Friday 21 January 2011

A life of motorbiking shooting hunting fishing in Tuscany








My father-in-law has proper passions. The basement houses his "old ladies", as he calls them, his classic bikes. Amongst them are a military MV Agusta Raid 250, a Morini Settebello 250 GT, an Aermacchi/Harley 350 and a Gilera B300 Extra - he also looks after my wife's Gilera Trial 5V, which I used to love taking off on into the mountains nearby when we lived here.

My wife's been into bikes far longer than I have - the b&w shot is her sat on her dad's prized Morini Settebello 175, taken in about 1972. The other b&w photo is of him wearing a cool jumper, perched on his VW Karmann Ghia sometime in the late '60s, and then posing proudly with the massive moray eel he's just caught with some kind of spear gun.

The other photos are reminders why the first time I met him and saw one of the several gun racks around the house to treat his daughter well, so that my head didn't end up like the wild boar's on the wall. This is hunting country, wild boar in particular, and he loves it, hence the various weapons. I could never hunt, but papardelle (type of ravioli) with wild boar sauce is one of my favourite foods out here.

I guess I'm fascinated by him because I was brought up in a big city, and because he's the complete opposite of my dad.

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