Wednesday 1 - Smiths 1

That's more like it, the game is swinging back in our favour! An improved day over yesterday, and progress made, albeit slow and not without frustrations.

I wasn't aware of Helen going out to exercise this morning, I could hear rain drumming on the skylight, so I think that sub-consciously I hadn't expected her to go out in the rain... but she had. Turned out that she had slept pretty well, and although still not 100%, felt in a better frame of mind today.

Helen's damp view on going out to exercise this morning.

She disturbed me sometime after 8am and I got up and grabbed my breakfast without delay - I had places to get to this morning after all!

So at about 9.30am, after catching up with some social media and emails, I headed out to Porcari, leaving Helen in front of her computer. I was hoping to collect our fixed hedge trimmer and strimmer - both of our 'economy' purchases from Obi that were in for repair. I say 'economy', but they still cost a little over €200 each - however, it seems this only gets you entry-level gear, and as a consequence, they were both broken after only 2-3 months of sporadic light-to-medium work.

I went into a quiet warehouse and was handed both items. I was somewhat surprised at this - the hedge trimmers I had expected, but I had only dropped the strimmer in last Thursday. Nevertheless, the guy gave them both to me and started waffling on in Italian. This guy didn't have the tiniest bit of English, or even seem to have any idea that slowing down would be helpful. I managed to make him back up once, and grasped that he was talking about the guarantee for the strimmer. I showed him my receipt, at which point he nodded and told me I was free to go. Excellent! Two repaired tools and not a penny paid!

My next stop was the car dealer. We had arranged to meet this morning so that Andrea (the guy from the dealership) could accompany me to their mechanic so that he could look at this flashing engine management light. However, when I arrived, only our English-speaking friend was there. He called Andrea, and then called the mechanic, and told me to head to directly to mechanic, Pelligrini, further down in the same road. So off I went.

After a little while, I was sure I must somehow have missed it but then spotted a Renault garage with the name 'Pelligrini' so made an emergency stop and a sharp turn into the forecourt.

When the mechanic came out, he took the keys and started the car. He saw the light and said that it was an electronic problem. I desperately wanted to say something sarcastic, but even if my Italian had been up to it, I wouldn't have done - I needed him more than he needed me at this point!

The mechanic explained that he had only just re-opened (today) after his holidays, and asked if I could come back next Monday or Tuesday. I plumped for Monday, and asked  how long he thought he would need the car for, to which he replied 'it depends' - so it looks like I will have to go back with my bike in the car in case he wants to keep it (which of course he will). It's only an 18km ride to/from the garage, which will be nice as long as the weather plays ball, but not conducive to work in any way, shape or form.

I was back in Pescia by 11ish, so I decided to do the supermarket shopping. We had avoided it for as long as we could and had run down all of store cupboard items, so now seemed like a good time to do it. Shopping done (after a quick call to Helen to ask her to read me the shopping list over the phone), I returned home at about 12.30pm and made lunch. By this time the sun had made an appearance and the clouds were receding, so yes, you've guessed it, we had lunch on the patio.

After lunch I wrangled with some more emails (technical ones the details of which I shan't bore you with, but suffice to say it involved registering our new SIM card and trying to acquire a manual in English for the car starter pack). Once that was done I could finally head outside to start knocking in some fence posts. Somehow, it seems impossible here to get a full day's work done focusing on any one thing - it was now gone 2pm and only now was I ready to make a start on what is our No. 1 job.

By this time all the clouds had disappeared and sun was beating down all afternoon (if I hadn't changed out of my black t-shirt before starting work this afternoon I would have frazzled!). Three and a half hours of hammering, 16 fence posts, two renewed callouses, two new blisters, four pints of water and one thumping headache later, we could finally see Goose Island starting to take shape.

Goose Island starting to take shape.

Towards the end of my shift, Helen came out in her manual-work attire, carrying a rake, and made a start at thoroughly clearing the area from the top downwards. There is so much debris on the ground now after all the initial clearing that it's like a think mulch, and if left it would allow little to grow, so we need to clear it all away to (hopefully) make way for some fresh grass and clover - perfect goose food!

So the area is coming along now. We still have to finish clearing the bottom little terrace, which is going to be a real pain - for some reason it's in a much worse and more knotted state than any of the rest was, and I think we've both been avoiding it, but soon enough there will be nothing other than that to do. Once that bit is done we will be able to get onto the more exciting part - fitting the wire fencing and building a house for the geese.

So while Helen spent a little over an hour raking, I rehydrated under the shade of the umbrella and wrote the blog.

Let's hope tomorrow swings back fully in our favour and we can push on to get Goose Island completely cleared so that next week can be all about the fencing (once we've found somewhere to buy some from, that is).