Acuto and back

I returned from Italy on Sunday night. It had been very hot in Acuto (33C at the hottest time most days), but we had a cracking thunderstorm on Saturday evening. I say ‘a thunderstorm’ - I think there must have been at least two storms, possibly three, going on at the same time. From time to time we could see two or three simultaneous lightning strikes.

Acuto is in the Apennine Mountains south of Rome. It’s a small hilltop town, a commune, with narrow streets, mysterious side alleys, stairways, churches. Not a tourist place, but a work-a-day Italian town with a few shops and a real community life. About 750m above sea level. Hotel la Panoramica, the Bah?’? Studies Centre, stands on a hillside overlooking Acuto, which always looks wonderful in the early morning sun.

Thunderstorms have a strange effect on grown people, especially men.

I remember being either terrified or horribly excited by thunderstorms in my childhood. The fear and the excitement have not disappeared, and clearly others have the same reaction. A bunch of us gathered under the porch of Hotel La Panoramica to watch the lightning flickering in the clouds and darting to the ground. The storm (or storms) circled round us in the mountains, sometimes close, sometimes more distant. The hotel lights were off and on when the storm was very close. Large hailstones. Sudden illumination of the valley below us and the mountains on the other side. Darkness. Thunder.

We men behaved like kids, going ‘ooh’ at a particularly strong lightning bolt, laughing, mock challenging each other to run out onto the hotel terrace and touch one of the lampposts before the lightning came.

Later, after the storm, the air was much cooler and several gangs of conference attendees trooped down into the town and wandered around the narrow lanes, finally doing a circuit which took us down to a point where the town overhangs a valley and then walking back up to the hotel. Looking up to see wispy clouds, stars, the green and red lights of an airplane passing overhead.

Anyway, I am now back at my desk at home.