27 April 2007
We found a place to park by the main road, somewhere in the Valdichiana, not far from Lucignano, tucking ourselves away from the enormous views, squeezing the car off the tarmac under the hedge, then walking a few yards back, carrying the food, and down a track of mud, baked hard, lined with branching buttercups, into a wood of tall turkey oaks. We settled down, shaking the spider, a pisaura, off the cloth, sending a green tiger beetle up into the air by moving a finger close to him. The white butterflies settled, closed their wings, and were green veined. The adjacent field sloped up and away. It was an olive orchard.

Swallows went to and fro, sweeping the margin. Then I was surprised to see that they were coming in under the trees, even round the trunks. Birds, flying about inside. Always suggesting that there is something here which might be important. Here the outside and the inside were being sewn together with long loops, the hot exposures stitched back into shelter. They were coming in under the roof, from sunlight into a glimmer. An accomplished knitting, a flash of perception and another clever swerve to return to the only half defined. I recalled Adrian Stokes again, as I had often during this holiday in Tuscany, and his comments on being in an arcade, at a café table with a blue tablecloth, leaning immobile against a pillar, but provided for, outside and ...