No Internet, no car, no water

Once again, this update is brought to you courtesy of the free Wi-Fi at Franco's bar in Pescia. The latest on our own Internet service from Italia Wi-Fi (after pestering them for news today, Saturday, having not heard anything since the email we were sent on Monday, which advised us that all services would be up and running again by the end of the week) is that we will be sent a new modem towards the middle-end of next week, so it seems like we are looking at a minimum of a full two weeks without service.



Day 7: Hot hill climb

With our new guests installed downstairs, both Stuart and I got up at 6.40am this morning so that we could manage Reggie and attempt to keep his barking to a minimum. While I headed outside with my exercise kit, Stuart settled down with Reggie on the sofa for a quiet 40 minutes or so.

We had breakfast on the patio in yet more lovely sunshine, before Reggie got wind of the fact that there were new faces downstairs, so while Stuart had a quick chat with Keith, I cajoled Reggie into coming indoors with me to keep him from barking his head off at him and Jacqui. After a quick coffee, we headed out with Reggie for his morning walk. This time, we opted for the Vellano road. We hadn't got far before a vehicle with UK plates came down the road towards us beeping its horn - it was David and Sarah on their way into town. We stopped for a quick chat then carried on up the road. Even before 10am the sun was beating down and we decided not even to go as far as we usually do on the Vellano road - it was just too hot. After just a 40 minute walk, therefore, we arrived back at the house. The plan was to cycle into town for a coffee at Franco's bar where we knew they had Wi-Fi.

After Stuart had sorted out his road bike (his mountain bike being pedal-less at the moment) and we'd packed a rucksack with laptop, phones & tablet PC, we put Reggie in his crate and headed off with our trusty steeds.

The ride into town was very pleasant once again, and we parked our bikes up at the top of the square before walking through the square and down to the Vodafone shop. I wanted to see if we could buy a dongle, but once again, the Vodafone shop was closed - in fact, it's closed until next Monday. We therefore went straight to the bicycle repair shop, where Stuart waved the broken part from his mountain bike at them and was rewarded with a shiny new one. After that, we popped into Esselunga to pick up some Lycamobile top-up cards. We'd eventually worked out that the reason the data facility had stopped working on Stuart's mobile was that he'd run out of credit, so hopefully this would sort it out.

After that, we walked up to the ice cream shop, La Barrachina, where we met up with David and Sarah, who had texted to say that they were still in town if we wanted to meet up. The four of us headed from there into the square and we sat inside Franco's bar with cappuccinos and spent a very enjoyable hour or so catching up with them properly.

When David and Sarah left to go and rescue the shopping that was slowly cooking in their car, we moved to a table outside the bar where the Wi-Fi reception was better and got out the laptop and tablet pc to log onto the free internet and download emails and do a bit of admin.

After we'd done the most important tasks (checking for and downloading some work, uploading our blog posts for the last few days, checking emails and emailing the car dealer to ask WHEN our car would be ready), it was finally time to head off back up the hill to rescue poor Reggie from the confines of his crate.

So, as the temperature reading on the LED display outside the pharmacy in the square read 33C, we climbed onto our bicycles and started the long, hard slog up the hill. I'd been dreading this bit all morning and when my legs started to ache before we'd really even hit anything approaching a steep incline, my fears were amplified. However, I am pleased to say that, in fact, the hill climb went better for me today than it did on Monday, and unlike Monday, I managed it all the way home without having to stop or get off and push (maybe I've still got it after all!). We did both arrive at our gates dripping in sweat and struggling to catch our breath, but at least we'd made it, and in 33C heat to boot!

First things first, we let Reggie out - he seemed very excited to see us, I'm sure the poor boy thought we'd left him home alone for good. After a long cold glass of water each and a few moments to cool down, we both retreated to the cool of the office - me, so that I could start work on some of the work files I had managed to download, and Stuart to do some more tinkering with our website (offline of course).

Come 6pm we'd both had enough - we went into the garden and managed a nice chat with Keith and Jacqui. Although Reggie barked a lot to start with, he quite quickly calmed down and we were able to have a decent conversation across the fence with them. We were very pleased with Reggie, and thankfully our guests didn't seem too alarmed by his behaviour, at least with the safety of a fence in between him and them. So, after that small victory, we celebrated with dinner and a glass of beer on the patio in the warm evening air. We'd been planning to go all week without beer or wine (more of a challenge for Stuart than for me), but after today's exertions we felt we deserved it - and it tasted good!

