Up the River Without any Water

I've not been very active on here recently, mainly because Neil and I have been doing a marathon to get the Norman Nicholson biography out of the house and into the Printer's hands.  Proof-reading is a tedious and time-consuming business, reading word by word, line by line, checking every comma and stop.  We're trying to get it as perfect as we can.  And Neil has been tweaking the type-setting in InDesign, finding all kinds of glitches.  But we're almost there and felt able to give ourselves a day off.

We decided to go up the big river that flows down from the marble mountains, where there are several waterfalls and swimming pools where you can cool off on a hot afternoon.  Neil also wanted to look for some big marble cobbles to carve into small pieces of sculpture.  When we got to the river, we got quite a shock - no shortage of pebbles, but a definite absence of water!

And this is the river further up - some muddy streaks, presumably from the thunderstorms we had a week ago, but not even damp.

The waterfalls are high and dry.

But at the base of the falls, there's a pool of turquoise water where the river has gone underground and is trickling out at the bottom.  Enough to paddle!

Italy is very much in need of rain, but it's coming - summer has broken and we're getting thunderstorms and cloudy days.  Just as I'm posting this, I can hear rain pattering down on the terrace outside.  Hopefully the river will be back in full flow in a couple of months.