Living like the Medici at Villa La Massa

In Koh Samui, it’s common to see people dressed in red on Sundays. In fact, every day of the week has its own lucky color.

It’s 3.30pm on a Friday afternoon and today I’m not in ScotRail carriage, travelling home after what will have been an excruciatingly busy week, with a body that is craving sleep and a nodding head that has just switched itself back on upon hearing the crack of a G & T can two seats down.

Today I’m sitting in a restaurant terrace overlooking the river Arno, watching the calm waters running slowly towards the rolling Chianti Rufina hills, a glass of Prosecco in hand, the golden, mellow mid-Autumn sun shining down on my ‘end of week’ face. My mind is slowly hypnotised watching the wood smoke from a nearby house drift downstream in the still air against a backdrop of endless vineyards, olive groves and Cypress trees rising towards the cloudless blue skies.  It feels like one of life’s perfect moments, one you’d like to press the pause button on by sitting completely still; my eyes are drinking in my surroundings with every mouthful of chilled bubbles that pass my lips. I want to screengrab this moment.

I am without a doubt, in adult fairytale land.  You’d be hard pushed to find a Scotrail carriage with that description; it could well be that I just get on at the wrong time of course…