‍Sorry for the radio silence of late dear reader (if you are still there) but I have been holidaying and learning to see again, more of which later.

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‍First, the little break in Paradise: it began in Southend, a joy I had failed to discover in my 80 years, took in Tuscany’s truly wonderful Fattoria Poggio Alloro, just over the hills from San Gimignano, and ended with a Brief Encounter with the Prince of Darkness, Mandelson himself. I do like to pack in my days.

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‍The trip to Poggio Alloro was a birthday treat from my daughter and son-in-law and started at London City airport for an 8.30 take-off to Florence.

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‍ All was well, our little group of revellers seated at the departure gate when it became clear summat was oop, as Sir Larold might have said. Trained reporters like me can spot it you know; people with clipboards and hi-viz, scurrying and talking into mobiles and not even attempting to feign a smile.

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‍Then the announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, we are looking for 15 volunteers to opt to go to Heathrow for a flight to Rome and an onwards connection to Florence. Oh, and we will give you £250 to spend with BA.

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‍“There are severe thunderstorms over the Alps and we must lighten the load, hence the request.”

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‍There was no rush to take the money and after an hour another announcement from Hi-Viz Man (reassuringly a doppelganger for the Rev Richard Coles so I felt God might be on our side) to say that as we still had all those selfish passengers we would have to take on more fuel. “But not here at City where the runway is too short for such a heavy load. We will be stopping on the way”.

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‍Fevered speculation where that might be; Paris, Bern, Milan?

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‍“Therefore we will be landing in Southend where will take on the extra fuel”.

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‍Silence followed by cries of What! After another hour we were in the air for nine minutes over Essex, before the captain announced, deadpan: “Welcome to Southend where the local time is 10.32”.  

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‍We eventually left our stop-over 40 minutes later and the flight was mercifully uneventful, landing in Florence in the sort of heat we have all been used to this summer.

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‍Our destination (once we had ‘done’ Southend) was Poggio Alloro, a model agriturismo spot seven miles from San Gim, as we old hands fondly call one of the greatest medieval cities in the world. [Almost 40 years ago when San Gimignano first came into sight while driving through the exquisite Tuscan countryside, I asked how local planners could scar the landscape with 14 skyscrapers.  It was patiently explained that they were towers dating from the 12th century built by powerful families, each trying to outdo each other. Medieval Trumps I guess.]

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‍Today it is one of the jewels of Tuscany which is not short of such delights. As for Poggio Alloro, it is 350 acres of vineyards, olives, pomegranates, lemons, limes, tomatoes, the finest and rare Chianina cattle, pigs, chickens, rabbits, bees and everything 100 per cent organic. We stayed in the farm buildings (mine was once a cattle stall, not the pigsty you might have hoped) and ate nothing which was not produced there apart from the pecorino and the balsamic. The food is superb and seemingly endless; four courses for lunch, five for dinner, all eaten outside or in the open-sided dining room.

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‍All the wine, three types of Chianti, two of the white Veraccia, the Prosecco, the brilliant Rossata pink and the grappa and limoncello are all grown and made in-house and even the saffron is their own.

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‍We had a tour of the farm and winery and met the patron of Alloro, 91-year-old Amico who still works there and, despite the great value of his empire, drives the most decrepit green Fiat Panda in the whole of Italy.

‍We ate, drank, rosé early without a hangover, ate and drank again, even attempted to sing, swam in the pool, read (Bob Mortimer’s terrific autobiography And Away) and listened to visiting Americans in despair about their so-called president.

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‍There is nowhere quite like Tuscany and surely nothing as good and welcoming as Poggio Alloro. But all good things have to come to an end (hopefully temporary) and so it was back to Florence airport. Waiting at Gate Nine, daughter Helen returned from the Signoras to tell me we might have a fellow passenger on our flight. It was Peter Mandelson who clearly still has a passport despite his little difficulties. 

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‍He was waiting at the adjoining gate for a flight to Heathrow, eyes down on his phone though my beautiful spy later noticed him outside the loos. What a star she would have been for Hickey.  I noticed he was holding a little bag which had once contained paninis from All’Antica Vinaio, Florence’s legendary sandwich joint where the cheapest offering is £16 rising to over £22. He might be flying like the rest of us and not with Epstein Air but it’s good to know he’s not short of a bob or two.

