A delayed birthday meal, and memories of Florence

Outside the window, a thrush grasps a devil creature, or snail, and is busy thrashing it against the pavement until the shell flies off and the thrush triumphantly flies off with the morsel to its nest. Byron lies moodily in the heat, unable to pace round his old friend Bartok the guinea pig. Ann has placed an advert for the cage on the Hundon Facebook and someone is coming for it this afternoon. Edwin had been working all day in London on Ann's birthday, so last night he made up for it by taking us to a new restaurant in Bury - The Lark - which served the most unusual but delicious combinations of food. 

With Andre's family in Florence

We returned from our Florence trip last week, but it already seems a distant memory. Having determined this may have been our only chance to meet Andre's parents, Ann fought the consultants to try and get her treatments sorted before we went, but circumstances were otherwise, so we went "at risk". Andre has the most wonderful family, very close and affectionate with each other, and welcoming us in as part of their group. They had rented a capacious, six-bedroom apartment in Florence, and invited us to stay gratis with them: his parents, two sisters and their husbands. All are greatly talented, but although the parents speak a little more English than we do Portuguese (i.e. a few words to our zero words), we got by mostly by universal body language and translations by the children. 

Andre told us of his grandmother, a dramatic character who, unless her children phone her regularly, says "no one loves me anymore. No one cares if I'm still alive!"  She believes the plants in her garden protect her from evil spirits. When her fern died, she said "Someone must have wished me ill. My fern absorbed the hate and sacrificed itself to save me." She had been born on a large farm and was her father's favourite, but he had a vendetta with farming neighbour. The grandmother fell in love with the neighbour's son, but her father said if she ever married him, he would kill him and his family, so she married someone else under duress, but still talks about her lost love. Then Edwin then told us of the mother of a friend of his who was having a big birthday celebration and deliberating over who to invite. She finally made the choice based on the postage used to send her Christmas cards. If they used second class stamps, they clearly thought of her and posted their cards in good time, but a first-class stamp meant they had forgotten, and posted the card at the last minute, so they were not invited to her special party.

Andre's father is a pastor and said a moving prayer before we left, wishing for health and save travel, which was much appreciated. The family walked each way into the centre each day, and Ann walked once or twice but I used taxis, although only a couple of kilometres. I am not a great admirer of multiple, seemingly repetitive, pictures of the virgin and child, so the contents of the Uffizi were a little wasted on me, although to see the originals of so many paintings such as Botticelli's “Birth of Venus” known only through art programs or modern pastiche was worth the effort of the long, hot, crowded corridors. But the David of Michelangelo in the Accademia Gallery is breathtaking in its monumental scale, its symbolism, its sculptural beauty, and the shear artistry of the representation. 

We also visited the Museo Galileo that holds many of his experiments and inventions, things I had only seen pictures of in schoolbooks when we were learning basic physics. Again, to see the originals was remarkable. To comprehend the originality of calculating the parabolic arc of projectiles, or the arrogance of thought that could demolish belief in the earth as the centre of all creation by demonstrating the heliocentric system with systematic observations, is inspirational to the power of thought to change the world. Galileo had his equipment built by the finest craftsmen of Florence, so even a demonstration of the path of a rolling ball is made of elegant wood with inlaid marquetry and polished brass.

Galileo’s Parabolic Demonstration Apparatus