Dear Friend,

Well, in late April the Watermill was looking marvellous, thanks to Spring springing, Müller maintaining and Terenzoni tending. Karsten Müller, our manager and friend, who is staying at the mill for the duration, has been doing all those maintenance and restoration tasks that are needed to keep the mill looking spruce and lovely. He’s also been slowly and lovingly restoring the old ‘Chippendale’ wardrobe that belongs in the Botticelli bedroom.

Here he is working away on the wardrobe door in the sunlit courtyard. Meanwhile our gardener and friend Flavio Terenzoni has been bringing out the window boxes from their winter hibernation and filling them with flowers, as well as tending the Watermill gardens and grounds. He has also been taking some marvellous pictures of flora and fauna around us. Four of his pictures are top and bottom of this introductory section, and you can see more in a little 30-second Facebook slideshow, by clicking here.

16th century music
discovered by Lois

Lois and Bill are still ‘confined to barracks’ in Florence. Lois has finished the thesis for her PhD and will be soon taking her viva, online, to convince expert musicologists that she knows what she’s talking about. It’s a bit scary, but Bill and our daughters, Lydia and Lara, confidently expect that we’re going to have to address her as dottoressa very soon.

Now she’s reading some first-hand sources about the Italian opera composer Pietro Mascagni, with a view to writing a novel or screenplay about some aspects of his life.

Thanks to some expert, practical advice from our scriptwriting guru Laurence Marks, we are beginning to see what direction the story might take.

The illusion of reality

Bill seems to be as busy as ever, not only writing daily blogs, Facebook posts, Tweets and goodness knows what else, but also working on the follow-up to his detective novel set in Renaissance Florence, A Matter of Perspective. (If you haven’t read it, now is your opportunity. You can buy the paperback on Amazon, or download the Kindle version. Please click here for more. The link is to amazon.com, but you’ll also find the book on your own country’s Amazon page. The working title of the sequel is The Illusion of Reality and the picture above, of the floor of Florence cathedral makes the point. What’s it all about? See Beware of Vertigo below. Bill has also completed the World’s Slowest Marathon, and there’s more about that below, too.

But there’s no getting away from the fact that the coronavirus has wrought havoc on the Watermill’s 2020 season. We have taken decisive action, postponing our earlier courses to later in the year and even to 2021. We believe that in a few months much will be resolved and hopefully will be able to run creative courses later in the season, but we are constantly monitoring the situation and will keep everyone informed as things progress. You can see our Coronavirus response in the article below.

Meanwhile, enjoy Flavio’s pictures above and below this introductory section. They are: Top Left: A swallowtail butterfly soaks up the spring sunshine; Top Right: The wisteria is blooming on the vine Verandah. Bottom Left: Busy gathering ingredients for Lunigiana honey; Bottom Right: Lemons and flowers on our riverside terrace.

In this month's newsletter there are also stories on:

• The coronavirus at the Watermill
• Beware of vertigo
• The World’s Slowest Marathon
• Bees, honey and breakfast
• Gone fishing! A peaceful pastel from a Watermill guest
• Liszt and Lisitsa: exhilarating sounds
• Grandparents, cousins, aunts -- everyone wants to join Mike’s international painting classes
• ‘Tune in‘ to a knitting chat with Renée
• How quickly are you writing your book?
• Italian words mispronounced by millions

Happy reading....

“You need a break, Scarlett.
Let’s take a week at the Watermill!”
Leigh and Gable in Gone with the Wind

Bring a partner: there's plenty for them to do

They don’t have to participate in the course, but they will be able to enjoy the wonderful hospitality of the mill and, whenever they want, to come out with you to our beautiful locations.

We also offer a range of Alternative activities for partners on all our courses, as well as a generous £GBP 250 discount if they share a room with you.

The coronavirus and the Watermill

We hope you are well and in good heart in these difficult times for all of us.

