To want to live in this photograph?

[ThePtarmiganIsSleeping]

With these slim, casual, at ease folks from the 1980's enjoying delicious, communal Italian food and pasta ..

I could quite happily crawl back in time and join them for a glass or two. Or just steal the food, the weather and the scenery, wrap it up in a huge sack and drag it back to the uk. Of course, I would dribble the sauce down the front of my white shirt within a minute.

If this was now, they'd all be fighting over their unique exclusion or macro enhanced diets. Someone would wind up being pushed right over that ledge because the pasta is simply white Durum instead of wholewheat

"Is that a lentil ragu or some sort of beef?"
"I've no idea, but I'm not touching it unless it contains 500g of protein!".

Image is by the photographer Slim Aarons: Dining Al Fresco On Capri.

If this was now, they'd all be on their phones!

I didn't read the full OP and just looked at the photo and was going to say it looked like it was in Italy 🇮🇹

I want the curly lady's hair!
Instead I am wearing a sloppy ponytail and am sat here indoors sporting the patchy disaster of yet another overpriced gradual tan having not worked.

OK, but it was socially acceptable for you to do all the cooking, and all the childcare, while your husband relaxed (not all men, some were great, before some of my amazing male friends and relatives react!)
And some people would have had allergies, but have been treated as freaks/liars for it. Even if you don't have any allergies now, it's not uncommon to develop them as you age, so maybe you wouldn't be so keen to be in the photograph.

Yes, from this vantage point, life seems as though it was so much simpler back then, but it probably wasn’t. That photo is the 80s equivalent of Insta!

I doubt they did their own cooking.

I would happily be the jet set in any one of Slim Aaron’s photos!

Yep, that was what the staff is for

I don’t know what’s wrong with me because my first thought was.. They all look dangerously close to the edge of a cliff and there’s not even a fence up behind that row of men.

I miss Johnson's Holiday Skin; you don't seem to be able to get it anywhere anymore. It worked well for me, and was the only gradual tanning lotion I've tried that didn't give me an awful rash.

Yours for the small inconvenience of several hours passing curl papers to Debbie as Debz cut n curl, inhaling foul smelling chemicals with a rubber cap on your head, and having your hair break off at the roots. On the plus side it only cost about £20.

I mean, in Capri, the women are mostly still doing all the work while the men laze around.
Italians are the definition of macho.

She is staunchly defying the white shirt uniformity. However, her vintage, soft-structured summer slipper style moccasins....

Oh you are right!
I'd be sat there with my eyes clenched shut with my hands clinginging desperately to the table because I'm literally terrified of heights.

I also want to know what this food is in the very bottom right corner, looks like some sort of cheese something or other (the thing that looks like a boating hat!)

The table is far too small for all the food, which would irritate me no end.

What a cynical lot you are.😄
This COULD be you, we had a similar get-together last week, in the garden, in the sun, in the north of England. My hair was even like that woman's, because I had washed it and had no time to do anything with it, and it dries curly like a sheep's coat (according to DH)
OK, we had no sea in the background, just lots of trees and flowers, but we do have a bigger table. 😎

Am getting ready now, will be there later, just add another chair for me.

Haha...the pasta and pizza are already in the oven. x

It's not very clear and quite blurry. But I will guess at lasagne or cannelloni at a glance?

It's idillic! I'd happy be there too. Did you see the news this week that the healthy med diet in Italy is going and their obesity rates, esp with children are one of the worst now?

I believe this was taken at Umberto Tirelli’s (fashion designer) villa so the food was definitely cooked by staff! I’ve always loved this picture too and find it so dreamy and atmospheric. There is another version more zoomed out where you can see more of another table at the side with grapes, plates and cutlery etc.

I’d be worried about leaning too far back in my chair and plunging over the cliff to my untimely death. I guess I’d at least have had a nice tea first.

I think the cheesy looking thing might be a dessert. Torta Caprese maybe. It’s a sort of flat almond cake. Sometimes chocolate, sometimes lemon.

How do they (and others) keep flies, wasps, bees and assorted insects off the food please. I am taking notes.