Anyway, a 45-minute exercise session completed, I came in, showered and settled down to breakfast at my desk. I knew there was a possibility I would be taking the afternoon off today, so wanted to get stuck into work as early as possible.
We had been hoping to visit our friend Elisabetta in Colle di Val D'Elsa (further south, in the Siena region) today. We first met Elisabetta in 2010 when we stayed in her B&B in the beautiful town of Colle when we were meeting our wedding planner for the first time to go and visit some different venues for the wedding. We stayed with her again when we came back the next spring to make a visit to the wedding caterer, and we sent a few of our friends her way when they came to the area for the actual wedding in June 2012. Elisabetta has always been very friendly - an Italian by birth, she lived in Australia for many years, and brought up her children there, before moving to Colle and opening her B&B business. However, the time has now come when she has decided to move back to Australia to be close to her children and grandchildren. We were hoping to catch up with her - and pay a visit to our old stomping ground - today, as she is due to leave the country in the next few weeks.
Sadly, we received an email from Elisabetta a couple of days ago saying that her mother had been taken ill and that she would call us this morning (before we set out) to let us know how things were. We were thus uncertain as to how our day would pan out.
I therefore spent the morning plugging away at my computer. Although the conference papers have now been finished, the conference-related work is far from over. If anything, things have turned more hectic now than in the last few weeks, with the prelim pages for the proceedings still to finish, various designs, graphics and signage to check, menus to produce, four different hand-outs to produce, slides to check and so the list goes on. I'm utterly thankful that I no longer have to add 'write and practise speech' to that list, as I remember all too well that this time last year I was getting up at 4.30am in order to be in the office at 5am to run through the speech before heading to the gym for an hour and then doing a full day's work after that.
Anyway, while I was busy at my computer, Stuart loaded the car with the backpack strimmer, the hand-held strimmer and the hand-held hedge trimmers in order to take all three to the shop/workshop from where we bought the backpack set. Foremost, he wanted them to check the backpack strimmer, which seemed to have a small oil leak and he wasn't convinced that the choke was behaving as it should (or the engine behaving as it should with the choke in/out, I'm a little hazy on the detail), but he also wanted to see if the guys (who clearly know what they are doing, and with whom he now has some rapport) would look at the broken hand-held tools as well.
He returned some 40 minutes later having had the backpack strimmer checked, the oil cleaned, and been told that he ought to be leaving the choke partially open all the time (which was news to him, apparently). The backpack strimmer thus made it home again with a clean bill of health. The other two tools were left at the workshop for further investigation.
Once home, Stuart settled himself at his computer and did some work on beefing up the set of directions we send out to apartment guests - downloading photos from the internet and adding extra details to what we already had.
We stopped for lunch at around 12.30. It wasn't the sunniest of lunch hours we've had - and the umbrella went up not to shade us from the sun but to shelter us from a few spots of rain - but it was pleasant enough to be outdoors, and the spots of rain didn't amount to anything.
After lunch, with no news from Elisabetta, we concluded that we wouldn't be going on a road trip today after all. I had been looking forward to catching up with Elisabetta and to revisiting the Siena area (which we haven't visited since our wedding two years ago), but maybe there will be another time before she leaves. I do hope everything is OK.
Stuart decided over lunch that this afternoon would be a good time to visit another agraria he had spotted, to try and find some fencing materials - but we are learning (slowly) not to bother going anywhere until at least 3pm in case they are still closed for lunch. So we both went back to the office and while I continued with my conference-related work, Stuart also did a bit of conference-related work - it almost seemed like working in a real office with us both working on the same thing!
Come 4.30pm, my head was beginning to feel frazzled, so I was pleased to down tools for a short interlude and head out into town.
Our first stop was the lawn mower shop. We went in and the owner (Davide) immediately greeted us in his happy, friendly way, gabbering away in fast Italian with lots of smiles and earnest looks. Our lawn mower was awaiting us at the front of the shop, so he took us over and gave us a full demonstration of how to start it, where to put the oil, where to put the petrol, when to change the oil, and various other technicalities. Stuart seemed to be doing a lot of nodding and making noises to suggest he understood some of what was being said (meanwhile I was struggling not only with the language but more with the fact that I wasn't all that familiar with four-stroke engines and what you might/might not do with them). In amongst all of this Davide asked a question, at which point Stuart - who had been tuned in to listen for information about four-stroke engines and grass cutting - looked completely blank. This was my turn - he was asking where we live!! Like many other locals we have met, he seemed mightily surprised that we are living here permanently, and not going back to England. He then asked us what we did for jobs, and seemed genuinely interested.
Next, Davide wheeled the mower out of the shop to our car, and between them Stuart and Davide lifted it into the back. We then went back into the shop to settle the bill. While we were paying, Davide asked us whether we have visited the restaurant 'Da Sandrino' in Sorana yet. We explained that while we've been to 'Da Carla', we haven't yet made it to its almost next-door-neighbour Da Sandrino yet. He gabbered away a lot more - we think he was saying that we really must go, that Sandrino is his friend and that we must go and mention him in order to get a fantastic meal for a very reasonable price (that's certainly the impression we got). He then (definitely) told us that the pappardelle with hare was delicious and well worth ordering!
He finally waved us off with the lawn mower, our receipt and a photocopy of our receipt (not really sure as to why we needed the duplicate receipts, but we didn't question it).
Our next stop was to try to find the Agraria Castellare, which we'd seen signposts for (and Stuart had been on their website - yes, one of the few businesses in the area that has a functioning website!), but for which we'd never actually found the entrance.
We did a couple of circuits of the area we knew it was in before we finally managed to find it.
We pulled up right in front of several rolls of fencing wire in several different heights and thicknesses - this was definitely the widest range and best stocked agraria we had been to when it comes to fencing. Stuart has found out, via some helpful people on his BackYard Chickens forum, that chicken wire can be too flimsy to provide adequate protection against predators (apparently foxes can chew through it), so we had decided to go for something a bit beefier than standard chicken wire.
An assistant came out to ask if we needed help, so Stuart asked for a price on a roll of the wire. The price seemed very decent compared with the other prices we have been quoted (for less robust fencing), so we asked for two of the 25m rolls (1.5m high). The rolls were loaded into the car, and as we were going back into the shop Stuart had the foresight to ask for something to use to attach the fencing to the fence posts! One small bag of u-shaped fencing nails later, we were leaving the shop and heading for home with a lawn mower, some fencing and some fencing nails.
Stuart couldn't help himself but get the mower straight out of the car and straight onto the lawn.
I wrestled it off him so that I could have a go as well. The mower is a lot heavier than the old one, but seems to do an excellent job. Bizarrely it felt a little like pushing a pram around the garden!
After a stint at mowing the lawn, Stuart decided to get the strimmer out to tidy up the edges, so I headed back to my computer for another half hour before calling time, prepping some vegetables for tonight's dinner (red pepper, courgette and aubergine pasta), and then finally sitting down on our patio in the last of the evening sunshine.
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