In view of the coronavirus pandemic, which seems to change daily if not hourly, we have postponed our 2020 early courses, pushing them back to later in the year when, hopefully, the situation will have been resolved. Some courses have been postponed until 2021. We have been in touch with everyone involved. The painting, creative writing, knitting and Italian language weeks that we are currently planning to run are outlined in the appropriate sections below.

Your well-being is our concern and we are constantly reviewing the situation, so please be rest assured that if travel restrictions in your own country or in Italy mean that the course cannot run on these new dates, or that appropriate flights are not available, we will postpone your course again to later in the year or until 2021.

Our coronavirus cancellation policy is as follows:

• If a workshop is postponed and you cannot make the new dates for the tutor you have chosen, we will offer you alternative courses with others of our inspiring tutors, either this year or next.
• If you still want to cancel despite those offers, our normal cancellation policy will apply. You can see these on our website under FAQs in each of the appropriate sections: Painting holidays, Creative Writing holidays, Knitting holidays and Italian Language holidays
• If we cancel a workshop, rather than just postpone it, we will refund any payment in full.

If you would like to support us and our business in this difficult period, we would be grateful if you would use any payments you have made as a credit for a future creative course, rather than requesting a refund. Your help in this way would be much appreciated.

We do hope you will be able to plan ahead for the time when we are through this difficult period and you are ready for a relaxing and inspiring break away from it all.

Please come and join us.

Beware of vertigo

During our April ‘house arrest’ in Florence, Bill has been musing on the artistic and architectural splendours of the city, and in one of his mini-essays last month he suggested we looked down for a change.

In the days BC (Before Coronavirus ), every time we visited the Duomo, Florence’s Cathedral of Santa Maria Fiore, we wanted to look around us at the impressively colossal space created by those ancient architects, at the wonderful artefacts on the walls, and then up into the interior of the extraordinary dome created by his hero Filippo Brunelleschi. But by looking down you can also see a remarkable achievement: the cathedral’s 16th century pavimento.

The first section of flooring, just inside the main portal is the most extraordinary of all. You will see that the multicoloured marble motifs in the octagonal pavement get smaller until they reach the central point, marked with a medallion inscribed with the letters OPA, the ‘logo’ of the Opera del Duomo, the venerable institution in charge of the cathedral works. (See the two pictures above.)

You can admire the precision of the stonework and the knowledge of mathematics that went into its construction, apparently inspired by the inlays in Turkish carpets, fashionable among the rich in 16th century Florence. But to enjoy the truly remarkable aspect of this floor, you need to fly with us, virtually, high into the nave. Beware of vertigo!

Isn’t that extraordinary? It just shows that being locked down can give you a new perspective on life!

The world’s slowest marathon

At 9 o’clock on the morning of 12 April the church bells in Florence rang out loudly under a clear blue Tuscan sky. We’re not sure whether they were celebrating Easter Day or the fact that Bill had just completed the World’s Slowest Marathon, 422 100-metre laps around a specially designed circuit in our apartment here.

Yes, he’s been in and out of the bedrooms, round the kitchen, through the hall and sitting room and round a couple of balconies, no fewer than 422 times, for a total of 42.2 km, slightly more than the 26 miles 385 yards required. That’s Bill above at the Finishing Line between Balcony Bend and Sitting Room Straight, waving the chequered flag specially prepared by Lois. And the winning time? A mere 13 hours 40 minutes.

Since the Italian lockdown is not scheduled to end until 4 May, and since oldies like Bill are likely to have to remain ‘confined to barracks’ for some time after that, the challenge was to find another objective for those daily 20 laps of hundred metres each. The answer was the Kennedy March.

In the 1960s President John F Kennedy was concerned about the lack of physical fitness of the American people and he heard that his predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt, had said that American Marines should be able to walk 50 miles in three days. JFK said that that modern Marines should be able to do even better, completing the distance in 20 hours straight. Jokingly, he suggested that the presidential staff might do the same. The president’s brother, Robert Kennedy, made the march, through slush and snow, wearing his Oxford brogues! Many ordinary Americans also took up the challenge, and the Kennedy March was quite a craze in the 1960s. I think it has all but disappeared now.

