Italy in the rain

I am just back from a short trip to Italy looking for marble. It was, I suppose asking too much to get fine weather in mid January. The first evening it poured with torrential, monsoon like intensity but luckily for the two days of wandering round stone yards it was dry. I went with my friend and fellow sculptor Paul Vanstone and we bought enough stone to fill a twenty six ton lorry between us. I bought two six ton blocks of fairly ordinary Carrara marble. Unfortunately I was not able to find two tall thin blocks of the right shape and had to settle for buying one twelve ton block and cutting it in half. I say unfortunately as the larger block has more commercial value and is therefore more expensive. The marble will largely travel here by rail which goes someway to assuage my guilty feelings of dragging it across Europe at all. Although the Italian winter was almost as wet as ours, I was warmed by the sight of tangerines growing by the side of the road. I attach a photograph taken from the car window.