Soggy Monday

We were woken at around 6am today when the rain started falling from the sky by the bucket load, accompanied by some rumbles and crashes of thunder. It's no wonder everything grows so well here, with the amount of rain and warm weather we've had! The rain and rumbles of thunder continued non-stop until about midday, so there was no exercising for either of us today - I had planned to try and coax Helen into a bike ride to Vellano, but we'll have to save that for another day.

While Helen was getting up, I heard an unusual dripping noise out on the landing. We're used to the rain bouncing off the roof window like a drum, but this was different. I lay there and puzzled as to what the noise could be - although I didn't have to puzzle for too long as Helen soon returned and announced that the roof window was leaking and the noise I could hear was drops of water collecting in two Tupperware containers. Mystery solved.

There is another of the previous owners' 'secondary glazing' units on this window (as there were on all of the others), which is basically a narrow timber frame with some polycarbonate-type plastic sandwiched between and screwed to the window frame. I decided to take this off and investigate, as I could see the water coming in through the window, but it disappeared before it got to the secondary glazing and appeared in the house from a point in the rafter adjacent. When I pushed the screwdriver to unscrew the second screw, I lifted the whole window up, so I think I've identified that issue - I just need a dry day and some ladders so that I can get my head through the window and hope for an easy repair.

After breakfast, Helen went to her post in the office and I ran between the raindrops to the cover of the woodshed in order to finish the construction of the insect screens by stapling the mesh to the frames, then came back inside to fit them to the windows. There's only one window left to do now, but I need more wood for that job so another trip to Obi is in store (as if that would come as a surprise to anyone!).

Once the screens were on, I was able to fling open all of the windows to let the cool fresh air in. I bundled up the old mattress in the second bedroom, bound it, and wrestled it out into the woodshed ready for a trip to the bins and left the room to air. When I went back into the room in the early afternoon it smelled fresh as... well maybe not quite a daisy, more like a wet pine tree, but much better than cat wee!

I spent the rest of the morning in the office with Helen, I finished the last of the filing and tidying, and although the room is full to bursting point, it's as tidy as it's going to be for the foreseeable future.

It was nearing noon and I needed to call Mercatone Uno about the kitchen. I had an ominous feeling about this - we both did - but at least we knew we should have an answer and a plan of action after the call. However, before I managed to call, they called me. The chap spoke no English, so it took a little while and a lot of repeating (on his part) before I understood that we weren't going to see this kitchen at any point close to when we need it (NOW), so arranged to go back tomorrow to cancel the order and get our deposit back. I'm still none the wiser as to what the problem is, but that's a moot point now - mildly annoying to say the least, as we ordered it nearly two months ago ... but it's not like we've been sitting on our hands waiting for it with nothing else to do!

After that minor, but pretty much expected bombshell, I spent the next two hours using Ikea's online 3D kitchen-planning facility to work out what we could buy instead. It's not as easy as simply browsing for kitchens: everything is modular and has a multitude of door styles, but not all units can have all doors, and so on. I eventually gave in and planned the thing out properly. I have to admit it's a very clever and easy to use system of dragging and dropping units into a 3D room, then changing colours, worktops and accessories. Once you've finished your design, you just print a list of everything you need, complete with prices and product codes. Thus we now have a new plan for the kitchen, albeit €350 more expensive than the one we originally planned. A small consolation is that the quality will be better, I'm sure.

It was baked potatoes for lunch, by which time the rain that had been Biblical all morning had stopped, and the sun had come out and completely dried off the garden furniture, so al fresco it was.

After lunch I called the garage to ask if it was still OK for us to visit this afternoon as planned. They said we could go in any time, and advised us that the insurance was more expensive than they had estimated and we were free to find our own if we were not happy.

After the call, I left Helen wrangling with a particularly difficult conference paper and went into town with a list of a few small jobs - the first of which was to take the new laser printer back to the shop as it didn't work (it wouldn't feed paper). I had a brief chat with the guy in there while he tested the printer - someone else who seemed pleasantly surprised to hear that we are living here permanently. After the printer had misbehaved for him just as it had done for us (which was a relief), he made a call and arranged for us to pick up a replacement on Saturday.

That done, it was off to the post office to send my signed accounts and a cheque back to my accountant in Lichfield. There was no queue and thankfully I had no special postage requirements today, so was in and out in a matter of seconds.

Next on the list was to attempt to get an insurance quote to compare against what we were being offered by the guys at Car to Car. Richard had pointed out his insurer a while back, which is almost next door to the post office, but it had closed at 3pm (closed every day at 3pm during the summer, in fact - another random opening time to remember!), so I hopped back in the car and headed for the main square as I had a couple more bills to pay at the tabaccheria.

Once the bills were taken care of, I took a drive past another insurance place to see if they had a different work ethic. Indeed they did, and were open beyond 3pm, so I parked and went in with photocopy the garage had given us of what must be the car's log book. The woman who dealt with me was very nice and accommodating when on several occasions I had to stop and apologise for my poor Italian. Her English was even worse, and she seemed to find it very amusing that the only way we could communicate was through our poor second languages. I won't bore you with the details, suffice to say that 40 minutes later I left with two prices: €2100 for the year, or €1800 if I could prove 9 years of no claims. We have been told that the first year of car insurance is always very expensive in Italy (no kidding!), and the woman told me that if we could prove more than 9 years of no claims in the UK, it would get even cheaper - or should I say less expensive, it works on a sliding scale.

Jobs done, it was 5.30pm and time to extract my wife from her cave and head to Porcari with a cheque book to see if this car deal was going to happen.

It seems like it's a done deal! We signed the cheque that we ended up having to ask them to write out for us - the layout of Italian cheques is new to us, and we were a little bewildered as to what goes where. In the end, we opted to take their insurance to get us started - it turned out that one of the documents the insurane broker I visited in town needed is something that the car dealer can't give us until we have residency, so we had no option really than to pay €1300 for 6 months on Car to Car's insurance - but were told that, as soon as we returned with our ID cards, they would be able to give us the document we need to arrange our own insurance, they will cancel the policy and the unused portion of the six months will be refunded to us. All seemed fair enough to us, and our only option really!

So that was our day. The clouds has reappeared by the time we got home, and it was quite cool, but not so much that we couldn't sit out on the patio for half an hour or so planning our next moves.

This bright beauty clearly enjoyed today's dumping of rain.