After dinner, I went to water the seedlings on the vegetable terraces - although our irrigation now does the majority of our watering for us, there are still some seedlings in pots that need our attention each day. I went down with the watering can and wondered why the pipes were hissing, given that the irrigation should have switched off by now (and indeed, the drips had stopped). After watering the pots, the hissing sound came again, from the same spot. On closer inspection I found that the hissing had not come from pipes at all but from (look away now, Sheila) a small snake curled up in one of the crates we'd left down there. I noticed that it didn't have the same markings as most of the snakes we see around here and called Stuart down for a second opinion. After looking, and photographing it, he concurred that it appeared to be a viper. Hmm, not sure quite how I feel about that! One thing's for sure: we will both have to be very careful about wearing gloves and picking things up slowly and carefully from now on - and there will be no more strimming in shorts for me either!

Excitement over, Reggie and I walked along the drive to collect the post from the post box, then we all retired indoors to try and give our guests a peaceful evening outdoors.

Have we heard anything about when our car will be ready for collection? No. Is our internet fixed yet? No. But at least we've topped up our mobiles and downloaded enough work to be going on with for a couple of days.



Day 8: No internet, no car, NO WATER!

From the brief snippets of information we've been able to glean from our patchy internet access via phones, friends and internet cafes over the last week, we understand that the UK has been unseasonably cold this week. We, meanwhile, seem to have been having a heat wave (sorry). I think the temperature has to go above something like 32C to officially be classed as a heat wave, but I would say that today it has DEFINITELY done that. You may be shivering in your UK homes with the central heating turned on, but we are melting here and struggling to get anything done in the energy-zapping heat. Somewhere in between the two extremes is probably the ideal!

Today has been rather more work-focused for me as I'd managed to download some things to work on when we were in town yesterday. After my exercise and breakfast on the patio, therefore, I headed to the office to start my first full day's office work in almost a week - it was still frustrating not having the internet, but at least there were things I could get on with doing.

With our guests having gone out early, Stuart turned his attention to fixing his broken pedal on his mountain bike, before setting off down the hill to the builder's merchant. He came back a short while later, looking bedraggled in sweat after having cycled back up the hill with a rucksack full of ant traps, insect spray, enormous nails and a loaf of bread. He handed me the bag to show me how heavy it was - I almost dropped it, so I've no idea how he managed to power his way up the hill with that on his back!

After a cold drink and gathering his strength, he headed out to the veg terraces to start nailing down the ground cover material. Until now, it had only been held in place with large stones - of which we have plenty, but every time a breeze whipped up, the material would flail around and not really do its job properly.

We each stopped our respective tasks for lunch at around 12.30pm and ate on the patio - today's temperatures were so hot that it was impossible to have any bare skin touching the metal table for fear of third-degree burns!

After lunch I returned to the relative cool of the office while Stuart soldiered on on the terraces, popping back up for a bit of respite from the heat every now and then.

By 4.30pm, I'd come to a stop with my work so I offered to do the last task on Stuart's list for the day, which was going around the electric fence and cutting back anything that was encroaching on it (in order to prevent short circuits). I headed off to the terraces with my secateurs and before I'd even got going I felt the sweat building up. I spent about half an hour walking and cutting and SWEATING. It's not a pretty picture to paint, but the sweat was literally running off my face and down my arms and my hair was plastered to my head - and literally all I was doing was taking a few steps before bending down to cut a few pieces of bramble. I've no idea how Stuart managed to do anything more strenuous in that heat.

By the time I'd finished, I was done in, and the offer of a glass of wine and some freshly podded peas to snack on was hard to refuse!

We sat in the searing heat (even at 6.30pm I found the sun too hot to sit in - and, coming from the heat-seeking, sun-loving person that I am, that's saying a LOT!) and enjoyed our view, while also totting up all the losses and costs we have suffered from the combination of no car and no internet.

Stuart finally heard back from the car dealers at around 6.45pm: the mechanic is STILL WORKING ON OUR CAR (he's had it for 8 days...) and they will let us know when it's ready. We're due to be going away for a couple of nights for a mini-holiday first thing on Tuesday morning, so we NEED to have our/a car (large enough to fit Reggie's crate in it) by Monday evening at the latest! Argghh, another frustration to add to the list.

As for the internet, the communication we had from Italia Wi-Fi earlier in the week advised us that we would be emailed 24 hours prior to the connections being restored - as we haven't heard a peep from them since that email (on Monday), we can only assume that we won't be getting our internet back tomorrow after all...

