In all honesty, when we first wrote in our adoption booklet ‘and you can come and visit your tree, you can even give it a little hug’ it was half as a joke. The thought that people would traipse hundreds of miles to visit an adopted member of the botanical world seemed fanciful to say the least.
But then they started to come. Sometimes unannounced, on our doorstep, bing! as if teleported from another world, here were real life customers. ‘Hello’ they would say ‘we’ve come to see our tree.’ Isn’t that marvellous? I love the be-botheredness of people sometime
s. The common cliché is that in our age of convenience and comfort, people have become physically lazy, unmotivated, apathetic – why venture out of your comfort zone when the world can so readily be brought to you. Twaddle! I say.
One day probably about four years ago now, Tony and Jean arrived on our doorstep. They weren’t unannounced, they had been planning this trip for quite some time, as Tony’s thorough and charming e-mail correspondence testified. They had Cheshire cat grins and within seconds so did we – you know how some people have an enthusiasm more contagious than swine flu? Well that’s them. We were soon getting down to some serious coffee drinking as they grilled us about all things Nudo. I say they grilled us but actually these two already knew their onions. They had not only read but clearly digested and assimiliated any piece of olive related information we had ever sent t
hem; in fact Tony even quoted things back to us from our information booklet so there was no room for bluffing. Pretty soon, he would be correcting us in achieving the perfect form of the polyconic vase.
We had a lovely time with them and still stay in touch today. Their boundless enthusiasm – for Nudo but more importantly for life – has bustled us out of many a disillusioned moment. If you’re reading this T + J, thank you!
Do you have a story about Nudo or an experience in Italy you would like to share with us? Send your story and some photos to stories@nudo-italia.com – we’d love to hear from you.
