Tumultuous Tuesday

On paper, today should have been a run-of-the mill day with a short blog post to follow. However, as you'll no doubt know by now (we certainly do), things are rarely that straightforward!

With the aid of my new alarm clock, I was up and out of bed before 7am today, and more importantly before my wife (even if only by a matter of minutes)! Jet lag aside, this must be the first time I've managed that since moving here.

As I packed my gear into the car to head out for a day's strimming, Helen was setting up for her exercise session and she was just finishing as I pulled away in the car, after having spent 45 minutes checking my emails and catching up on social media.

I was very pleased to find absolutely NO horse flies when I arrived for my day's work today - that, combined with a cooler day, seemed like it would make for a pleasant day's strimming.

And so it was until late morning when I was interrupted by a couple of guys who had opened the gate to the driveway, parked and then walked down towards the house and announced their presence by shouting at me.

I soon realised that they had been invited, as they seemed to think I was Gary (which, clearly, I'm not). Gary should have been there working with me today, but as yet there had been no sign of him, so I greeted the guys and told them that Gary wasn't here. One guy said something about the swimming pool, and then the other told me - in perfect English with a hint of London: 'Gary said he was going to meet us here to talk about the swimming pool'. His perfect English completely surprised me, which put a smile on his face and he said 'I made a surprise then didn't I?'! Turns out he (Donato) was born in Puglia, in the south of Italy, but moved to Crawley with his parents and grew up there - he even worked at Gatwick airport for a while before the whole family moved back to settle around here in 1980.

We had a great chat while Donato absent-mindedly squashed chestnuts with his feet and ate them (raw) and told me how rusty his English was. Our conversation covered where I live, where he now lives having built his own house, where his colleague lives, where Bob (or Jim) the Australian lives in Pietrabuona Alto, along with a load of other foreigners the pair of them have worked for. Donato now lives near Monte Carlo and has insisted we pay him a visit next time we're passing.

Once the pair of them had looked at the pool and measured up to replace the decking, they left me to my strimming.

Several more hours of strimming later, it was time to load the car with more surplus wood from the driveway to take home and go back down the valley to see what Helen had been up to today - with no credit on our mobile (another long story, and another issue to fix), I hadn't been able to call to find out how she was. Having said that, I couldn't have done regardless as the house landline is still not working, despite Sue having called Telecom Italia on our behalf to report the fault when we were away.

Firewood!

Helen had a busy day of her own, but with fewer visitors (we're still waiting for the return visit of the police officer who came while we were away and who said he would return after the 29th - how long after?, we're starting to wonder!) A combination of Virus Bulletin work, a bit of garden tidying, guest information pack updating and paint touching up in the apartment filled her day, so nothing too exciting.

What was exciting, however, was that I was due to collect my new chainsaw at 18:30 this evening, so at 18:15, I hopped into the car with cheque book in hand... only to find that the car wouldn't start. Again! (Haven't we been here before?!). I tried numerous times using both methane and petrol, but nothing changed. The starter motor turned happily, but it just wouldn't fire and I eventually had to concede defeat before I flattened the battery trying.

This was ENORMOUSLY frustrating. It definitely seems to be a problem requiring a mechanic - there's no hope of us getting it started ourselves - and we had plans to use the car in the morning. We have apartment guests arriving at lunchtime, and we need to get a few items from the supermarket in preparation. (Not to mention looking further ahead to the weekend when we have important visitors to pick up from the airport - let's not dwell on that for the time being though, with any luck it will all be fixed by then, and failing that we'll have got ourselves a hire car.)

After calming down and gathering my thoughts, I emailed Sue to see if she had the details of the mechanic they used some time back. As a Plan B, I also Googled to see if I could find one nearby. Lo and behold, there seemed to be one in Pietrabuona! I couldn't imagine where, as it's such a small village and we've walked around most of it - I strongly suspected this was an error on the part of Google maps, knowing what the Italians are like with their online presence and how out of date it tends to be if present at all.

I decided to call the number anyway. It rang! Someone answered! I was a bit unprepared, but managed to make the guy on the other end understand that our car would not start. He said he couldn't look this evening but could tomorrow - or at least that's what I THINK he said. He seemed a touch grumpy and probably didn't appreciate an Englishman phoning him, making an awful attempt at his beautiful language down the phone at nearly 7pm. Anyway, I persevered and agreed I would call him back tomorrow morning.

So tomorrow could well bring a trip to the supermarket on bicycles. I can't imagine how much fun it will be cycling back up that hill with a rucksackload of shopping...