"Un miracolo!"

“Posso?” Giorgio, 82, crooks his left arm and offers it. (“May I?” he says.) “Si.” Dear fellow. I accept and together we venture slowly through the piazza to our local ristorante, Cantina del Granduca. He is taking me to dinner. It’s like being with Dad, who also has a gentlemanly air and holds a walking stick in his right hand.

Giorgio is my downstairs neighbour. I’ve been here in Anghiari less than a fortnight and already this is my second dinner invitation. How fortunate is that? I had been prepared to be lonely from time to time, but things seem to be working out.

“Old-fashioned,” says Giorgio, pointing to his chest when I suggest we share the bill. “I invited you.” Next time I’ll make sure I do the inviting.

People here do seem very generous and kind. I have been greeted warmly by anyone who remembers me from last year, from Carlo, the lovely painter, and his gracious partner Armando, to Angela who runs the newsagency. It’s touching.

It does help to have reached a stage in life when I have no qualms about striking up conversations with complete strangers. I do it at home too. There’s a freedom that comes with the invisibility of age – you’re no threat. Here, of course, I start out by apologising for not speaking much Italian, and people are most often patient and interested.

Just as at home, I often ask people the name of their dog when I’m out walking. “Come si chiama?” “What is his/her name?” Today this approach revealed that the gorgeous golden retriever I’ve seen is Lola and her amused owner is Mario. So now I can always say “Buongiorno, Mario e Lola” when I pass them in the street. It’s better than nothing.

I bumped into Giorgio briefly the day I was leaving Anghiari last year when I went to have a last look at the apartment I’d found. “Ci vediamo l’anno prossimo,” I told him (“See you next year”). It hardly seemed real at the time, but here I am.

I’ve already been to the Granduca twice and have bonded just a bit with Giulia and Samuele, the lovely staff there. Samuele has worked in London so speaks quite a lot of English. Looking for common ground, I showed him a picture of la mia figlia (my daughter Coco) who manages a restaurant in Sydney. “Molto bella!” he said. I have to agree.

I don’t mind eating alone, which is just as well, but it is very nice to have company. Giorgio and I both order the baccala (cod) served on grilled polenta and chickpea cream. Squisito. Neither of us is particularly hungry but we order dessert anyway – pannacotta with pistachio syrup for me and a tortino al cioccolato for him (which is delicious but would have kept me awake half the night).

Our conversation staggers along with my limited Italian and what Giorgio can recall of the English he once must have known quite well – he lived in Australia for 30 years off and on. A professional chef, he owned restaurants in Melbourne and also lived in Sydney and Perth.

Giorgio tells me he was born in Anghiari and is the second youngest of of seven siblings, the first of whom was born in 1923. Some years ago when he was very ill, he returned to Australia because at the time he thought that’s where he wanted to die. Fortunately, obviously, he recovered.

Today is Palm Sunday, a fact that would absolutely pass me by in Sydney but it’s an important day on the calendar in this most cattolico of countries. Apart from attending a Christmas midnight mass in Anghiari a few years ago, I haven’t been to church since I was a child. We were protestants, and not very church-going. But today I was intrigued to sit through some of the mass at the lovely Madonna del Carmine, built between 1536 and 1552, surprised to find I could understand bits and pieces – for example, “Croccifiggilo” (“Crucify him”) – and enjoying the ritual.

Here, at Carmine, the story goes that the Madonna appeared to a shepherdess on this site on either 11 July 1536 or 16 July 1535, depending on which sign you read, and so a church was built.

Last week I arrived at the church at 8.30am and found it closed. The woman who opened the doors had a ready response when I told her how I had sat, disappointed, on the bench facing the church when, just like that, the doors opened. “Un miracolo!” she said. We both had a good chuckle.

It’s about a one-hour walk from my place to the church. I had remembered it from my first visit to Anghiari and decided to make it my personal Sunday ritual this time around, for the exercise and the meditation a walk can bring. This morning is chilly and I notice, among the dry brown leaves from the oaks on the side of the road, the body of a dear little bird, about the size of a sparrow, brown with a touch of gold and some drops of blood on its belly. Hope, the “thing with feathers”, comes to mind as I’d only just read it again. It’s a beautiful poem (see below).

A flea market is operating in Anghiari’s main piazzas when I return to town, with plenty of junk and probably a few treasures. I linger over some editions of The Adventures of Pinocchio, a well-known figure in these parts whose author, Carlo Collodi, came from Firenze. I became intrigued (again) by the story several years ago when I played the parts of both the carabiniere (policeman) and the Blue Fairy in a pantomime, and think I could use the book as a translation exercise while I’m here. I don’t find one with illustrations I like, though, so I’ll keep looking.

My Bondi friend Ann Game has now arrived in Anghiari. She is the person I have to thank – so much – for introducing me to this special part of the world that has so taken my heart.

Ann first came here in 2003 and has been several times since, and it is through her that I have met the wonderful Carlo and Armando as well as Ann’s very interesting Canadian writer friend Marco who has a place of his own here – and was the first person to invite me to dinner. Ann also put me in touch with Elisa, who is doing a great job of teaching me Italian. Thank you, Ann.

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

by Emily Dickinson

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul

And sings the tune without the words

And never stops – at all.

And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard

And sore must be the storm

That could abash the little Bird

That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land

And on the strangest Sea

Yet – never – in Extremity

It asked a crumb – of me.

Every pew is full at the chiesa (church) of the Sanctuary of Madonna del Carmine al Combarbio on Palm Sunday and the mass is attentively heard.