This summer, D-Day came on August 31st. This "D-Day" is that day when the sky clouds over, blackens menacingly for the whole day before delivering the father and mother of a temporale (thunderstorm) onto the scorched Lazio landscape. Even if the temporale does not last long that first, late-summer downpour serves to mark the advent of autumn.
After "D-Day" the sting has gone out of the heat, the evenings are cooler, the mosquitoes less evident and the horse-flies less aggressive.
"D-Day" always prompts a long moment of melancholy in your correspondent. I am always loath to give up on the many and varied rituals of the long, hot Italian summer. Summer is the time when life is lived in shorts, a tee-shirt and sandals and when the evening concludes with a glass of prosecco on the lakeside in front of Jollo's bar, watching the sun go down as elegant natives strut their stuff.
It is the time when much of the waking day involves an ongoing battle against the heat - closing window shutters, but not windows, to keep the house cool; watering the garden for hours to keep plants half alive; looking for the shadowy side of the street when walking in Rome; avoiding appointments between the hours of 13.00 and 17.00 (not always possible); eating lots of ice cream; drinking endless mineral water and taking long swims.
Summer is the time, too, when much of the waking night also involves a battle against the heat. Take a walk down to the lakefront in Trevignano any July or August night between midnight and 1.00 a.m. and you find half the village out, in search of a cool breeze and perhaps a cool drink, having long since abandoned any attempt at sleep.
The night-time battle also involves the deployment of long, medium and short-range anti-mosquito defence systems. This usually involves my wife in the application of a variety of sprays and creams (which never seem to work) whilst your correspondent spends many fruitful moments lighting citronella-(lemongrass) based paraffin lamps all around the garden of an evening in an attempt to create the definitive, unilateral defence shield.
All of these as well as the other, more public rituals of summer - traffic jams on the weekends of the esodo (when everyone goes on holiday) and the rientro (the return from holiday) fade away by early September, plunging the nation (and your correspondent) into a reluctant "back to work" mode.
All is not lost, however. Autumn and winter approach but some positive Summer of 2000 memories remain. For a start, there was that Rome to Milan return train journey to watch Ireland's latest footballing wunderkind, Robbie Keane, in action.
In a country constantly criticised for the poor quality of its infrastructures, it is a pleasure to report that Italy's high-speed train, Il Pendolino, is not only fast and efficient but also makes France's much-vaunted "TGV" seem like the Tralee-Gortatlea races special on the turn-of-century Great Southern and Western line, in terms of comfort and cuisine.
Then there is the Festa Dell'Unita, once a fund-raising fete-cum-party rally for the old PCI and now a watered-down propaganda exercise for Democratic Left. One attentive reader of this letter has expressed concern about the possible demise of the various Feste Dell'Unita up and down the country, following the difficulties (referred to in the last letter) of the ex-PCI daily, L'Unita.
Well, the good news is L'Unita is due back on the newstands by the end of this month, without Democratic Left amongst its new shareholders Secondly, the Festa Dell'Unita institution seems to have survived this summer's crisis, at least judging from our village edition last weekend where the highlight was, as usual, the dancing. The sight of various familiar shopkeepers, bus drivers and farmers etc. doing a lively foxtrot and, in one case, a devilish tango, remains another summer high point.
Then, too, there is the Arena, Trevignano's open-air cinema which was made all the more magical for two viewings of the summer's Italian box-office success, Pane E Tulipani (Bread and Tulips). This is a gentle, ironic and subtle film which suggests the Italy of the mobile phone, the frenetic work rate and the traffic-jammed autostrada may have lost something of its Mediterranean soul.
Many Italians, it seems, preferred it to such crude, transatlantic blockbusters as The Gladiator or The Patriot. Now that is a truly positive thought with which to head into the autumn.
Paddy Agnew can be contacted at pagnew@aconet.it