Giovedi again!

Well technically it's Friday right now - we're late bringing you this post thanks to another very late but very enjoyable night at Sue and Chris's, but here goes with Thursday's update... 

This week has raced by. Despite our best efforts, the kids' sleeping habits are sliding and although bedtimes are still for the most part before midnight, their waking times are edging closer and closer to midday - so with that in mind, as well as the fact that our apartment guests were in Florence, I decided that this morning it was time to play with the strimmer on the much neglected terraces above the house (which, rather alarmingly - not to mention depressingly - had begun to look almost as overgrown as they had done when we first arrived). So after breakfast I filled the fuel tank, strapped on the backpack, clicked in the strimmer attachment and climbed the terraces. I have to say that every euro spent on the new tool felt worth it - while it's still not easy, it was much better than using the standard strimmer (although admittedly I've not yet tried a seven-hour shift with it). I clocked off 'work' at noon after two hours of strimming. Very satisfyingly, the terraces look hugely better already. We now just need to get the hedge trimmers back onto the upper tiers to attack some of the acacias that have already started springing back up despite all our efforts of a few weeks ago. Helen is hoping that our broken pair will be repaired soon so that she can get stuck in up there as well - perhaps with two of us at it we will be able to make a significant dent in things. However, that will have to wait until we have more available time when we don't have house guests to entertain. 

We can see the terraces again! Note the beautiful blue sky as well.

In the meantime, Kerys and Ben had risen (Kerys still needing a little extra help over and above the noise of the four stroke engine), Helen had  managed to salvage a disaster with a vital piece of software on her computer which had been refusing to start, and Mom had busied herself in the house giving the bathrooms and floors a bit of TLC.

Late morning, I tried to call Sue as Ben was due to have a sleepover at theirs with Henry and Erik, his new friends. He's been so excited since the boys hatched the plan last Friday evening that he's asked me about it (at least once, usually several times) every day since then. However, when I picked up the phone to dial, the display read 'controllare linea telefono' (check the phone line). Brilliant! Sure enough, the phone line was dead as a dodo. No incoming or outgoing calls were likely to happen any time soon. 

While I could phone Sue via Skype, Helen quickly pointed out that the misbehaving phone line meant that we now had no way of receiving a call from our apartment guests who we were due to pick up from the train station that afternoon after their trip to Florence! The plan had been for them to call us once they'd decided when they would return and what time they would need picking up. While we'd given them both our landline and our mobile numbers, we'd mentioned that the landline was most likely the best number to get us on, as we have no mobile signal at the house. We hadn't thought to take their mobile numbers before they left either! After a bit of internet sleuthing, Helen found Lorenzo's mobile number on his website, so I tried to call and leave a message by calling him from Skype, and also emailed him in the vain hopes that he might check his email while halfway up the duomo...

We ate lunch under a beautiful blue sky, and once that had been cleared away it was time for Ben to pack a bag (helped by Mom) for his sleepover, and for Mom and Kerys to get ready to go into town as that was what I had planned for them once we'd dropped Ben off. The sun was out, and I thought a walk along the river and some ice creams were in order (meanwhile, back at the house, Helen's afternoon 'treat' was to spend half an hour away from the computer to mow the lawns before the return of the guests).

After delivering Ben, clutching a board game, to Sue's Mom, Kerys and I first walked along the river from where we'd parked the car and went off (on the advice of Sue) to find a rock pool in the river. You would certainly never find it if you hadn't been told about it - a quiet little spot that appears to get plenty of use, but today it was devoid of other folk, so we had a paddle in the water before squelching back to the car.

A short drive into town and a walk along the river found us back at La Barrachina, the ice cream shop, so we sat down and enjoyed cups of ice cream under the shade of the awnings before parting company - as luck would have it (and much to our relief) I had received a call on my mobile from Lorenzo while walking back from the pool. He hadn't received the email I'd sent this morning explaining the phone situation (a long shot, admittedly), but he had tried the house phone and when he found it dead he had called my mobile. What a relief! So they were due to arrive back in Pescia at 17:10 and I was going to go and meet them and their shopping at Esselunga at 17:45. I left Mom and Kerys browsing the clothes shops while I went into the computer shop yet again (still no printer, but this time I was promised it by 9am tomorrow...) and then to collect our guests.

So, drama averted, I dropped the guests safely home then dragged Helen away from her computer to come into town with me for a drink (and to pick up Mom and Kerys). The four of us whiled away a pleasant half hour or so at Bar Poulter, watching the world go by and wondering how Ben was getting on.

We'd arranged to pop back to see Sue and Chris for a couple of drinks on their patio at 8.30pm, so we drank up and dashed home for a bit of dinner and freshening up before charging back down the hill.

Before leaving we said a quick thank you to our guests for having deposited a bottle of limoncello on our patio by way of thanks for the taxi service. They really have been perfect guests and we would love to have them back again some time - that's assuming they actually leave, they seem genuinely attached to the place, which is really lovely and we are really touched to hear their appreciation.

We were quarter of an hour late arriving at Chris and Sue's (we're slipping into Italian ways all too quickly), but once there, we all settled down out on the patio and chatted, drank wine, watched shooting stars and enjoyed another lovely, lovely evening in their company. Once again, we didn't leave until WAY past bed time. We shouted a quick 'goodnight' to Ben as we left (who didn't seem all that bothered to see us leave, and in fact was probably glad we were leaving him to it), and staggered back down the path (this time we'd brought torches with us) to the car.

We got home just before 2am and all headed for bed.