[I wrote this a couple of days ago and it already seems dated. I thought I’d post it anyway to show how quickly events have overtaken us.]

I got home a couple of weeks ago, ending the popular series “500 hours of solitude (give or take).” My blogpost output in New York falls drastically, not because it’s a less interesting place, but because, I will admit, I lead a boring life here. Call it the uneventful life of the New York native who didn’t move to the city to live out some fantasy of a glamorous life.

So, first off, I’ll come out and say it. I’m a klutz. Call me butterfingers. Remember when people said that? I was reading something on my dear sweet iPad Air 2, a model that first saw the light of day in 2014, when I dropped it onto a hard tile floor. It wasn’t the first time that I’d dropped either a phone or iPad, but this time it was serious. At first things seemed to be ok, but then the screen turned into a series of gray stripes. Once the icons flashed and I thought, great, it’ll self-heal. But the was only a momentary letup in its slide to oblivion.

I’m also a geek, and when I’m here, I tend to obsess over stuff like computers, iPhones, TV streaming services and the like. I suppose it’s just another way to fill these boring days. Sure, I’ve had work to do, but I am a master of procrastination.

Okay, you say, why not go out and do something? Good question. Since I did return from the walled country of Italy, I’ve been trying to do the right thing and self-isolate as much as I can. Screening while traveling back was nonexistent other than being asked if I’d been to China. But I was in Milan for a couple of days, traveling back and forth from Perugia on crowded trains. So I figured I’d do the right thing and lay low. Plus, jet lag hit me hard and I’ve been semi-narcoleptic, waking up at 4 a.m. and needing a nap by lunchtime.

The Italy I left was about a month ahead of the U.S. in terms of Covid-19 craziness. Whole areas of the north were under lockdown and it was only days before all of the north, then all of the country was ordered to stay home just a few days after I got back to New York. It was all people talked about, and I was unnerved by how unaware people in New York seemed to be about what was going to unfold.

I almost wish I hadn’t left. As a journalist, you want to be where the action is, and a whole country of 60 million people basically staying home is definitely the kind of phenomenon you want to witness. Thanks to social media and everyone having a smartphone, though, it’s been easy to see what’s going on there. Italians have adapted with some sadness and, as you might expect, with a fair amount of style and humor.

Some of our friends are lucky enough to live in the country. Angela and Debora, for example, live across the Chiascio valley from us, in a hamlet of Valfabbrica called Poggio S. Dionisio. Their incredible off-the-grid new house abuts some woods, and Angela, who grew up surrounded by forest, is an expert forager. The first days of staying home found her wandering around to pick wild asparagus, which, after a warm winter, is now in season. Here’s one day’s harvest:

Others have taken refuge in books, cooking, drinking. They’re allowed to take walks, but have to maintain a 1 meter/1 yard distance from others. At first restaurants and bars (more like all-purpose cafés in the American context) were at first allowed to be open from 6 am to 6 pm, but they’re all shut down now. Italians can buy food and medicine, but there are rules. Angela tells me that at the local supermarket, only 1 person per family is allowed in, and there’s a limit of 25 people in the store at any one time. The writer Beppe Severgnini has a piece in The New York Times that describes things pretty well.

More, later….

Did anyone notice that I’d changed what’s in parenthesis in the headline? I didn’t, only realizing the change when I scrolled through the blog. Both phrases say the same thing—give or take, versus, more or less—but the change was completely accidental. Hey, where’s my copyeditor?

Anyhow, so much for solitude. After a drive to another town, then Angelo driving me to Perugia, then a bus trip to Rome’s airport, then a 10 hour flight and 40 minutes to our house and a few hours’ sleep, I’m sitting across the table from The Spartan Woman with cappuccinos and her homemade bean-oatmeal muffins. [Update: I’m finishing this up a couple of days later, jet lag having temporarily eaten my brain,]

I didn’t see any signs of coronavirus worries until I hit Rome’s airport, where every now and then you’d see someone with a mask. When I got in line to check into my flight, an airline rep came up to me to ask me if I’d recently been to China; presumably if I’d said yes I would’ve been tested. I was preoccupied anyway, my periodic allergic cough having returned at a most inconvenient time. Luckily a visit to a pharmacist took care of that; he gave me this great cough suppressant in lozenge form, so I wasn’t hacking all the way to JFK.

The scare is already seriously changing how we live. American Airlines has cancelled flights to Milan, while Perugia’s terrific Journalism Festival has been cancelled. Also cancelled is Geneva’s auto show, one of Europe’s big industry get-togethers. In AA’s case, a flight from New York to Milan never took off because the flight crew refused to board the aircraft.

Back in Italy, at least for me, the last couple of days were such a whirlwind that it didn’t occur to me that I was alone most of the time. I realized at some point that our home insurance had expired, so a few WhatsApp exchanges led to my attacking the bancomat (ATM) in town and running off to our agent to pay in cash. Okay, so, cash, old-fashioned, right? Then the policy is called “Generali Sei a Casa Digital” (Generali–the company–you’re at home, digital). I had to sign a half dozen times on an iPad. Go figure.

Then I rushed home to change and take the organic Prosecco from the fridge to go over the hill to our friends Letizia and Ruurd for dinner. Letizia runs a cooking school, her specialty being updated Umbrian classics made with the best ingredients. The couple also run a bed and breakfast, the classes and inn both bearing the name Alla Madonna del Piatto. Both trained entomologists and former academics, they tossed it aside for life in the hills outside Assisi. In one way, it wasn’t a big stretch; Letizia grew up in nearby Perugia. Ruurd’s from the Netherlands and is a multi-talented guy; among other things, he took all the photos in Letizia’s cookbook Kitchen With a View. You should buy it.

It was an adventure getting to their place at night. Being a city boy, it’s taken me awhile to get used to driving around the Umbrian hills, especially when it’s dark. We native New Yorkers orient ourselves by buildings and by knowing where our islands end and the water begins. You can’t really get lost, plus, you know, streetlights. Letizia’s place is way up a winding road, and it took awhile to figure out how to get there with the car’s navigation. Now I can do it easily in the daytime. But at night, without those cues, not to mention streetlights, I had to keep checking my onboard map, which has been known to lead me through fields.

It was a terrific night, with a couple they know, Augustino and Rossella, who live not too far away in the countryside outside Foligno. We talked about food, families, where we live, ingredients, how to make polenta properly (there are actually pots with motors that stir the stuff for you), beer and the incredible dessert wine we were Letizia’s biscotti into—Passito di Sagrantino.

All good things end, and I woke up the next day at 8:30, late for me, with a whole bunch of things to do. Closing the house is more involved, plus I had to pick up a couple of things at the supermarket for friends. And, er, I wanted a bottle of that Sagrantino dessert wine. That night I had my final solitary bachelor’s dinner—farro spaghetti with fennel, spring onions, chili-spiked anchovies, and bread crumbs. Basically, it’s what was left in the fridge.

So…yes, I survived 23 days mostly alone. I spent far less time by myself than I thought I would. Living in Italy means that you have a lot of interactions with people—neighbors, shopkeepers, friends, barristas, etc. I’d get into conversations just walking up the road to get some exercise. We have neighbors up and down the road, and if they’re driving, they’ll usually stop to say hi. Then there’s that inter webs thing. I used FaceTime a lot, probably bothering The Spartan Woman, and we’d just go about our business chatting over an open connection. “Phone calls,” if you can call them that, are free with an Internet connection now.

We’ll be here for awhile. I just hope we can get there from here later this year…