Productivity returns (Wednesday)
From yesterday's day of fruitless shopping to a morning full of acquisitions! I started the day once again with a drive to Borgo a Buggiano for a visit to the agraria. There's no market on a Wednesday though, so this time I pulled up outside the shop, saw the bails of straw sat there waiting to be purchased and was greeted by a nice old man who asked what I wanted. I told him I wanted paglia (straw), and we loaded a bail into the boot. While doing, so I noticed a sign for dog food. 'Vendette crochette per cuccioli?' I asked, 'si' was the reply. I followed him indoors and grabbed four enormous bulbs of garlic from the basket on the way in. The man then reappeared with two bags of dog food of different sizes - no point in messing around with Reggie's appetite, so I went for the larger 10kg sack, paid my money and left feeling very pleased with myself - my first stop of the day and I'd already ticked two items off my list. I hadn't planned to buy garlic, but could NOT resist when I saw it.
My next stop was OBI so that I could browse the plumbing section. I tried to unblock the bathroom sink yesterday without resorting to chemicals, so had unscrewed the waste pipe to do so, cleaned out what I could, but when I went to fit the waste back together, noticed that it had been fitted using silicone sealant and was missing a rubber seal - so for the time being, the sink was out of use and I was hoping I could find a simple replacement. This was a task that was going to go one of two ways - either be met with unknowing shrugs or be an easy purchase (there often seems little in between here).
Fortunately, it was the latter, so with the seals in the trolley, a plastic waste bin and a rachet spanner, I left for a shop around the corner in search of a metal bin for storage of wood ash. However, all they had were prettily painted versions for €30 - an unnecessary expense for what we needed. Before I left, I went downstairs to the hardware section of the shop to attempt to buy some septic tank starter enzymes. 'Vendette avviare per fosso settico?' I asked, which was met with a blank look. It was poor Italian, I grant you, but I was confident that this set of words would be understood. I tried again but to no avail, the man just shook his head, so I gave up on that one and asked for some sink unblocker. This he understood and he took me to the product. I asked if this unblocking liquid was OK for fosso settico, knowing full well that just 60 seconds ago these words had received no acknowledgement but I had nothing else to go with. Now however, something about the context in which I was asking seemed to help bridge the language gap and he corrected my 'fosso settico' to what I know know to be a 'fosso biologico'. It turned out that this unblocker was no good for use with a septic tank, so I left empty handed but with a new couple of words in my vocabulary at least.
After filling up the car with methane I headed for Frateschi again and was greeted by Massimo to whom I bade a good year and then asked him for a bidone in metallo (bin in metal). He rubbed his chin and took me into the shop. While we waited for Paulo, Massimo asked me what I wanted the metal bin for. Not knowing the word for ash, I told him 'for after a wood fire for the [...]' and he filled in the blank in a way that would have won him a Blankety Blank cheque book and pen! However, I've already forgotten the word. Nevertheless, the meaning was understood and Paulo sent Massimo off to fetch something.
When Massimo returned from the yard he did so with an empty, but used, oil barrel - more like a large bucket. He handed it to me and asked if I wanted it - for free!? Of course I wanted it! I loaded it into the car and then when he asked if I needed anything else. Once again I attempted to explain that I wanted to start a septic tank, except this time I called it a biological tank. He understood perfectly the type of tank I was talking about, but nothing more, so I had to resort to telling him that the English word for what I wanted was 'enzymes'. Turns out the Italian word is almost identical, so off he went and returned with a tub of helpful bacteria.
What a success of a morning, a different day altogether from the previous day and a wholly more enjoyable one!
When I got home we had lunch outside again. It was far from balmy outside, but pleasant enough to sit outside with a jumper on. Helen then went back indoors to the office and I set about constructing a mini-septic tank for animal waste using the plastic bin and enzymes I had just bought.
This is a borrowed idea from the glorious interweb that involves burying a waste bin in the ground after having cut its bottom off, drilled holes into its sides and partly filled it with gravel. From then on we fill it with solid animal waste. Of course how well it works remains to be seen, but this could mean we no longer need to put kilos of animal waste into landfill and can save some money on buying doggie poop bags.
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| One plastic bin, one hole in the ground. |
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| Cut the bottom off the bin. |
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| Drill holes in the sides of the bin. |
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| Put bin into hole and part-fill the bin with gravel. |
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| Add enzymes. |
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| Animal waste septic tank! |
That done, and as night fell we took Reggie into town for a walk - one of our usual and regulation length affairs that saw us circling the hospital and back at the car after 40 minutes.
After we got home we lit the fire and relaxed for the evening in front of the fire.
Watts up?! (Thursday)
Today marked the middle of January (already?!!) - not only that, but it was the day our very good friends the Wattses were arriving to spend the week with us. This meant that the apartment needed the usual pre-guest overhaul, which was what I spent my morning doing while Helen tried to cram her day's work into the morning.
By the time we stopped for lunch we were ready for guests, so after a quick lunch we decided to take Reggie out for a walk along the quiet refuge track so he could have a good stretch of his legs off the lead.
It was already 3pm when we got home, which meant that the plane from London was in the air and I would soon need to be in the road to the airport! So, after lighting a fire, I left Helen to the house cleaning, fire tending and dog watching while I drove to Pisa to collect Sarah, Dave and little Ollie.
The plane landed four minutes early and it was only a ten-minute wait before the Wattses were walking through the doors into the terminal. I say 'walking', but it was only the grown ups who were walking - Ollie was having a great time being pulled along on his Trunkie after his first ever plane journey, he seemed to be taking it all in his stride!
After loading the car and setting off on the road towards home, I made the same mistake I'd made once before: as a result of concentrating more on talking than on where I was going, I missed the first turn-off towards Lucca on the autostrada - I also did it when we picked up Helen's parents in October, a definite display of me not being able to multi-task particularly well - which added an extra 20 minutes to the journey.
By the time we got home it was 6.30pm and dark, and when we pulled up and got out of the car we were greeted by a very barky dog. Fortunately, Sarah and Dave are dog people themselves and weren't phased by Reggie's best efforts to show us up with barking and even nipping at poor little Ollie.
Despite Reggie's attempts to spoil the party, we enjoyed a long overdue catchup over some Prosecco followed by Tuscan sausage and beans which even Ollie enjoyed - a gold seal of approval by all accounts. We followed that with a zucotto from the freezer which we'd made on New Years Eve and then some cheese and port while Sarah took a now very tired Ollie downstairs to bed, followed shortly by Dave for some much needed sleep. We can't wait to start showing them around our little piece of Italy - starting with a supermarket trip tomorrow and probably a trip into town for coffee.
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