Many hands make... quicker work!

Noah arrived upstairs for breakfast with us just after 8am today. All was going well until I opened the kitchen cupboard and a jar of peanut butter jumped to its certain death on the tiled floor - a quiet breakfast quickly turned into chaos as cats were chased out of the way and Henry hoover went to work sucking up all the shards of broken glass. I really wasn't in the mood for that kind of start today (finding the sound of hoovers particularly offensive within the first 30 minutes of consciousness), but I got over it, and soon enough Noah and I were heading outside to start our first day on the terraces.

Job number one on the list was to turn the vast piles of acacia cuttings made by Helen and Allison last week into cleaned up small pieces of kindling. So, with bill hooks in our heavily gloved hands, we set about stripping the branches and stems of leaves as the sun rose up behind us into a clear blue sky.

Until this point, I had only done a tiny amount of this task - just enough to practise really - but two hours vanished. It seems that swinging around a very sharp bill hook focuses the mind, which in turn speeds up the passage of time - it proved to be very therapeutic and enjoyable!

Men at work.

Check out the blue sky!

Noah and I stopped for a coffee on the patio around 10.45am, and then went back to work until Alex and Donatella arrived at 11.30am. When they arrived, I left Noah to the branch stripping and joined them and Helen (who had been busy at her computer all morning) on the patio for a coffee and catch up.

It was great to catch up with them again and have a proper chat - while we drank coffee and ate Helen's home-made ginger biscuits, we discussed chickens, geese, cats, dogs, rabbits and planning regulations, until Alex and I eventually went to look at the wood pile (it's a guy thing), which then led to looking at my new chainsaw, which in turn led to looking at my new axe in the man cave, and that led to bicycle talk as Alex is considering a purchase of one for the first time since he was 15. I'm hoping I can help Alex make the right decision about what sort of bike to buy so that he can get out and enjoy our valley on two wheels in the not too distant future - it's such a fantastic way to get out and see the beautiful scenery and the feeling of riding along the quiet roads is second to none.

Before I realised it, the time had marched on to gone 1pm, so I went to tell Noah to down tools for lunch as he had been busily processing the wood all this time. With sweat dripping from his nose, he seemed more than a little relieved to be able to stop for a break and joined us on the terrace as Alex and Donatella made to leave.

Shortly afterwards, Helen, Noah and I were sitting down to a lunch of celery and celeriac soup (made by Helen while I was out with Lee and Rob on Sunday) some cheese and salami (courtesy of Allison and Q) and some bread.

After lunch, we all had a walk around, trying to work out a solution or a suitable location for the geese to move to. In front of the house seems like non-starter, while the far side of the terraces would definitely be out of view, but a huge effort. Noah suggested trying to cut further up into the terraces to make a clearing behind some of the vegetation - but that also seems like a monumental effort. His idea may work to the left of the current goose area though, so we've decided to make a start clearing some space in the next few days to see how feasible it is.

After that, Helen went back to the office and Noah and I went back to wood prep. Having cleaned up all but the smaller bits, we made a start on cutting the clean stuff into fire-length pieces. It was surprising how much we'd cleaned this morning, as the pile never seemed to get any smaller no matter how much we cut, but after an hour and a half we had made a fair dent and a sizeable pile of kindling. When the Pietrabuona church clock chimed 3.30pm, it was time to stop work (for Noah at least - we are asking him to do six hours of work per day).

Kindling!

Gotta love those bill hooks.

I planned to head down to Frateschi's, the builders' merchant, to try and acquire some drainage channels for the driveway and Noah said he'd like to go with me - keen to see and hear some real Italian as prior to arriving here, he'd only spent a few days in Rome, where everything was done in English.

Noah's wish was granted as I managed to acquire the channels while at the same time introducing myself to Flo in the yard and explaining to him where I lived. I also talked about the weather with Paolo, had an explanation of different axes from Paolo (one of which I bought) and then talked about the composition of pre-bagged concrete, all of which took us over half an hour. Noah picked up the main jist of what was going on and seemed to thoroughly enjoy the language immersion - and I suddenly realised how much better my Italian had got since arriving. To clarify, parts of these conversations were unclear to me, and the flow of it all was by no means of a fluent nature, but I I did manage to bumble through it without too much difficulty and felt like I understood most of what was being said.

With the car loaded up with drainage channels and other assorted bits and pieces we headed back to the house for a quick turnaround - Helen was due to go into Pescia for her first 'real' Italian lesson at 5.30pm, so we needed to head back out again. Noah seemed interested in coming along for the ride and having a quick look at the town, so we all piled into the car and dropped a slightly nervous/apprehensive Helen off at Rita's apartment block.

Noah and I then went to the power tools shop - but after standing waiting in the queue for 10 minutes, I decided to leave it, so we wandered around town, poked our noses into the San Michele church, had a look at the palazzo at the top of the main square, then ducked into a bar for a small beer each - which turned into two.

Running a little late, we headed back to the car and rushed back to wait outside Rita's apartment block for Helen to come out. We waited. And waited. In the end, I decided enough was enough and went to ring on Rita's door to see what had happened to Helen. She came out looking apologetic - without a watch on or a clock visible, she hadn't realised the time (although had had an inkling that things were running late). Somewhat alarmingly, she got in the car and announced that Italian is far more difficult and complicated than she had realised and starting trying to tell us about the existence of the indicative, subjunctive, conditional and imperative forms of words. Woah! Just as I was beginning to think I was getting somewhere with the language!!

Despite having discovered that Italian grammar is way more complicated than she thought, and feeling very daunted by that prospect, Helen had enjoyed her lesson with Rita and picked up a few useful bits and pieces and I think she is looking forward to more lessons.

As soon as we got home, Helen started preparations for a mushroom risotto while I attempted to light the fire in the living room - the temperature by this time had plummeted and it felt decidedly chilly in the house. Noah came up to join us about half an hour later, and the three of us enjoyed a delicious mushroom risotto, a bottle of wine good conversation.

Day 1 of HelpXer help had been a resounding success - let's hope for more of the same going forward!