Will he... won't he?!

Today was the day Remigio the carpenter said he would arrive to fit two new sets of French doors in the apartment. We have been here long enough now to take this kind of remark with a spade full of salt, but let's wind the clock back a touch.

Helen's alarm went off at the usual time - or at least I think it did. She didn't manage her usual exercise today though - she had such a splitting headache that she turned it off and climbed back into bed. I know it's bad when it stops her exercising.

It was a quick up-and-out job for me today, as I had to be at the CUP for 8am, or so the lady yesterday had said - she had said that it was VERY IMPORTANT that we were there at 8am. I've no idea if she'd made an appointment for us, but either way, when we found the CUP yesterday and noted its long queues of people inside, we decided that arriving as early as possible could only be a could thing. 

Helen had to stay at home to hold the fort just in case Remigio was as good as his word, so I went solo to the CUP. When I walked up to the open outer door of the building, I found 6 or 7 other people already filling the small porch area, so I stood and waited on the step. Five minutes later, the inner doors opened and I followed the excited crowd into a room looking something like a tired old bank from the 80's: very high ceilings, dated decor, and a long counter running its full width with desks for about 6 or 7 staff. Only three or four members of staff were milling around though - two sat down behind 'closed' signs, one sat down looking ready for business, and another kept teasing us by approaching a counter then leaving again. The effect this had was quite comical: everyone flitted back and forth before committing to a cashier and getting in line - this all happened in a split second, but imagine if everyone arrived at the supermarket tills as they were opening all in different states of readiness and you had to pick one and commit - that's how it played out.

Anyway, it didn't take very long for me to be served. I threw a pile of papers onto the counter and said I wanted health cards for myself and my wife. The woman asked if we had residency, so I presented the letter from the comune. Then she asked about work, so I presented appropriate documents for this too. She said all was fine but then said '20th of September' while gesticulating. Something told me that this was a place - a road name. I told her I didn't understand and again told her what I wanted, and she said again, 'yes, yes, no problem' then went on to say they were full and talked about Saturday. The meeting came to an end there and I left with no stamp (whatever the stamp was meant to be), so it looks like a repeat visit is on the cards for Saturday morning, although I'm holding out little hope for a victory.

I got home about 8:20, there was no sign of Remigio. I joined Helen in the office for a while to drink coffee and tie up a few loose ends on the conference slides - and after a little while, Helen heard the familiar sound of crunching gravel - it was only Remigio in his flatbed van with nice new doors!

I said hello and asked him and his workmate if they wanted a coffee - neither of them did, which is not the answer you'd get from a British workman! I left them to it and decided to start a day of terrace strimming.

So the morning passed with Helen at her computer, Remigio and his mate on the apartment doors and me strimming terraces - with a brief interlude to reset a trip switch after Remigio had managed to trip the fuse board with his power tools.

Remigio left at around noon after having had to write out his own cheque (we still haven't quite worked out what goes in which box on Italian cheques), leaving behind two beautifully made and perfectly fitted chestnut wood French doors, and two very happy customers. The doors are so nice and make such a difference to the house that we're now considering replacing our own front door with a Remigio-made one ... watch this space.

Beautiful new doors set 1.

Set 2.

They open and close!

They make the old doors look awful.

After lunch, Helen was planning to do a bit of work outside, but before doing so she went to check a few emails and make sure there was nothing urgent that needed doing office-job-wise. Of course, at that point, the internet cut out. With no connection available to the outside world, there was nothing else for it than for Helen to head to work on the upper terraces with the loppers.

I had to go out mid-afternoon to buy some more strimmer cord and had a technical difficulty with it but I shan't bore you with the details, suffice to say that by 6pm, the set of terraces behind the house next to Goose Island were all looking neatly shorn and tidy again.

In between brief interludes to dash inside and check to see whether the internet had sprung back into life again (it hadn't), Helen worked hard all afternoon (and refused to stop when told) - she made an enormous pile of acacia from the next terrace up (that we should really trim and keep for kindling).

Florence inspecting the bottom of the pile of acacia trees.

You can now see some of the olive trees again!

Daylight on this terrace for the first time in a while.

The acacia and bramble clearing is the first of the three-stage process of clearing, as well as the hardest and least enjoyable - it's such slow work (especially when the hedge trimmers are in for repair), and you can wrestle with a single terrace for hours and still feel like it looks no different. You definitely don't feel like you get out what you put in. The next stage is to fit the steel cutting blade to the strimmer and cut everything down as close to ground as possible before finally strimming it with cord, the glory stage - which I seem to be getting most of lately (not intentionally, but I must make sure Helen gets some of that work too soon otherwise she'll feel like she's banging her head against a brick wall each and every time she goes outside to do something) - but without Helen's acacia and bramble clearing we wouldn't be getting anywhere.

By this time, I needed to dash to the timber yard to collect all the wood we'd ordered yesterday for the goose house, the 182 bus was earning its keep today!

Roof rack AND boot full of wood.

When I got home the internet was finally working again. To add to our internet frustrations, the land line has yet again stopped working. We wouldn't have realised were it not for a courier, yes a courier, parking up at the house! That has never happened before, and I'm sure it won't happen again (couriers never usually venture down people's drives), but he said he had tried calling and couldn't get through. We'd had our suspicions that the phone was starting to play up again as it had started behaving oddly again (in exactly the same way as it did a few weeks ago - ringing only once before going silent). I guess another few days without a land line is ahead of us until we can get Telecom Italia to get the line sorted. Fortunately, the courier was delivering our new Skype phone so at least we can actually call Telecom Italia to report the problem (as long as the internet works, that is).

So this afternoon, while I was trying to make arrangements to meet a couple of old friends from conference land in Florence tomorrow and Helen's work colleagues were trying to get hold of her urgently, the internet stopped working, the land line stopped working, and mobiles obviously don't work here - we were completely cut off from the world. It was like living in the dark ages. We were relieved when the internet sprang back into life after just a few hours of being incommunicado.

What a day!