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‍*****

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‍Lennon and McCartney were clever buggers but I’m not sure that when they wrote I Want To Hold Your Hand 62 years ago they had in mind Brenda from Eltham. 

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‍To explain: last month I arrived at Moorfields Eye Hospital in the City to have the cataracts taken from both eyes. I can’t say I was looking (sic) forward to it but these days it is a routine operation.

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‍I was third on the morning list and about 40 minutes before I was due in theatre the lovely Brenda came and sat down beside me. “Hello, it’s Alan isn’t it? I’m Brenda and I’m your hand holder today”.

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‍I assumed she meant she was ordained to chat with me to say that all would be well and there was nothing to worry about. Well yes, but there was more to it; she really was going to be with me throughout the op (about 50 minutes because my right eye was rather tricky said my consultant) and hold my hand throughout while stroking my arm soothingly.

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‍And that is exactly what Brenda from Eltham did and would do for other patients later that day and on other days too. She is 78, a retired market researcher and one-time hairdresser, who volunteers two or three days a week for zero reward (other than the undoubted privilege of my company for a couple of hours). She had been at Moorfields that day since 7.15 and would not leave, depending on ‘trade’, until after 4pm.

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‍Once the surgeon had worked his magic she accompanied me to the recovery room where my carer, aka the Chief of Staff, was waiting. I told the Chief that Brenda and I were by now practically engaged, and I think I heard the phrase You’re Welcome but maybe my ears as well as my eyes needed sorting.

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‍The Hand Holding scheme, unique to Moorfields and its off-shoots began as an experiment in 2019 and has been a resounding success with a 90 per cent approval rating. It certainly gets my vote and people like Brenda are extraordinary.  I remember when a friend’s husband was taken ill on holiday in Spain she had to spend 24 hours a day by his bedside doing everything nurses do in this country except administer drugs. She was responsible for his food and drink and taking him to the loo, shaving and showering him and the rest.

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‍And here we are with the NHS, creaking as it may be, with volunteers like Brenda who come in early in the morning during a glorious summer when she could be in the garden she loves, holding hands with strangers.

‍By the way, and thanks for asking, my sight is now totally different. Everything is brighter and I can read without squinting.

‍We are lucky to live in this little country and to have people like the Blessed Brenda.

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‍*****

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‍When I joined the Belfast News Letter as the most cubbish of cub reporters in 1964 it was selling almost 80,000 copies a day in the North of Ireland and in Dublin and London too. A great man called Cowan Watson, a big bear of a chap, was editor and with a full and talented staff. It was broadly Unionist but there were many Catholics on the staff and not just those born in the North. Several were from the Republic and the leader writer and paper’s number three was a former Guardian man who had come back to Ulster to be near his beloved Glens of Antrim where he had been a Gaelic games hurling champion.

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‍I think there might have been an editorial staff of around 60, maybe more, and everyone went out of their way to help me learn this funny old trade. I will always look back with great fondness and gratitude on my two years at the News Letter, so imagine my sadness to learn recently that it no longer has an editor and does not intend to appoint one. Ben Lowry was at the helm for five years until he suddenly went, with no explanation from the owners, while his deputy was on holiday.

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‍Circulation is no longer 80,000, it is 5,580 and Iconic (yes really) Media, the money-grabbing chumps who own the News Letter, see the future as one of clicks just as the wretched Express does today under the ‘ownership’ of Reach. Last week the Express announced on social media: ‘Bombshell update as King rushed to hospital with horror disease.’

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‍Click on the headline and it turns out the king in question is Harald of Norway who is 89 and had been unwell for the last two years.

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‍As we keep telling ourselves, we really did have the best of it.

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‍*****

‍Thank God for The Times and for its obits. The one on Monday of Michael “Fingers” Fingleton, the Irish money man, reminded us of the great Flann O’Brien’s aphorism that “banking was the second-oldest profession in the world but not half as respectable as the first”.

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‍It also recorded the Fingleton did most of his business in the Horseshoe Bar of Dublin’s Shelbourne which one wag described “as the place where women with a past met men with no future”.

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‍ALAN FRAME

‍26 August 2026