Colonata and Carara marble quarries

Italy 2008

Many years ago - in 1969 - my parents converted an old Tuscan farmhouse into a villa, which my brother Michael inherited, and has maintained beautifully. It stands on a hill near the town of Camaiore, a few miles inland from Viareggio. How my parents found it, I'm not sure, but it commands a sensational view of the valley, the town, the coast, and the shimmering Mediterranean in the distance.

I visited it once, in 1986, while filming "Monty - In Love and War", a centenary documentary for the BBC. The 75-minute film won the New York Blue Ribbon award for Best Documentary profile, largely thanks to a wonderful producer, Jeremy Bennett, but the visit to Casa Hamilton in Pieve - the name given to the church-owned area east of Camaiore - was not a success. I had a violent migraine, and though Nick, my third-born, remembers still the contadino showing him a rabbit (to cook?) I remember only a pounding headache!

Fastforward to 2008, when brother Michael insisted that my wife Raynel and I think seriously of holidaying at the villa. My sons Alex and Sebastian had both stayed there (Sebby during a summer of alarming forest fires, which almost smoked him out), and my mother had become too frail to travel there. It would mean putting down my pen, and breaking my rhythm while writing "American Caesars," but Raynel - who had been suffering all year from a new boss completely out of her depth and bringing the Boston Public School's ESL Department to ruin and ultimately open rebellion - persuaded me to bite the holiday bullet. And to overcome my work-guilt, she suggested we take along her stepmother Lois, who lives in Berkeley, and has found it difficult to overcome her grief at the death of her only son, Kevin, Raynel's half-brother, who died at only 41 in 2006.

So, we accepted Michael's kind prodding - and booked our flights! From July 13, 2008 to July 28, 2008 we undertook an italienische Reise, if not in Goethe's footsteps, then in those of Michael and Lyn, who have been going for years and have kept the property both pristine and comfortable. With Palmira as our housekeeper - available to cook for us every evening if we wished - we would be in clover, or olivegroveland. Here are some of the photos...

Getting started

With three brothers, four children, two grandchildren, and more coming, it's time for the old boy to get with the program, and begin posting a blog!

On a visit to Sydney several years ago my son Alex showed me a cute little Minolta shoot-and-snap camera, a DiMage Xl, no bigger than a cigarette case. I bought one back in the US, and tho it is now held together with sellotape, it works fine. So here goes...