Well. in an hour and an half’s time, a mini-adventure begins…
Off to Sardinia with She Who Must Be Obeyed…
What to expect? What to expect?
Mediterranean. Hot hot hot weather.
A Canadian in Sardinia = a penguin in Hell?
A land of sardines?
A land of sardonic laughter?
A land of danger?
In the 1970s kidnapping of foreigners had amounted to a cottage industry, a culture of kidnapping.
Almost anyone with a little money snatched and held in a peasant hut in the mountains by semi-literate demanding impossible millions from desperate families.
Romans couldn’t control the mountain-dwelling Sardinians, called them Barbagians – barbarians.
Italians no better luck.
Stone walls everywhere.
The cackling of an incomprehensible dialect.
The Swiss must love that aspect of Sardinia!
Solid rock, wrinkled stone, tussocky grass, big sky full of smoky clouds.
Tough land for a tough people of iron will.
Italian fashions?
American cultural invasion?
The Church?
Functional dogs only?
A place D.H. Lawrence loved.
(And he knew all about love, did this literary priest of love.)
Eight days…too short a span of time…but we two are prisoners of limited time and limited budget.
A guesthouse, a hotel and a working farm.
Airport to airport, rental car.
Endless monologue expected from She.
Will it be the best of times?
The worst of times?
Hate to fly.
I always recall old sailors’ advice that if the captain of a ship looked like he was fit to be hung as a criminal, then his destiny (and that of his passengers) was not to drown at sea.
Doesn’t reassure me, as pilots all have unjustifiable swagger and unmatchable children’s faces, despite being bus drivers of the air.
Local-type flight…stewardess eye candy or “dear, where did I put my sleeping mask?”
Should I be envied? Pitied?
Let the games begin.