A set of wheels

We decided to spare you a blog until there was actually something positive to write about as it all seemed to have been a bit gloomy of late. So you'll be pleased to hear that we finally have our car back - not without another set of frustrations and complications, but we do at least have wheels for the time being.

Wednesday was another frustrating day, which ended with a call from the garage at 6.50pm to say 'the car is ready, can you collect it now?'. I'm not sure how exactly they thought we were going to get there right away (Stuart contemplated cycling there but they closed just 40 minutes later and the journey would have taken him close to an hour), so we told them that it wasn't possible to come 'now' but that we'd collect it in the morning.

Yesterday, therefore, we were helped out once again by the Phillipses and Chris came up to collect Stuart in the morning so that they could head off to the garage. By this time, Stuart had been given some useful advice from Donatella, so when he got to the garage and was asked to pay the €100 for the replaced cam belt he told them he wouldn't pay until he had both an invoice and a letter explaining why it was replaced and why it wasn't covered by the warranty. Apparently he was first asked to wait 45 minutes until the woman who dealt with invoices came back (which he refused to do), then was asked to come back in the morning - to collect both the invoice AND the car! He told them that wasn't acceptable either, and eventually they agreed to let him have the keys and take the car with a promise to return in the morning for the invoice and to pay the €100.

So, after having done a couple of hours of office work, I finally heard the crunch of tyres on gravel at around 1pm - I'd like to say the 'familiar' crunch of tyres on gravel, but actually it feels like it's been so long that it's no longer a familiar sound!

All of the hassles and frustrations with the garage had really mounted up, and rather than being in a celebratory mood, it was rather a subdued lunch and early afternoon. We had also found out, thanks to Donatella, that the insurance on the car had expired in mid-January and that the document the garage had given us which we were led to believe would extend our insurance cover was actually a temporary log book, which itself had expired in mid-February. To recap, we were unable to get the ownership documents for the car when we first bought it because we didn't yet have our Italian residency. You need ownership documents for a vehicle in order to be able to insure it. The garage had therefore put us on their insurance for 6 months (which ended in January). In the meantime, we had sent them our residency documentation in November, asking for them to send us the ownership documents so that we could sort out our own insurance. Nothing happened. When we knew their insurance cover was about to expire in mid-Jan, we hassled them again for the ownership documents and explained that the insurance cover was about to run out and we needed the documents in order to be able to get some cover. That is when they sent the temporary document and told us we would have the ownership documents by the end of the month. Of course, nearly 5 months later we still don't have the documents, despite having asked for them on several occasions. Should we be stopped by the police or the car spotted parked up in town with an out-of-date insurance badge, we would be in for a hefty fine. Needless to say, discovering all of this didn't put us in the best of moods and definitely took the shine off having the car back.

After I'd done a little more work, and Stuart had sent yet another email rant to the car dealer, we decided it was high time we took Reggie for a proper walk rather than just traipsing up and down the tarmac with his as we've had to do for the last two weeks. We therefore drove up to the cava, where we thought it might be a degree cooler and at least fairly shady. Reggie clearly loved being off his lead again, and on the return leg of the walk he went bonkers, tearing off into the woods, thundering uphill through the undergrowth, only to come careering back down again minutes later - he definitely had some energy to burn!

After our walk, we took Reggie back to the house, waited for him to have a long drink and calm down a bit before putting him in his crate while we went out for a couple of hours of "holiday". We drove to Montecarlo and sat at a table outside the little enoteca there where we had a couple of glasses of wine and a selection of snacks. It probably took until three quarters of the way through the first glass for us to start relaxing and forgetting about cars and dodgy car dealers and mechanics (and dodgy internet providers). For a brief spell, we could almost imagine we were on holiday.

On the holiday front, we have made contact with the people who own the farm at which we were going to go and stay this week, and they have very kindly agreed to re-book our holiday (for which we'd already paid in full) for dates later in the year (September onwards). We are very grateful to them for the opportunity - we really loved the look of the place and had been looking forward to going there and meeting them - and it will be something to look forward to, although it's still a big blow to us both that we can't go away any sooner. After having been unsure about whether or not we could justify spending the money on a holiday in the first place, once we'd taken the plunge and booked it, we were both really excited about it and counting down the days until we went. While we have had many adventures and have been surrounded by beautiful scenery and some lovely weather, we realised that we haven't actually had a holiday - a break from routine and proper switch-off - for over two years, and it was only a couple of days ago that Stuart said to me that our holiday couldn’t come at a better time, given the hassles and frustrations of the last couple of weeks. Hopefully, things will start to iron themselves out over the coming weeks and now that we are mobile again we will feel less in need of getting away from routine. (There's nothing like feeling like a prisoner in your own home to make you start resenting being in even the most beautiful of places!)

Anyway, today (Friday), we are set to welcome another guest as our friend Chris Perkins is popping in for a few nights on his way back from a conference in Venice. So this morning will be dedicated to finally doing a supermarket shop under our own steam as well as tidying and preparing (and hassling the garage once again about our documents, and trying to find out whether our internet provider does ever actually plan to reconnect us...)