The move to Tuscany : Two for the price of one...

First we have to apologise for yesterday's radio silence. This picture pretty much sums up the situation last night and explains why there was no post:

But more of that later. To make up for yesterday's silence, today's blog post is a case of two for the price of one, so settle yourselves down, as this is going to be a long one!

Yesterday (in the daytime) was a fairly unremarkable day for us. 15th August is 'ferragosta' - the big summer bank holiday here in Italy, where pretty much every man and his dog heads for the beach. Of course, for us, it was just another day when I had office work to do and there was the ever-present mountain of jobs on the to-do list to taunt Stuart. Besides which, yesterday was a decidedly cool ferragosta - even if we had been granted a day free from work and chores, I don't think the beach would have been top of the list of things I'd have felt like doing!

Stuart's thyroidy tiredness seemed to have made another small improvement overnight, and the fact that he was able to make an attempt at conversation over breakfast was a good sign. He was clearly still not 100% though, and he made the decision not to even attempt any physical labour yesterday, and instead to devote his time to tweaking our website in various ways to make it easier for Google's search engines to pick up, as well as adding a testimonials page and a few useful links. So the two of us spent the day working in front of our respective computers.

We had arranged with Chris and Sue that we would join them at another festa in the evening - the Festa di Rifondazione Comunista (yes, a Communist party festa). They expected to arrive around 7.15-7.30, and knowing that we were going to walk there, we decided we would call time on work at 5pm in order to give ourselves some time to recharge over a drink on the patio, change, and get ourselves there.

Before we sat down to a drink, we did the daily walk to the post box to check the post. We actually got all the way to within 10 yards of it before I realised it was ferragosto and therefore there would be no post!

After a drink, a shower and a change, we set off for the festa. Rather unglamorously, the festa was held in the area where our communal bins are located. In fact, it was more salubrious than it sounds, and on entering the gates a whole new world opened up, with a building it felt like we'd never seen before, a cooking area, stage, bar and a dining area set out with long tables and benches.

The walk there took around 20 minutes. As the crow flies, from our house it is probably less than 500m away (if it wasn't for a few trees you would actually be able to see it from there), but because the road twists and turns and negotiates a few hairpin bends, the walk is probably around three times that distance. It was strange walking down the road that we usually whizz along in the car - it gave us a different perspective on the landscape and the houses of our nearest neighbours that usually flash past the window. It was also strange that we seemed to spend 5 minutes walking away from our house, then 5 minutes walking back towards it again, as the hairpin doubled back on itself, all the while dropping lower into the valley bottom.

When we eventually reached the festa, Chris, Sue, Henry and Erik were already by the gates waiting for us. We wasted no time and went straight in and straight to order our food. Rather like the festa we went to the other week in Santa Lucia, food and drinks were ordered at a small makeshift booth and were entered into a laptop, we paid and were given an A4 sheet of paper showing the items we had ordered.

We then went to find a spot to sit down, whereupon someone came and took our piece of paper from us and shortly afterwards we were served with drinks and food. The service at this festa was lightning fast compared with the one we went to the other week, although to be fair, there were fewer diners to be catered for.

Stuart had some crostini with ragu, while I had cheese with honey to start, and then Stuart had an enormous pork steak while I had sausages for our main course. Once again, it was simple, but incredibly tasty and well cooked food. Delicious, and all washed down with plenty of wine.

Like the other festa, this one had been running every night for a week (in fact, we had heard it on several nights over the course of the week from our house, with the sounds drifting up the hill on the breeze making it sound almost like it was going on in our garden). Each night there had been a different agenda, and while most of the evenings had offered a speech by a representative of the communist party, last night's post-dinner entertainment was an Irish folk band.

Yes, we were at a dinner run by the local communist party listening to a bunch of Italian people playing Irish folk music.

In the short space of time since we have known Chris and Sue and their boys, we have always, always had a great time whenever we have seen them - but last night was simply off the scale. I can't remember having laughed so much in a very, very long time. Whether it was the joint attempts at Irish country dancing or Stuart's and Chris's attempts at doing the moonwalk at the end of the evening (both of whom were made to look like complete fools by Erik who nonchalantly moonwalked across the stage - yes, by this time they were on the stage - looking effortlessly cool), or simply the joy of spending an evening in great company while well and truly immersed in local culture.

A few of the edited highlights:

The Phillipses rock da house.

Italian Irish folk band.

Everyone has a go.

The atmosphere of the whole evening was very relaxed and welcoming - we were the only non-Italians present, but didn't feel even remotely out of place (admittedly that may have been helped by the several bottles of wine consumed).

