A very personal post today.

All was so very good this morning at Bellaugello Gay Guest House, a still quiet dawn, the mist slowly lifting to reveal a clear blue sun filled sky, revealing  autumnal reds, golds, ambers and oranges in the woodlands that hug the valley sides below Bellaugello, the sort of early morning I just love.  The wispy mist breaking away and giving substance to the cobwebs spun magically between blades of grass and in low hanging tree branches, sparkling in the ever strengthening sun.  Swarovski does not come close.  So near to Christmas a day bringing friends and families back to the valley to be together and celebrate, today should have been a perfect day but alas not.

This is a blog about my life here in Umbria central Italy, running my Gay Guest House.  Much I write about is based around the business, what I get up to, the highs, the lows, the great guys I meet, my series of Bellaugello Backs, Dinner table  decorations, and several nonsensical events, but it is also a blog about what affects me and life here in rural Umbria. Most of my blog is light hearted, there is the occasional rant – often much deserved and about the inordinate Italian bureaucracy, the inefficiency of state systems, the challenges I face, and things that irritate me, but this post different, and is a difficult one.

The phone rang, a good friend….. informing me of the death of my neighbor’s son.  Killed in a road accident on his way to work this morning.  I am still in shock.  For those of you readers who have been to Bellaugello you will know his house, maybe passed him working on his tractor, his home the white farmhouse just over the hill from Bellaugello.  Roberto, a forty one year old father of three young children died this morning, his car hit head on by a drunk and drugged up individual driving a Mercedes too fast and who survived..

It cannot be true, but alas it is.

Roberto lived with his wife and kids, and in the traditional Italian way of family life.  In another part of the house lives his father, sister, her husband and their son, a close family who are superb neighbours and good friends.  Roberto was quite simply a nice guy, ever smiling, always willing to lend a hand, passionate, humorous, un anima favolosa, per me è stato un onore averlo conosciuto.

Today is his youngest son’s 3rd Birthday