As if that weren't all enough already, I went to turn the kitchen tap on while preparing our dinner, and only a dribble came out, which slowed to a drip, and then stopped completely. We've had air blockages in the pipes before, but the total lack of water has only ever lasted 10 minutes or so. This time, it seemed like it was gone for good. Stuart checked outside and confirmed that there was no mains water coming up to the house at all. This would be bad enough at any time, but to happen when we have guests just seems like someone is having a joke at our expense (not funny!). After building up some courage, Stuart got the water bill out and dialled the 24h line for reporting faults... only to get a recorded message saying that the number was incorrect or out of service...

I called Sarah up in Vellano just to check that it wasn't a system-wide water problem (Sarah and David were the only people we could think of who were definitely connected to the mains supply), but she reported that they had freely flowing water. Meanwhile, Stuart got out his mountain bike for the second time today and set off down the hill to our water meter, which is located right at the bottom of our land and accessible via a little path behind the back of the pink house on the road in the valley bottom - he came back a little while later bearing a photograph of said meter. The pressure gauge indicated that there was definitely something going in - so perhaps the problem lay somewhere between the meter and the house. With darkness descending, there was nothing else for it than to retire to bed after a quick bite to eat and plan to get up with the lark to start digging out the water pipe.



Day 9: The cavalry arrives

I slept fitfully until 4am, at which point I woke up, and lay there in bed going over and over all the troubles these three "issues" are causing us, while waiting for it to be light enough to get up and go outside. At 5.515am I got dressed, fed the cats, let Lucca out, let Reggie out and then headed to the terraces with a spade. I must have spent a good 20 minutes wandering up and down trying to find a section of pipe sticking up through the soil. But, whereas in winter everything was bare, making it easy to see things, everything is now in full foliage: there was ivy covering the ground, bracken, brambles, nettles, grass - you name it, it was covering the ground and I simply couldn't get my bearings relating to where we'd spotted the pipe back in the winter. I was just about to give up hope - reckoning that it would take us as long to FIND the pipe as it would to dig it out - when I stumbled across an unmistakeable section of black and blue water pipe. Bingo! I started digging. Stuart came out and joined in at about 6.15, and while I dug and traced the pipe up the hill, he did the same heading downhill. Thankfully, in most places the pipe was close to the surface, and with the soft soil it didn't take much to pull it free, but in other sections it was buried deep and we both worked up a sweat well before 7am. I guess we can be thankful that this didn't happen before we'd cleared (most of) the terraces below the house - bearing in mind that up until January we hadn't even found the septic tank, I wouldn't have fancied our chances of finding a water pipe underneath 6ft brambles! Having said that, of course, we did eventually reach a point at which the vegetation was so voluminous that I had to head back up the hill to grab the hedge trimmers and we had to cut before digging and repeat.

Eventually, Stuart decided to give up on the digging and instead cut his way through the jungle of brambles as far as the very bottom of the hill and the water meter - he wanted to check the meter again, to make sure that it really was working and we weren't digging for nothing. The meter was indeed working, so after a bit of breakfast and some suggestions via text from Chris and Sue, Stuart headed back out to attempt to fit a stop cock on the meter. I suggested he should maybe take some shampoo and shower gel with him as it was bound to be very wet - the tap to shut the water off at the meter had ceased up completely so he was definitely going to get wet! He came back a little later looking drenched but this time with water rather than sweat (not that you could really tell the difference) and having managed to fit the tap. Next, it was a quick phone call to Chris and Sue who had offered to come up to lend a hand, to ask if they could pick up 100m of water pipe and bring it up - the theory being that if we (Stuart) connect the new pipe to the water meter at one end and the house at the other, we should have flowing water again...

Chris and Sue arrived, and while Stuart and Chris headed off down the hill to the water meter (this time in the car), Sue and I sat in the cool of the house. To cut a VERY long story short, the solution to the water problem proved not to be so easy, and Stuart and Chris spent all day traipsing up and down the terraces with pipes, spanners and power tools - the problem, it seemed, was that we didn't have enough pressure to get the water all the way up the hill to the house. The pair of them were run ragged - in heat that must have been hitting the high 30s today, and finally caved in to come indoors for a very late lunch at around 3pm. By this time, Sue had left to go and teach a couple of her English classes and I was catching up on a bit of work, so when the boys came in I sat with them while they ate their lunch. They had pretty much discounted the idea of us getting any water flowing today. They had tried everything, including connecting an old pump - which proved not to work. We therefore sat and discussed what we could offer our apartment guests - one night (and day) without water is bad enough, and they have been amazingly understanding and patient with us over this hiccup (although hiccup doesn't seem quite a strong enough word to use!), but we really couldn't let them go for two nights without running water, so we mulled over the options of where we could offer to book them a room for the night (or more).

