28 June 2025

The ice cream store at the beach has permanently closed. It had been there for 90 years, but over the winter the family who ran it decided they were done and so it sits empty now. I had become addicted to the Apple-Cinnamon gelato and doubt that I will ever taste its like again. Fortunately, in an act of what now appears to be great prescience (but wasn't really), I gorged myself on it last summer. Everyone says that there are plenty of other gelaterie around, and that is true. But it is also true that there will never be another one like that.

Even though we are in mourning, Jonathan and I are helping out every weekend at the pub, doing the bills and waiting for Alice's baby to be born. When that happens, we will work every night for a while. We do this surrounded by our friends who could be sitting out on the cool terrace, but decided to come in to be with us so that we won't be lonely. It is sweltering inside, but they are kind and lovely friends. They speak to us in Italian while we are adding numbers in our heads in English, making it impossible for me to either speak or add correctly and demonstrating beyond any doubt, because he can do both simultaneously, that Jonathan is a goddamn genius.

At the house, both the olives and the grapes are coming along nicely despite the heat. The olives are the size of small peas now. The grapes are a little bigger. Jonathan and I live very sedately in front of the fans, drinking ice water and not doing much else. In the mornings, we often go to the beach. Little kids build sand castles with buckets or play with beach balls at the edge of the surf.