Thunder and lightning - not quite the electric we were after...

So, I have been charged with putting together today's post despite the fact that most of today's excitement & adventures of note were had by Stuart (while I was tied to the office). However, he is currently otherwise engaged, finishing fitting our new BATHROOM CABINET (Yay!).

We had another appalling night's sleep thanks to another very warm, very muggy night. The temperature gauge on Stuart's alarm clock read 29.5C in the bedroom when we first went up to bed - that was moments before the electricity cut out AGAIN. I had attempted to put the washing machine on just before we went to bed last night - reasoning that, if it was going to be rainy at the weekend (as forecast), I'd better try and get a load washed overnight so I could get it out on the line to dry today. Of course, five minutes into the cycle, it tripped the electrics and we were plunged into darkness and forced to read our books by torchlight.

We therefore both got up this morning feeling considerably frazzled and irritable. Stuart managed to get the electric back on, but the minute the water heater kicked in it was off again, so it was a bracing, stone cold shower for me this morning and yet another day without being able to do any washing up.

I set to work in the office and at about 9am, Stuart announced he was off out to 1. get his hair cut and 2. go to Ikea to collect some more pieces of furniture.

Some three hours later I was relieved to hear his footsteps outside the front door and in he walked with a snazzy new haircut. I'm sure he will expand on his trip to the barber in a future post, but suffice to say he managed a patchy conversation with the barber, finding out that he was Pescia born and bred, and also managed to find out some details of a couple of local events going on in town later this month.

He will also probably fill you in on his toll booth (pedagio) challenge on the autostrade. Taking a ticket at one end, and paying at a toll booth at the other, is easy as anything in a LH drive car, and easy as anything in a RH drive car with someone in the passenger seat. However, it presents something of a challenge in a RH drive car with no one to help. Especially in a car full of flat pack furniture... He must have managed it, because he got home OK, but I'm sure there's a story in there for him to tell.

Anyway, when Stuart got home it was time for lunch (we used up our very last tin of Waitrose tuna for another tuna mayo sandwich). It was HOT again today, and once again very, very muggy.

After lunch, Stuart decided to make an attempt at calling Enel, the electricity company, to try to get to the bottom of what is going on with our electrics.

We'd received a bill yesterday (addressed to the previous owner, but because it looked like a bill, we opened it to check). The bill was for the May-June period, but in small writing there was another line that said (I'm paraphrasing) "we haven't received payment for the bill dated 5th April, which was due by 26th April". Hmm, so the previous owners had not paid their last bill - things were starting to make a little more sense.

Stuart managed to speak to someone at Enel whose English was about as good as his Italian, which resulted in a slightly confusing conversation, but it seems that our electricity supply is being so flaky because there is an outstanding payment due on the account (rather than cut you off completely, they put you onto a very pathetic supply).

Despite attempting to explain to Enel man that we didn't actually live here in April, so the outstanding amount wasn't really ours to pay, it seemed that the only way to get our electricity supply back in full working order was to pay the outstanding amount.

Enel man told Stuart we should go to a tabaccherie to pay the outstanding amount, and if we managed to do it today, they would be able to switch us back onto full power within 2 hours of us making the payment.

We weren't happy about having to pay someone else's electricity bill, but decided it was our only option and made a plan to go into Pescia at around 4pm when we could be sure that the shops would be open again.

We both went back to our tasks at hand for a while - Stuart starting to construct the bathroom cabinet he'd brought home with him from Ikea, and it was back to office work for me. After a while I detected a different smell in the air, and Stuart called out to say it had started raining - almost at the same time there started a cacophony of noise from the roof window, as heavy, HEAVY drops of rain began to fall with increasing speed. The smell of hot wet soil was delicious, and the sight and sound of rain certainly made a change from what we've had for the last few days!

It wasn't long before we heard the first rumbles of thunder, which soon became loud claps of thunder accompanied by sheet lightning. We decided that now was not  the best time to go and check the post box, despite the concern that our letters could be getting soaked.

That's not what the umbrella was meant for...

Truly wet.

No need to water the veg plants today...

The thunder and rain rumbled around on and off all afternoon - and although the rain brought the temperature down a fair bit, it still felt very humid. We managed to find a short dry spell in which to jump into the car and hot-foot it into Pescia to try our luck with paying the electricity bill.

We didn't hold out much hope for getting the thing paid: it seems that electricity bills here each come with a unique barcode, which needs to be scanned when it is paid. It turns out that if you try to pay your bill online, the website won't let you progress to the next step if the barcode number and the amount you say you want to pay don't match the bill exactly. This meant that, online, we would only be able to pay the bill we had received (for May-June usage), NOT the outstanding amount from the April bill - because we didn't have the April bill (nor its barcode). We were quite convinced that at the tabaccherie we would also only be able to pay the May-June bill and that we wouldn't be able to sort out our problem of paying for bills that we didn't have.

We went into the tabaccherie, and this time it was my turn to try out my sketchy Italian on the man in the shop - bizarrely, he seemed to understand EXACTLY what we wanted to do, and proceeded to process two payments: one for the May-June bill (with its barcode scanned in), and one for the outstanding amount (which we assume he just attributed to the same account number).

Within a couple of minutes we were walking out of the tabaccherie, receipts in hands. I couldn't quite believe what had just happened. How could it have been so straightforward?!

We raced home, stuck the receipts on the scanner and faxed them to Enel, in the vague hopes that they might see fit to sort out our supply in time for us to heat some water tonight. (Still waiting to see if that happens - watch this space!!)

While all this had been going on, Stuart had emailed Andrea (the geometra) to let him know what was happening with Enel, as we understood that Andrea is tasked with changing the utilities over to our name. Rather frustratingly (to put it politely), it seems that electricity is not the only bill that had been left unpaid by the previous occupants. According to Andrea, there is also an unpaid bill (as in billed prior to us living here) for the water supply (that we will now have to pay before Andrea can sort things out), and we already know that there is an unpaid telephone bill as well, as we've had messages from Telecom Italia to say as much. Arghhh.

All of that called for a sit down and sharing of a bottle of beer on the patio - the weather had dried up considerably, and by this time was also cool enough for me to feel the need to put a sweater on! I'm not sure how much of the relative coolness will have made it through to the house (which still feels warm), but we dare to hope for maybe a degree or two's difference in our sleeping quarters tonight.