Platonic Diversions

Greetings from Mondovì: A Hole in the Heart

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LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE There’s a hole in the heart of Piazza. Our farmacia storica has closed its door under the portici, the metal gates pulled tight. The hand-painted sign remains above, as if some other pharmacy might come along to…

Greetings from Mondovì: A few words

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LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE A few words—very few–as any attempt by me to make sense of or draw neat conclusions about 2021 seems presumptuous, futile, and redundant.  It’s been a year, four seasons and 365 days, events unique and mundane, day…

Greetings from Mondovì: Spring came early

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LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE On 1 March I invited four friends for a properly distanced coffee on the terrace, even though it was the first day of another red-zone lockdown, in response to a third wave of COVID-19.  Squinting in bright,…

Greetings from Mondovì: The Smallest Things

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LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 February  It’s snowing again, a lazy tumble hiding not a thing, dropping a delicate web over tree and field, garden and wall.  My husband says he’s done with winter, and this half-hearted effort seems to show…

Greetings from Mondovì: No Rush

Close encounter

LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 1 February  Here’s a new month in the new year, but I can’t escape a recurring sense of déjà vu, of experience spiralling back upon itself.  It feels as if the same full moon has been rising…

Greetings from Mondovì: A Proper Winter

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LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE 13 January 2021 We’re having a proper winter, snowy and cold, the kind we haven’t seen for a couple of years.  The landscape is just as it should be—snow-covered hills, bare branches—a perfect study in black on…

Greetings from Mondovì: December 2020

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LESLIE MCBRIDE WILE I could quote Sweet Baby James to tell you about the first of December, go on to describe the hush and sweep of falling snow, how it dropped a curtain between house and valley and filled our…