The move to Tuscany : Manic Monday (morning)

Knowing that the weather is about to change for the wetter, I had earmarked today for getting some more work done outside. It was another crisp frosty morning today, so after a warming bowl of porridge for breakfast my work started with log splitting for the wood pile - let's call it wood pile number two. Wood pile number two is the one furthest from the house and is pretty much the first patch on the driveway to get sun in the morning, thus making it an ideal place for the wood to dry, and also a good place to start work on a cold day.

When I heard the church bells in Pietrabuona chime 10am I decided I should head out to get my errands done, so I collected the stuff I needed from the house and shot down towards town. On my through the village I couldn't help but notice how busy our little post office was - eight or nine people were rubbing shoulders like sardines in the queue (I'm mixing metaphors, I know sardines don't have shoulders) and I made a mental note to try and avoid the place when paying bills on Mondays as Mondays always seem to be really busy... with people paying bills... BILLS!! I'd only gone and left the bill I needed to pay in the house!

After an about turn and going back to the house to collect the bill for the TV licence I was once again heading into town. My busy Monday theory was further confirmed by a lack of parking spaces in the main piazza in Pescia ,so I headed back out of town and parked alongside the river.

I paid the bill in the tabaccheria. This seemed to take a lifetime, despite there being no queue. The guy who served me looked as if he'd never seen a payment console before and struggled horribly while people came and went next to me at the other till. I know it wasn't his first time as he's served me before (and was exactly the same the previous two times I've been in there), but we got there in the end.

My next stop was the bank across the square. It was time to try and get our internet banking sorted, not only to avoid having to make trips into town just to pay the odd bill but also to keep an eye on our balances - the printed statements that make the three-mile journey from the bank to the house seem to take a month, meaning we never really have an up-to-date idea of what's happening in our accounts.

When I arrived at the bank to tackle the security cubicle (which is something like a vertical MRI chamber that will only release you once you've provided an electronic fingerprint), there was a queue of three waiting patiently outside while a very old lady was struggling to get the chamber to let her into the bank and kept trying repeatedly. This definitely looked like her first time doing this, but how could it be? Had she moved to this town only last week at the age of eighty-something? Unlikely, as most Italians around here never leave their home town, so I figured she must have been into the bank numerous times before. Two of the others in the queue outside started to get involved while I stood there wondering in amazement at how difficult my visit to the bank was going to be. The other lady in the queue was helping check the old woman's bag for metal objects while the old man in the queue started shouting at the bank staff through the windows asking them to open the door. I soon gave up when I realised that even if they did get in, there was already a queue right the way to the door, so I turned around yet again, vowing to not attempt anything again on a Monday morning.

As soon as I got home I realised I'd forgotten to buy Helen a new desk diary - one of my main reasons for going into town. The chaos at the bank had thrown me completely and I'd gone home empty handed. I was thus soon back in the car, Pescia-bound, wondering if I'd ever get any work done after such a manic start to the day.

Diary acquired (in a nice girly pink colour), I headed home, stopping to refill a jerry can with fuel on the way home in readiness to get the chainsaw out.

By the time I got home it was almost midday - the manic activities of the morning had eaten into half of my day, so once I had fitted a form of anti-climb measure to the length of fence at the rear of the house (as witnessed by Helen this morning, Reggie is not jumping the fence, but has worked out how to climb up the wire fencing), we had lunch and I headed out into the sun to cut trees that were being a nuisance on the lower terraces.

After a couple of hours of wood cutting and felling four or five trees, Helen arrived with hedge trimmers in hand having thrown the towel in on a less than productive day at the office thanks to having had a poor night's sleep. By the time four o'clock arrived she had made a good inroad into terrace number five beneath the house. From here, we can see another three terraces beneath that, which take us to the trees at the bottom of our land - so it looks very much like we will end up with eight terraces beneath the house by the time the year is out.