The newspapers, internet reports, radio and television are all blaring full of the crisis facing the Euro and the deepening European financial catastrophe, but somehow this morning here at Bellaugello Gay Guest House it all seems a long long way away.

The view from my kitchen window is of peace and serenity, mist hangs over the Chiascio river with strata clinging to the countours of the wooded hillsides glorious in their autumnal colours.  There is virtually no breeze, no rustling of leaves, the only sound that of birdsong, peace perfect peace!

It is surreal to be in this oasis of calm, I am listening to the news from the BBC in London and am reminded that today at 11am Britain remembers the dead of two world wars.  This year as every year the Queen will be a t the Cenotaph for two minutes silence at, 11am on the 11th day of the 11th month of the 11th year which this year is is particularly poignant not only for its palindromic numbering but also as it is the first with no living survivor of the 1914-1918 Great War.  As I write in times of such loud economic turmoil and noise, my kitchen window is still open, wafting in over the silence is birdsong, I am imagining the fields of Flanders, the silence of the armistice, did the birds sing there on this day so many years ago?

The tranquillity of Umbria is cure for my soul…..