Saturday...the full story!

First off, apologies to readers who were looking for a full-length post on Saturday night (or Sunday morning). We had such a busy day on Saturday, it was just way too late (and we were too tired) to attempt one by the time we had got all of our jobs done and out of the way.

So as is often said... 'better late than never' - but we'll let you be the judge of that.

Our alarm clocks woke us up on Saturday as we had booked a rental car to collect from Europcar in Montecatini Terme at 09:30. There was no exercise for Helen though, as she was feeling a bit under the weather and verging on having a migraine.

After a quick breakfast we headed off along the now familiar route to Montecatini Terme, and couldn't help thinking back to the time we first did it only three months ago - kindly being driven by Sue - and being misdirected by locals not realising that the rental office had moved two days earlier.

We parked up outside the Europcar office and went in to collect the car. The guy in the office soon recognised us from our last visit, and he quickly signed the car over to us without any of the usual information or tour around the car. Our booking had been upgraded from the VW Golf that we'd booked to another Fiat 500L - the same as last time - and we were soon being waved on our way with a big smile.

Helen had the somewhat daunting task of driving the '182 bus' home from Montecatini on her own, as I was the only insured driver for the Fiat 500. Helen would have far rather driven the shiny, almost new, slightly smaller vehicle, and having only driven our car (briefly) once before, she was less than enthusiastic about getting behind the wheel of it solo, but she followed me home without incident.

We dropped the rental car at the house and immediately headed back out into Pescia to go and pay a visit to the Phillipses to see their new baby chicks that had just hatched. This is their first attempt at hatching eggs, with hand-built incubators, and things seem to be going well - three eggs have already hatched into tiny chirping balls of fluff, and two more are starting to break out of their eggs. By this point, we'd only had our geese for two days, but we're already thinking ahead about maybe doing the same with them, the proposition is too irresistible - and we can then swap some chickens for geese too!

We sat in the warm late morning sun drinking tea/coffee and catching up with Chris and Sue until almost one o'clock when we left the Phillips's to the the task of preparing for Erik's birthday party while we went to do a mammoth shop at Esselunga. Fortunately, this was the right time to go to Esselunga - it was as quiet as it ever gets. With Helen's Mum and Dad due to arrive the next day for a week's holiday (their first visit to see us since we moved out here), we had a LOT of shopping to do and we piled our trolley high.

Should be enough to last the week...

We cringed when the lady on the till announced the total cost of our shopping, but soon relaxed when we realised that the week's shopping for four of us was roughly the same amount as we'd been paying for a week's shopping for two of us back in Abingdon.

We headed straight home from the supermarket to find Chris and Erik on the drive - actually, this was not a surprise as we'd invited them to come up to our house to borrow some DVDs from our sizeable collection. They were keen to have a back-up plan for Erik's party should it rain, and with the nearest video rental establishment in (you guessed it) Montecatini Terme (a long way to drive to go and rent a movie), we were only too happy to offer them the opportunity to avoid making that trip.

Once the DVD raiders had left, we sat on the patio and had a quick bite to eat then set to work on turning the apartment around for our next set of visitors. With two of us tackling the job, it was a much quicker process this time.

I had to break off from cleaning duties though, leaving Helen to it, and head up the village of Macchino to finally collect my new chain saw from Antonio. As I left, the rain started pouring down and the thunder clapping. The rain was still torrential when I arrived, but no matter - I was in Antionio's workshop for nearly an hour while he explained the new piece of kit to me in broken English. Antonio is a really nice guy, very friendly, and prefers to try to speak in English - so between us we got the job done. He later told me that English is very important to his day job (in the paper industry), as he deals with folk from across Europe, so we struck a deal whereby when I need help, or the chain needs sharpening, he will come and collect it from me on his way past our house and in return he will get a coffee and a conversation in English. I look forward to that - although he did insist  that the coffee must be small Italian coffee. (I think we need to adjust the settings on our Nespresso machine!)

Latest piece of kit.

By the time I got home it had gone 5.30pm. The rain had just stopped, but it was still more than a little damp. In the short time it had been raining, the barrel we had been given by Alex and Donatella, which was positioned under the roof on the goose house - but without guttering yet fitted - had collected four inches of rain water.

Had the weather been different, I suspect that at this point we would have collapsed on the patio and called it day right there and then. However, we had a washing machine full of wet washing (the rain had started almost as soon as the washing machine started filling), so on the spur of the moment we decided to head out to go and buy a load of eye hooks, some washing line and another dehumidifier. We knew that very soon we would have limited opportunity to dry washing outside, and with no radiators indoors, we were going to be in trouble if we didn't find a winter drying solution.

After doing some reading on dehumidifiers recently, I learned that some of them have a 'laundry' function, and the idea occurred to us that the small downstairs bathroom (which we don't use) could easily and usefully be turned into a drying room by running as many washing lines as we could fit across the ceiling (hence the eye hooks and washing line) and then running a dehumidifier in there.

We quickly found some eye hooks in the crazy Aladdin's cave of a hardware store on the roundabout on the way to Lucca, but they didn't have any washing line - pegs, yes, and EVERY other conceivable item associated with laundry, but no washing line. So we left the shop and headed a bit further along the road to the electrical appliance shop run by the man who had looked at us like we were loonies when we last went in (a few months ago) bearing a picture of a vacuum cleaner with a smiley face on it (a Henry).

After spending about five minutes trying to explain what we wanted in true 'Give Us a Clue' style (we knew how to ask for a dehumidificatore, but not one with a laundry function), we gave up trying to understand each other and decided instead simply to look at the dehumidifiers he had in stock. We immediately spotted one with 'laundry drying' highlighted on the box, so took that and left with a free adapter to plug it in too.

We had to do a quick dash into Esselunga to find some washing line - with time ticking away, darkness was beginning to fall, and with the geese still out, we had visions of Mr Fox paying them a visit and us returning to a scene looking like a huge pillow fight. Thankfully, when we got home (by which time it was dark), they were both just standing rooted to the same spot as they had been all afternoon (even throughout the torrential rain and thunder). The pair of us donned head torches so that we could see where we were going, and quickly shepherded the geese into their house before retreating indoors ourselves.

While Helen cleaned the upstairs bathroom, hoovered the house and made a start on dinner, I started fitting washing lines into the soon-to-be drying room, hung the washing up, switched on the dehumidifier and locked the door. The experiment had begun!