DRIVING home the other day, 1 noticed a short, sharp flash of bottle green on the asphalt. A snake had just sizzled and coiled its way across the road, probably forced out of the woods behind our house and down towards the village in search of water.
The vision of our thirsty reptile friend flashing across the tarmac signalled a very clear message. After the hottest May in Italy for 50 years, summer has begun a little earlier this year. The season of outdoor living, of battling with mosquitoes, of eternal gratitude for the air-conditioning in the car, of forest fires, of the annual move to the beach house, of endless garden watering and of your biannual wardrobe change is upon us.
Wardrobe change? Indeed. Ask an Italian to show you his or her wardrobe and as likely as not you will find yourself confronted with that quintessential family item, the Quattro Stagioni (Four Seasons). No, this is not a piece of Baroque music written by Vivaldi. The Quattro Stagioni is a ceiling-to-floor wardrobe usually divided into four large compartments, with the top ones being so high that you need a long pole complete with hook in order to - pull down the good suit.
The whole purpose of the Quattro Stagioni is to enable the cambio della stagione (seasonal change). In other words, some time last month, you get all your winter gear (Armanis, Valentinos, Versaces, the usual old muck) and shift it to the top compartments while moving the summer gear from the top down to the bottom. Then some time next October, you repeat the whole operation in the reverse direction.
Summer is indeed upon us and the heat is already building up. Regular readers of this letter may be familiar with the AMB Test (Agnew Melted Biro Test), which soon will prove a far more important contribution to the - science of meteorology than your common or garden Celsius thermometer.
The AMB Test, like many great scientific discoveries, was made casually when I left a Biro on a car dashboard one hot day, only to return hours later to find that it had melted itself into an "S" shape. Ever since, I've been leaving ballpoint-pens around testing the summer that is in it.
The other day, however, your intrepid Mediterranean weather-man came up with a new version of the melted Biro when inadvertently leaving the plastic petrol can out in the sun while mowing the lawn. By the end of the day the can, too, had gone a sort of squidgy H-shape that suggests with truly scientific exactitude that the summer of 1997 is going to be a hot one.
In a land of conformist living, summer engenders a whole variety of comforting and familiar duals. This is the time when those lucky enough to have a beach, mountain or country house (and there are millions of Italians who have at least one if not all three) move out of their city flat and into their summer residence.
"Papa" is often left house-sitting in the hot city, as he continues to go to work, joining the family at the beach house on weekends. Those who opt for the country or mountains generally opt for privacy, peace and quiet, but those - the vast majority - who opt for the traditional seaside holiday often find themselves back in the madding crowd, struggling hard to see the waves from Row 7, Deckchair 23, on the regimented beach front and so crowded that if you are not careful setting down your sandwich, you'll find a bite out of it when you next pick it up.
Summer, too, is the festival season in Italy, from Spoleto to Umbria Jazz to the Venice Film Festival to the Rossini Pesaro festival and much more. Not to be outdone, our own Trevignano this year celebrates its third Festival Internazionale del Corto (short films festival) which features not only recent work by young Italian directors but also a section on TV shorts, as well as a section of Norwegian short films. Now, there's a cultural and climatic clash, from the fiords of Norway to volcanic Lake Bracciano.
Now about those snakes, again. Two types of snakes may be encountered in these Northern Lazio parts: the "wood snake", which is often impressively long (up to 10 ft) but almost totally harmless, and the little viper (18 in), which looks less dangerous but can, in fact, be deadly.
Usually, however, snakes do not tend to hang around to exchange the time of day, and the only time I ever got to watch one for any length was when a group of us out walking came across a pair of amorous snakes, coiling and cooing around each other in a remarkably graceful and elaborate dance.
Normally, however, at this time of year snakes are seen only because they have come out looking for water. One of my Irish relatives, not a great reptile enthusiast, has suggested that we leave out rows of little tins full of water on the edge of the wood, complete with "Snakes This Way" signs.
We could be on to something here.