Before we knew it, the band had packed up and left, the young 20-somethings had packed up and left, and we were pretty much the last men (&women) standing - with the clock saying it was 1.15am! Another thing I can't remember having done so much of since we met the Phillipses is staying up so late, so frequently! We decided that we would wend our respective ways home, so we bade goodnight to Chris and Sue, who went off in search of Henry and Erik to start their walk down the hill to Pescia while we started our dark walk up the hill towards home.

We'd had the forethought to bring torches with us, but it was still a very dark, very steep walk, with rather a lot of zigzagging that wasn't entirely due to the switchbacks in the road. By the time we reached home it was gone 2am, so we headed straight for bed.

And so we awoke rather bleary eyed this morning. Naturally, Lucca (who hadn't been out partying all night) wanted his breakfast at 6am, so I fumbled my way downstairs to fill the cats' bowls with biscuits and fell back into bed to try and get another couple of hours' sleep under my belt. But with the light shining through the makeshift towel-curtains (I say 'makeshift', but sometimes I wonder if we will always have hand towels stapled to the tops of our window frames...), sleep was a bit of a struggle, so in the end, I got up and came downstairs to drink a large glass of water, load some washing into the machine, and boot the computer up to check emails etc.

I was surprised, when I tiptoed into the bedroom looking for Stuart's phone, to be spoken to - I had been expecting Stuart to sleep on for several more hours, but it seemed that he was struggling to stay asleep as well, so we both headed downstairs for cups of tea/coffee and, having found Stuart's phone, I took great pleasure in showing him a couple of short video clips of some of his antics from last night - much of which he didn't remember.

We ate breakfast (in pyjamas) on the patio in the sunshine, then retreated to the relative cool of the house, our delicate heads not ready for the bright, hot sun just yet. We spent the rest of the morning tinkering with the website and doing various other not-too-taxing tasks.

By the time lunchtime rolled around, the rain had rolled in. Unfortunately, in our somewhat jaded state we hadn't noticed soon enough to retrieve the washing from the line, so it had another rinse.

With rain outside, we decided to indulge ourselves with a 'TV lunch' and ate our lunch picnic style in front of the TV (iPlayer) watching a recent episode of 'Who do you think you are?', an old favourite from our UK days.

Lunch dispatched, it was incredibly tempting to remain on the sofa and doze off for an afternoon siesta, but we each knew that we would feel happier at the end of the day if we had made the effort to do something constructive. Stuart had already decided, given his thyroid issues over the last few days, that he was going to avoid heavy physical work until the start of next week, to give himself a proper rest. I, on the other hand, was keen to do some manual work, having been sitting the office all week, with more of the same on the cards for next week.

We decided that I would go out with the handheld strimmer and make a start on clearing a second terrace for Gooselandia, while Stuart would reassemble the bicycle storage unit we brought over with us from the UK.

We duly both changed into work clothes, and set about our tasks.

Going in!

We'd been at it for 15 minutes or so when the rain returned. With a vengeance. At first I tried to ignore it and thought I would simply work on through it, but when the drops of rain started to hurt when they hit me, and were feeling icy cold, with my hair and clothes dripping wet, I decided that perhaps I'd go and sit this shower out after all.

My poor washing gets ANOTHER rinse.

I found Stuart sheltering in the woodshed.

Dripping wet.

We decided we would grab an umbrella and go and investigate what happens to our drive when the heavy, heavy rains come. Turns out that the drive turns into several small rivers.

One of the many rivulets.

We retired indoors after that, to crunch some numbers on our spreadsheet and work out how many hours I have worked over the last couple of months and thus need to charge for on my first invoice. After half an hour or so of that, our heads were both starting to feel too tired to concentrate and thankfully, when I looked out of the window I could see sunlight shining through the trees. Without another thought we parked the number crunching and went to find our respective sets of tools outside.

From torrential rain to blue sky in 30 minutes.

This time, it stayed dry for the rest of the afternoon/early evening, and my strimming was only interrupted when the strimmer started to complain. I handed it over to Stuart, who changed the fuel mix and tinkered with it before declaring that it seemed to be in need of a proper service - so without a power tool, I resorted to raking the grass clippings from terrace 2 down to terrace 1, then from terrace 1 down to the driveway, then from the driveway down into the woods. By the time I'd finished all of that - around 7pm - I felt well and truly ready to spend an evening with my feet up.

I helped Stuart fit the door to the bike shed then headed inside to shower and change while Stuart finished assembling the shed. Stuart came in shortly afterwards.

And so, against the odds, we end a day that by rights should have been spent huddled on the sofa feeling tired and hungover, having instead cleared another terrace for Gooselandia and assembled a storage shed for the mountain bikes that we're hoping to buy (and will now feel more encouraged to go and buy, having actually got somewhere to store them).