We were due at Andrea's office at 9am this morning, so at 8.35am I went to give Stuart another nudge - he seemed very sleepy this morning, which probably was the sign of things to come.
Once we'd wrapped ourselves up warm and packed Reggie in the car, we drove into Pescia and made it to Andrea's for just after 9am. He was already there with both the engineer and the geologist, so we were ushered into the office to sit at the big table with them all. We were passed document after document to sign. It has struck me on recent visits to Andrea's that, while it is my name (only) on all of the bills that we are having to pay, there have been several official documents that only Stuart has had to sign - as if it is he who is in charge of things. That in itself doesn't bother me, but it does slightly irk me that I only seem to be included for the payments!!
Talking of payments, several more were discussed that we will have to make in the near future - a hefty one to the engineer, an even heftier one to the comune as some form of property tax on the new extension (if it goes ahead), and so on. I found it all rather distressing as we seem to be totting up a pretty significant sum before we've even thought about actually doing anything constructive.
After we'd bade our farewells to Andrea (the geologist and the engineer had already said their goodbyes), we got Reggie out of the car and took him for a bracing walk up and down the river. While Pescia itself has no snow, the view of the mountains (or hills as some might prefer to classify them) from the town centre is a very snowy one indeed. I kicked myself for not having brought a camera out with us.
Walk done, we were all glad to get back to the warmth of the car and drive home.
Once home, Stuart's well-being seemed to nosedive and before I knew it, he had taken himself to bed - it seemed that, right then, he simply couldn't face any more of the day. I tried my best to busy myself with taking Reggie to the apartment to check the dehumidifier, taking Reggie along the drive to check for post (I was thrilled to find parcels from my sister and my friend Louise, as well as a couple more Christmas cards - less thrilled about the credit card bill and the telephone bill [which is still in the previous occupants' name and we are still paying for services we have said we don't want], but I suppose you can't have it all!), plus taking a phone call from the courier who was about to deliver another parcel, and taking Reggie along the drive again to wait for him to arrive at the gates.
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| View from our gates. |
Stuart eventually re-surfaced at about 2.30pm, three hours after having gone to bed. He seemed a little better for it, so that was something at least. We then opened up the parcels - a lovely abstract image based on the colours of our wedding day (hmm, not explained very well, but it's beautiful!) from Louise, some gorgeous cards designed and beautifully written by my nephew and nieces (which brought tears to my eyes) and some lovely presents from my sister.
After a little while spent tinkering about with our listing on the holiday lettings website, time ticked on to almost 4pm and Stuart had promised Antonio - his supplier of Stihl power tools - that he/we would go to his shop at 4pm today to collect our new hedge trimmers.
We quickly got the cats in, and decided to take Reggie along for the ride, and headed right out of our drive, uphill towards Vellano and the tiny village of Macchino beyond it. We hadn't driven very far before we noticed snow still lying around - all of the snow from our part of the valley had long since thawed (even if things had re-frozen overnight). By the time we were leaving Vellano, the snow piled up by the sides of the road was quite voluminous. The road itself was clear, it had clearly been ploughed and gritted, although there was one spot in particular where a sheet of ice covered the entire road - right on a hairpin bend! We cautiously made our way up to Macchino, where the snow must have been almost several inches deep, and called in at Antonio's shop.
Antonio quickly welcomed us and told us that the hedge trimmers were over the road in his house, so we moved the car to his snowy drive and followed him into his garage. He gave us (well, Stuart anyway, I don't think that women are expected to be using petrol-powered tools) a full demonstration of the shiny new hedge trimmers, before taking us into his house for the payment. We met his son, Marcello, who spoke very good English (he must have been maybe 10 or 11 years old) and then sat down at his kitchen table, looking out the window at the incredible view. We remarked what a beautiful view it was (mountains, valleys and all with the most beautiful wintry sunset), and Antonio told us that you can even see the sea from there!
While he did his calculations and wrote out an invoice for us, Antonio fed us slices of his wife's delicious home-made ricotta tart. I haven't until now had many dealings with Antonio, beyond the odd 'ciao' here and there, but I came away from today's longer encounter with a very warm feeling towards him. He truly seems to be a generous and friendly man and, as Stuart has mentioned here before, he likes to practise his English. As such, he was as patient with us and our poor Italian as anyone could be, and between the three of us we strung together part-English, part-Italian sentences and got along famously.
After we'd waved goodbye to Antonio and Marcello, we headed back down the hill, the views looking absolutely breathtaking, with snow dusted hills, a burning red sun and pink skies.
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| New toy... |
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| ...and this one is allowed to be mine! |
Once home, it was time to put the geese away and huddle around the wood burner. We demolished yet another enormous stack of wood today - so tomorrow could be a day of wood chopping and maybe even taking the new hedge trimmers for a spin!
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