Yesterday was the “mandatory olive harvest recovery day.” Having been out of the manual labour-force for so long, I’d forgotten that one of the side-effects of manual labour is the post-labouring muscle creaking. So I spent much of the day laying about.

While the vrai Collettiani went off to have their annual meeting, I had the rainy village all to myself. After lunch I realized that my food supplies were again running low and if was to escape the fate of eating moldy broccoli for supper, I needed to run into Albenga for a refill. Fortunately by the time I set out the worst of the rain had subsided, and it was an easy drive; indeed now that I’ve done it three or four times, the “Italian roundabout experience” seems almost natural.

During December the COOP is open all day on Sundays, and it was bustling. From the various special flowers on offer, and “feste” signs around the town, I think yesterday was either a holiday, or perhaps simply a step on the road to Christmas.

It being Sunday and rainy, I toyed with the idea of going to the movies after shopping: Albenga is well-outfitted with cinemas, and there’s a 6-screen multiplex on the way back to Colletta. Alas although I was primed for La mia super ex-ragazza dubbed in Italian it was not meant to be: everyone else in the Albenga region decided that a rainy Sunday was a good day to go to the movies too, and as I drove by it was obvious that there wasn’t a parking place within 2 miles of the theatre. Another time.

So I reconciled myself to some late-nite Javascript hacking and Harper’s reading instead.

Woke up this morning with my muscles back in form and to a beautiful sunny day. After a morning cappuccino and a walk around the village, I’m back in the e-dungeon at work. If I get accomplished what I hope to get accomplished today, I’m thinking of taking the train into Genoa tomorrow for a brief respite from the “working” part of the “working vacation.”