If I sit and really think about it, I find it overwhelming, the amount of people I see in any one day but don't speak to. Or even the people at my place of work who I see everyday and exchange polite chit chat with but don't bother scratching the surface.
We buy books and go to the cinema, watch the telly and read the newspapers but we ignore each other.
People are interesting and it’s amazing what stories there are around you that you just don’t know about.
I was chatting to Liz who works on our switchboard today. She’s lovely and reminds me a bit of my Dads mum, Ada. Liz was exchanging chit chat with me about holidays and she was talking about the holidays that her and her late husband used to go on with another couple. They went back to the same farmhouse in the Italy every year. She was talking about the scenery there and the delicious food that would be cooked for them and we nearly changed the subject when I decided to ask, "So why did you go back to the same place for years then? Why not somewhere different"?
The reason for their repeated trips to this little, remote farm in the Italian mountains was because the friends they went there with, the man used to be in The British Army and during World War two, whilst in Italy in 1941, he and some of his comrades were captured by Nazi's and put on a train, like the one's I have seen in war films, to be taken to a Nazi concentration camp.
He jumped off the train and ran for his life. He managed to escape and hid.
In the middle of the mountains, past Ancona, near the Adriatic Sea, an Italian family, (peasants) found him and took him in. They fed him and looked after him, digging a large hole to hide him in.
He stayed there, being kept hidden, with this family for four years, until the war had ended.
His wife had received a letter back in 1941 from the Army stating that her husband had gone missing in action, presumed dead.
He returned home to his wife in 1945! !
And so that was why every year, they’d return to the Italian family and stay with them for a week.
How fantastic is that? True acts of human kindness and bravery.
What a lovely post.
ReplyDeleteI am always overwhelmed that behind the door of each and every house are people who have a story, a life.
People always get so caught up in the "big lives" of celebs and so often miss out on the small and important lives of those almost next door.
That's true isn't it Linda? I buy Heat and all those stoooooopid celeb magazines but I haven't read anything about any 'celeb' recently that was half as cool as Liz's story about the Italian family.
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