After three days of waking up to the house shaking and the ground rumbling and wondering if the ceiling is going to kill me, the aftershocks seem to have finished. Fingers crossed.

The mood of the whole town seems to be lightening. I buzzed around on the bike again this evening, and there’s a lot more people around, and a lot more smiles, a lot more laughter, a lot more kids running around and even some playing football in the piazzas.

I went up to feed the kitties and water the garden and do a few chores and saw that the house has a few teeny cracks in the upper part, mostly where the roof meets the south facing wall, and around some of the window frames, but these are small and don’t go all the way through, so we can sensibly hope that they are just superficial. I took some pics of some of the houses on my street that were pretty badly damaged, but it seems that they were empty. Holiday homes. There are some pretty big cracks in some of the garden retaining walls, even in properties where there is no damage to the house.

Some of the gardens are filled with tents, but the families in their gardens look and sound much more cheerful than they did last night, and in general, people all over town seem to be cheering up. One of the main bars is open again, a popular evening place for hanging out and chatting, and lots of people are down there with their kids and dogs. I chatted briefly with the family at my second favourite restaurant tonight, and they said there was no damage either to the restaurant or their house. “Just lots of scared.” I agreed heartily. The produce shop is open again, and I bought a kilo of figs, green and purple, and a kilo of peaches to celebrate. The produce lady, who has been teaching me lots of gardening and vegetable-related Italian, seemed very happy to be back.