At break of dawn this morning, the advance guard of your crack olive-picking team left Stroud Green and headed for the olive fields of eastern Italy. We're on our way to Abruzzo. As soon as we get out of the airport at Pescara, gateway to the little-known mountainous region, this is what we see:
In Britain, your local Asda might feature baked beans. In Italy, the pile-em-high show-stopper in the Auchun hypermarket is extra virgin olive oil so fresh you could mistake it for pea soup, just made from some of the zillions of olive trees that blanket the hillsides. It's all ultra-local produce, and it's the real thing. This augurs well.
Just one more observation for now: it's wet. Very wet. Wetter than a whale's whatsit. Wetter, probably, than I've ever seen it; the drive through absolutely drenching curtains of rain along flooded roads into the mountains today has not been the easiest (translation: one of the most perilous and trying journeys ever).) This does not bode well for the olive harvest: we need two dry days before Monday to achieve it.
We are hoping that O-Day (Olive-Picking Day No 1) will be Friday, so we can get it to the mill in time. It could be a cliffhanger. Watch this space.
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