We can’t report any slush and snow: in fact, the April days have largely been warm and sunny. And Bill doesn’t have a pair of brogues. But by the time you read this issue, he should have completed his 50 miles (80 km, 800 laps of the apartment; a cumulative time of 26 hours 40 minutes!) and looking for new challenges. Ghent to Aix? Land’s End to John O’Groats?

Bees, honey and breakfast

That’s another marvellous Flavio picture above, of a bee busy above the Wisteria blossoms in late April, and next to it, the product of their labours: Lunigiana honey.

As you may know, honey from Lunigiana, the unspoiled part of Tuscany in which the Watermill is located, is the only one in Italy to have been given the coveted DOP (Denominazione di Origine Protetta) designation. Other products so defined include Parma ham and Parmesan cheese and the balsamic vinegar of Modena.

Beekeepers here still keep to the centuries-old traditions to ensure the quality of the honey. The earliest records of honey-making go back to the early 16th Century (when the authorities realised they could tax the product!) and, amazingly, if you compare the locations of beehives on ancient maps with those on a modern one, you can see that the hives today are in almost precisely the same areas as they were five centuries ago.

Two types of honey are made in Lunigiana: the lighter-coloured, delicately flavoured acacia honey and the darker, more strongly flavoured chestnut honey. We serve them both at breakfast at the Watermill.

A recent blog Bill made about the honey inspired a Watermill guest, Shirley Coles, to rummage through the photographs she took during a painting course here last year.

She told us: “I have just done a small pastel painting based on photo from the Watermill breakfast table... didn’t manage to include the honey though!”  It is still a lovely painting, even without the honey. Thank you for sharing it with us Shirley..

Gone fishing! A peaceful painting from a Watermill guest

We are always pleased when previous guests write to support us in these extraordinary times. So, it was heartening to receive an email from Betty and Roland Gravois, from Louisiana in the USA.

Betty says: “We have fond memories and a few paintings from our time with you. We are hopeful that we will be able to travel to Europe again and see lovely places like The Watermill.”

Betty and Roland say they are keeping well, and Betty has had plenty of time to paint. She sent us the peaceful picture (right), reminding us of happier days, when all we had to worry about was whether the fish were biting!

There are trout in the river Rosaro that runs peacefully by the Watermill, but we seldom go fishing ourselves: we are far too busy ensuring that our guests enjoy our inspiring, week-long creative courses. We are certain that they’ll be up and running again very soon.

Liszt and Lisitsa: exhilarating sounds

In our monthly newsletters we like to give you exhilarating sounds as well as inspiring pictures.  Last month we shared a beautiful recording of Pietro Mascagni’s Intermezzo from Cavalleria Rusticana. This month it is something a little less relaxing: Just under ten minutes of extraordinary piano-playing that will invigorate your day.

It is Franz Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody No 2, played by Valentina Lisitsa, and you can see it by clicking here. It proved one of the most popular Watermill blogs last month. Valentina’s playing will amaze and inspire you by its sheer virtuosity. You can admire it quietly, in the privacy of your own home, unlike the earlier performances by the composer himself.

Liszt was an old musical show-off, of course, and his composing and his piano concerts played unashamedly to the gallery. Lisztomania, the hysterical ecstasy of his female fans, preceded Beatlemania by more than a century. His devotees would wear his portrait on brooches, and some would try to grab his handkerchief and gloves. A lock of his hair was as gold dust.

And not just his hair: some women carried around glass phials, into which they poured his coffee dregs and according to another report: “Liszt once threw away an old cigar stump in the street under the watchful eyes of an infatuated lady-in-waiting, who reverently picked the offensive weed out of the gutter, had it encased in a locket and surrounded with the monogram "F.L." in diamonds and went about her courtly duties unaware of the sickly odour it gave forth.” I don’t recollect the fans of John, Paul, George and Ringo go to quite such lengths!

So, make yourself a cup of coffee, click on the YouTube link and enjoy an exhilarating 10 minutes. It might just make your day! And you can throw away the coffee dregs!