We took our time in our search for builders. This gave us a whole Winter, Spring and Summer going back and forth from Tuscany on weekends.

This had its positive side, however, as it gave us the chance to spend some time in and around the house and to get the feel of its needs and dreams of future resurrection. We spent nights in the house during the winter with snow billowing through the non existent windows. Fortunately there were dozens of old dry wooden crates in the stables under the main part of the house and we had a constant fire in the living room which roared and didn’t smoke. And we lived on coffee and biscuits between starving sorties to the local Pizzaria. In the summer we camped in the garden rushing back in whenever a mountain storm rocked the country side. Mid -summer days gave us almost wrap-around sunlight and we began slowly to feel the many moods of the house.

The light in early Spring was intense and sometimes seemed to be emanating as much from within the house as from without.

Simon spent more days there than I during this period and these are the interior shots he took at the time, exhibited incidentally at The Edge gallery in London last July.

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