It's a week since we were exiled from Bellagio: my residency ended, and a taxi drove up to the villa, in pouring rain, to carry us away. It felt like exile, sad and irrevocable. Autumn had turned into late autumn, as you can see by this before-and-after in the garden.
It was beyond brilliant as a residency, and I can't speak highly enough of the chance it offered both me and TM to get work done, as well as to meet and talk every day with a group of intelligent and stimulating people. We both felt depressed leaving, but profoundly grateful for the opportunity to live and work there. It's been a strange year, of terrible personal lows and then these weeks, in Svendborg and Bellagio, where I felt like the luckiest person in the world.
This was my studio in the Villa Maranese, where I worked on the novel and an essay:
TM has just explained to me that a picture is worth 1500 words, and one of his is worth at least double that, so I'm going to include a few of his photographs without further comment.
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