How many Novembers are there in a slice of bread?
If we had to describe the taste of last year’s freshly pressed olive oil, where would we begin? With the bread, probably. We’d try to remember whether it was still warm, how much oil we poured, whether we reached for another slice after the first bite. Then we’d remember someone who was at the table with us, and the conversation would go off in quite another direction. As for the taste itself, the one we were so sure we remembered, we’d find we had very little to say.
There’s something curious about the way we remember the seasons. We can forget almost everything about a particular November and still remember exactly where we sat one afternoon. Perhaps anyone who has come back to Umbria after a few years knows the feeling. You remember a window, the climb to reach it, even the spot where you stopped to catch your breath. Then you try to give someone directions and realise that the one thing you can’t remember is the name of the street.
We think about this when we’re putting together a few suggestions for guests staying with us at Lemon Tree. We can write down an address or check a date. What’s harder to guess is which small moment, out of a whole day spent here, someone will carry home.
On 11 November, for instance, the Fiera di San Martino returns to Todi. Imagine two people standing at the same stall. One arrived in town last night and is seeing the fair for the first time. The other has been coming since she was a little girl and could point to the very spot in the square where her father used to ask her to wait for him. It’s just one scene we can imagine among many. What we like about it is that, if we took a photograph, the two of them would seem to be looking at exactly the same thing. Only if we stopped to talk to them would we discover how different that square looks to each of them.
Perhaps those of us who live in Todi sometimes need a visitor’s eyes, too. We know a street so well that we know where to turn, which steps to take and how long the walk will be. Then someone asks us about the little figure above a doorway. We look up. We’ve walked past it dozens of times, and we have to smile at the thought that we’re the ones who could use a guide.
That’s the curiosity we’d take with us to Perugia to see Lu santo jullare Francesco. On display at Palazzo della Penna are the sketches and paintings through which Dario Fo explored the figure of Francis of Assisi. We have a soft spot for sketches. Looking at a finished painting, it’s easy to feel that the expression on a face could only ever have been that one. In a sketch, there’s still room to wonder. What changes if a hand is raised just a little, or if the eyes turn towards the person listening? Part of what draws us to Fo’s Francis is the very practical question he faced as a man of the theatre. How do you bring someone on stage when everyone in the audience already thinks they know him, before he’s even said a word?
Meanwhile, in the countryside around Assisi, the walks organised as part of UNTO offer a chance to see the olive trees up close, just as the season’s new oil is being pressed. And here our thoughts turn back to that slice of bread. By the time we taste the oil, almost all the work is done. We can say whether we like it, try to describe it, pour ourselves a little more. Someone who has tended those trees for months comes to the same table with rather more on their mind. Perhaps that first taste tells them something they’ve been waiting to find out. Or perhaps this year there’s a surprise.
Given the chance, that’s what we’d like to ask the person who made the oil. “When you first tasted it, was it how you thought it would be?” We’d like to hear the answer with the bread still in our hands. Then we’d take another bite and see if, this time, we could taste it too.
Emanuele and Carmen
Lemon Tree Boutique Guesthouse
Todi, Umbria
