Another blur and it's Venerdi!

The week has passed in a blur again. If we thought they went quickly in Abingdon, here seems twice the speed! You know the saying about time flying etc, well maybe that's the reason.

Anyway, the day started in almost the usual fashion, woken by Lucca, Helen exercising and me catching up on a bit of admin at a respectable time thanks to my alarm clock. I wonder if the invention of the alarm clock coincided with the start of the industrial revolution!? I say 'almost usual' because, for the first time, we had geese to let out today. Helen went up to open the door to their house, and I think we both expected them to come rushing out after many hours inside their new abode - but nothing, even after a bit of coaxing (maybe it's too comfortable?). I also went up after my breakfast to look inside the Ritz, and they had both pressed themselves up against the back wall. There was a little gentle clucking, and the male hissed quietly at me - we decided not to force the issue and to let them come out in their own time when they were ready.

While Helen's PC whirred into life this morning, I sat with my tablet PC trying to improve my Italian. I needed to go and buy a tap for a plastic barrel, some guttering with associated end pieces and down pieces, and something that would qualify as a paddling pool for the new additions to the family. None of which were words in my current vocabulary.

While I was doing this, Helen shouted out from the office to say she had heard a car draw up. I dashed out to meet what we both thought must finally be the police coming back to do their residency check, only to see a small, sign-written van. I appeared via the tradesman's exit (through the woodshed), the man who had just got out of the van disappeared around the guests' side of the house. I shouted a 'buongiorno' at him, just in time to reverse his progress and turn him around. He greeted me and asked if was Geri! He waived a piece of paper at me, and I realised straight away that he was from Telecom Italia. Sue (or rather Henry) had very kindly spoken to someone at Telecom Italia on our behalf yesterday afternoon, who had said they would fix our faulty telephone line within two days. Lo and behold, here was a guy ready to do just that! I have to say that, although we somewhat begrudge having to pay €18 per month for the line which we now only use for incoming calls (and, more importantly, for emergency calls), at least the service is good - when you can phone them that is.

The engineer came into the house to test the socket, which was all OK. I offered him a cup of coffee, which I though he'd refuse, but he accepted the offer, so I made one using our Nespresso capsule machine. This makes very quick and nice small coffees, stronger and smaller than most of our UK friends are used to - perfect for an Italian - except when I gave it to him he burst out laughing, telling me I'd given him an Americano! He told me he likes his coffee small and strong - which tells you something about the way Italians drink their coffee: none of this sitting in a coffee shop for an hour working on a pint of coffee, they normally order their coffee while reaching into their pocket for the money, the coffee is made fresh and given to them in a thimble before they've pushed the coins around their palm, the coffee is drunk in one or two sips, the bill paid and on they're their way within a couple of minutes - for us, it's quite something to sit and watch.

After that, he fetched his ladders and asked if he could go to the telegraph pole in front of the house. He asked if their was a road to it. My turn to laugh now - the telegraph pole is on the first terrace below the house. I cut this terrace back once, a few months ago, and it's now quite overgrown again. We got most of the way there before he found a tree branch about 3m long and used it to beat the nettles back and beat his way to the pole,. It's fortunate that we'd made an attempt to find the septic tank a while back and started to clear this terrace, as otherwise he'd have had no chance at all.

I left him to it and went back indoors to finish my Italian lesson, but he soon reappeared having climbed the pole and asked me whether the phone line was working... it was! So he thanked me for the coffee and went on his way.

After that excitement, I went out shopping: first stop the local builders' merchant in Pietrabuona. While this place is virtually on our doorstep, we have spent hardly any of our euros here because, since our arrival, it has rarely been open. Paolo, the guy who runs the place, had been quite ill, but we'd noticed that lately it seemed to be back its usual opening hours, and Paolo was back in situ.

I went in and introduced myself, explaining that my wife and I had bought the house from Keith and Geri (knowing that he knew them). Paolo was very nice and dragged me around the shop to find me a tap and a piece of plastic that would work as a pool for the geese. He couldn't give me any guttering, as he said that was due to be delivered next week.

I decided I couldn't wait until next week, so headed to the local wood yard again to see Helena, who recognised me, displaying an amused grin on her face. We went through the usual process; I told her what I needed, she drew a picture of what she thought I'd told her, and once we were both happy, she shouted at one of the guys in the yard to fetch it while I paid. There was no need for Google Translate this time, which she normally has to resort to all too quickly when I turn up.

So as it was, I was home with everything I needed by 11.30am - a fairly productive morning at Italian speed, so I decided to dig the goose pond in before lunch so as not to disturb the geese (who were still inside their house and refusing to come out).

By lunchtime I'd half buried the pond and used the soil I'd excavated to build up a slope to the edges of it for easy access, and filled it with water - another tick!

After lunch on the patio under a slowly warming sky, Helen went back to work and I made a start on fitting the guttering to the back of the goose house. It wasn't long, however, before I'd spooked the geese and they came running out of their house and came skidding to a halt just outside their front door. I decided I would leave them alone to get comfortable and went instead to make a start at clearing and tidying the woodshed - hopefully in readiness to store some wood.

I spent the next two hours emptying the shed and slowly accumulating a pile of rubbish to take to the bins then putting stuff back in, but in a more organised fashion. The entire time I was doing this, the geese stood rooted to the spot, side by side, eyeing me up. They didn't budge an inch!

At around 3pm, while busy tidying, I heard a flappy commotion up on the terraces. I walked along the drive to investigate, only to find that one of the geese - the male, I think - had jumped into the washing up bowl that was meant as their drinking water bowl. He was sitting there, having a lovely time, looking quite ridiculous - a bowl FULL of goose! He didn't seem to care though, and splashed around for half an hour.

Goose in a bowl.

Bowlful of goose.

When he finally got out and flapped down to the next terrace to stand on a tree stump, his partner tried to have a turn in the bowl but couldn't quite get in, so she settled for splashing about a bit. It was nice to see them letting their guard down a bit, and they spent the next hour happily preening - at which point I'd finished clearing out the woodshed and headed out to go and dump a car load of rubbish.

When I got home, both birds were still in the same spots: the female hadn't not moved since coming out of the house at lunchtime, and the boy was still on his knobbly tree stump - I can't imagine how much cramp I would have had in my feet had I been standing on something as uncomfortable for that length of time!

Helen and I sat down on the patio in what was now the last half hour of the day's glorious sunshine to start the weekend with the last of our bottles of cider from Louise & Dan and a bowl of nuts until the light stated to fade to a point where we thought we should attempt to put the geese to bed.

This time, we went in armed with three long poles that I'd found during the woodshed clear out. The geese were both still in the same spots, with the boy still on his stump (he had been there for about three hours). With the three poles we managed to create a three-sided box around them and gently herd them towards their house door. Within a minute, they waddled into the house and sat on their bed of hay - a piece of cake! At this point Lucca joined us, having climbed over the gate to the enclosure, to see what was going on. He followed us back to the house for dinner, as did his sister, and we got busy blogging and trying to decide what dinner was going to be.. if anything (a supermarket trip is long overdue!).

It was a great start to the weekend - and end to the week for that matter. We have a busy weekend ahead, starting with driving to Montecatini Terme tomorrow morning to pick up a hire car that we hope will be more reliable than our currently rather flaky one. We're both very much looking forward to picking Helen's Mum and Dad up from the airport on Sunday morning.