Mid-week mugginess

As I sit here and write, I can hear the beautiful sound of our petrol trimmers echoing from outside, operated by my now sweaty and fly-covered wife.

We're slowly finding our groove here - it's definitely a different routine from the one we left back in Blighty: exercise in the morning (no change there), then work until sometime in the afternoon, and then Helen has taken to doing a couple of hours on the land after her day in the office - a great tonic for her, and the worst of the day's heat has (just about) gone by then. Today it has not only been hot, but very muggy too. I think we're due some thunder if the weather forecast is anything to go by, and I can well believe it after today's weather - I'm glad we're now protected by our lighting rod!!

I mustn't waffle, as I've no idea if the electricity is going to start misbehaving again once the water heaters kick in. Last night's problem has not been solved - from what we can gather from our smart meter (apparently over 30 million Italian homes have them now, by far the most of any country), we need to reduce our load, and I think that because we hadn't done so immediately last night, the meter switched off, and kept switching off. The meters are so flaming smart, they can not only be read from HQ and reconfigured to reduce or increase our supply, they can also be switched off or tripped remotely if you're using too much.

We're a touch confused about this, because at the time it started cutting us off, we were doing nothing more than normal - the water heaters had just come on, but they are on timers and had been doing the same for weeks without issue, and we were outside with nothing else but the fridge, modem and router switched on. A puzzle we need to get our heads around fairly soon and certainly before guests arrive!

We're hoping our new friend Michelle from Vellano will be able to get back to us with some helpful advice - we have been told that we can upgrade our supply from the standard 3KW to the maximum 6KW, so that may be something we need to do while we look into the minefield of solar power (honestly, you Google for info on solar power and you quickly end up mired in disagreements as to what is best for whom and why - if I thought getting through the vegetation on the olive tiers was bad, it could be eclipsed by the time-consuming research ahead!).

Anyway, I made good progress in the apartment today - we plan to 'dress' the bedroom and bathroom tomorrow so that we can take photos for our website and adverts. The kitchen is supposedly arriving any day now (mid-June is what we were told by the lady at Mercatone Uno, although I'm starting to lose faith with each day that passes).

The canvas prints we had made and brought over from the UK (photographs of the house pre-renovation).

Newly assembled chest of drawers in the bedroom.

Unfortunately the kitchen doesn't look quite as ready...

...Nor the living area.

Helen had a difficult day in the office today - she seems to be aching equally from all the exertion and from sitting motionless at the PC all day and couldn't get comfortable at all. I feel sorry for her being indoors staring at the PC for most of the day when she really wants to be outside dancing with the flies, hedge trimmers in hands.

The office is surely more unpleasant to work in because it's soooo full of stuff. It depresses me just walking in there as it looks like a hoarder's bedroom! I must make it my mission to sort it out very soon, but that will require another trip Pisa to buy yet more flat-pack furniture as we need plenty of shelves in there.

Talking of flat-pack furniture, I fitted the newly acquired doors onto the set of cupboards in the living room today. I'm very happy with them and it makes another big difference in the living room.

Neat and tidy.

Another step towards tidiness.

We went out at about 3pm today - that's right, we treated ourselves to the outside world again. We had to go into the bank to ask whether the surveyor's fee had been paid from Helen's account, so off we went with the invoice that we had been given at the meeting with the notary last week, the account number, and a scrap of paper with a carefully constructed Italian sentence to get the job done. I say the sentence was 'carefully' constructed, but it was what Google Translate gave me, so I'm sure it wasn't perfect, but here's the sentence I had to deliver to the cashier: "Mi puoi dire se questo disegno di legge e stato pagato dal mio conto moglie." Easy, right!? Well, that was by far the longest string of words I'd strung together so far, so if the humidity wasn't already making me sweat then that scrap of paper in my pocket certainly was while we waited in line!

I really wish I could deliver these attempts at Italian quietly, but as in banks all over the world, I guess, the Italians favour a sheet of glass between them and us - they don't seem to mind a gap at the bottom or top, but they must have a sheet directly between the faces of the bank teller and the customer. While I'm sure that helps stop the transmission of bugs, it certainly hinders the transmission of my sketchy Italian, so rather than whisper, I had to speak louder than usual... gulp.

Anyway, I got halfway through my memorised sentence, all the time fiddling with the scrap of paper in my pocket, stumbled a little, and stopped for a second to gather my thoughts before I had to resort to reading the paper. The tension was palpable, and the look of confusion on the cashier's face when I stopped halfway didn't help, but once I'd finished, she smiled, tapped away at her computer, and told us the invoice hadn't been paid. We even got her to pay the bill for us there and then! Big tick in the achievements box again, but still not up too facing the immigration guy yet - we're hoping for some help on that one from Richard.

After the victory at the bank we went to do our weekly shop. We seem to manage to go for 5-6 days before we run out of one thing or another (more often than not it's water), but the cost here compared to our old UK shopping trips is so much cheaper - we seem to have we've levelled out at around €55-60 each trip, whereas in Abingdon we were always over the £100 mark for the weekly shop.

On the way back into Pescia I pulled over and insisted we stopped for an ice cream. This time, I upgraded from a two flavour cup to a generously sized cone with nocciola and stracciatella (nut and milk with chocolate). Helen went for a larger portion than last time, but less greedy than me, and this time had amareno (black cherry) and nocciola. Very good ice cream here, but we mustn't let it become a habit!

So it was back to the house, a bit more work for Helen in the office before going out into the jungle with the flies while I did a bit more in the apartment, before sitting down to write this.

Damn it! The electric has just gone off again! Right, time to go and play games with the smarter-than-me meter and resign ourselves to no hot water again!

Ciao for now.