While Chris and Stuart ate their lunch,  we also talked about unreliable internet service providers and incompetent car dealers. We still had heard nothing from Italia Wi-Fi regarding our internet being reconnected (which had been promised "by the end of the week"), and while we were talking the car dealer phoned to say that the mechanic wouldn't let us have the car back unless we paid for him to replace the cam belt (or else signed something to say we wouldn’t hold them responsible if something happened to the engine because we hadn't instructed him to replace it). There was still no news on when the car will be ready either. We have told them that we MUST have the car back by Monday at the latest, as we will be going away for a mini-holiday the following day. Given that they've had the car now for 9 days, and given that they had it for 6 days just a couple of weeks ago, you would have thought that any problem with the cam belt would actually have been picked up and conveyed to us sooner than this...

Anyway, come 4pm, Sue returned, this time bringing Erik and Henry with her. So, while Chris and Stuart went out to try one last thing before heading off in the car with the old pump to either try to get the old pump fixed or buy a new one, Sue (the voice of reason) and I considered our options for re-homing our guests whether for one night or the rest of their stay. Between us, we agreed that the San Lorenzo hotel would be the best option - it's only just down the road from here, easy to find, a very nice place, and easy to book by the night (the other option that Stuart and I were considering was asking around to see if any other folk in the valley who have guest accommodation would be able to take them). Once this had been decided, Henry very kindly telephoned a friend of his to ask him to look up the phone number for the San Lorenzo hotel and text it to us, which his friend kindly did straight away, then Henry telephoned San Lorenzo to find out the cost of accommodation and what availability they had. Thankfully, San Lorenzo had a suite available, and at €82 per night, we thought that was a reasonable cost (Stuart and I, of course, would be picking up the bill). It was a relief to have that option available, so we just had to sit tight and wait for Keith and Jacqui to return before conveying the bad news that the water still wasn't on, and then offering to book them into the hotel for a night (or more).

It was shortly after Henry had finished his fact-finding calls that we heard a strange banging and gurgling. I knew EXACTLY what that meant and ran to the kitchen tap. There was still nothing coming out of it, but then I remembered that I'd opened the tap in the office as well, and on running into the back room realised that the tap was in full flow and the saucepan I'd put underneath it to catch any drips was about to overflow! Sue and I did a little victory dance - it was SO exciting. There's nothing like a full day of having no running water (and a scorching hot day at that, and with guests to boot) to make you appreciate the simply things! I have never been so thoroughly delighted to hear the familiar banging and clanging of the water pipes!

It wasn't long before the kitchen tap started gushing water as well, and Sue, Erik, Henry and I ran around putting saucepans, frying pans and any vessels we could find underneath the taps to collect the precious water coming out. There was still no water coming out in the bathroom though, so the message came through from Chris and Stuart to turn off all the downstairs taps and see what happened in the bathroom. Sure enough, the toilet cistern began to fill and water came gushing out of the taps. What utter, utter joy! Having worked like trojans all day long, Chris and Stuart's heroic efforts had finally paid off and they had fixed the problem! (I hasten to add that they seemed quite surprised - I'm sure they had already written it off).

High on relief and a sense of victory, Chris and Stuart decided that now was the time to move the water tank that sits behind a tree in the car park (a back-up water tank) from where it had sat for several years to a better position on the terraces above the house - so that, should the same thing happen again, we would have a back up and at such a height above the house, there would be enough pressure to get the water to the taps. After emptying the dregs out of the bottom of the tank therefore, they manhandled the thing (which looks a little like a brown baby elephant but is called "maialino" - or piglet) from the car park to the first terrace, from the first to the second terrace, second to third terrace and so on, until they got it above the goose enclosure. We will plan to wash it out with bleach, as it has been sitting around with standing water in it for several years, and then fill it so that it's on standby for emergencies.

As the boys were doing this, our guests returned from their afternoon out and I was able to tentatively deliver the good news that the water was back on. Of course, we hadn't checked the taps in the apartment, but with it being the lowest point in the house, the theory was that they would have better pressure there than in the rest of the house - and since the water seemed to be back to normal pressure in our part of the house by this time, we thought that it should be fine in the apartment. Had they returned just half an hour earlier, I would have been delivering very different news, and potentially booking them into the hotel down the road!

Of course, we had to celebrate Chris and Stuart's victory with a little drink - and after all the back-breaking work and support we'd had from the Phillipses the VERY least we could do was to cook them all dinner. We therefore proceeded to have a very enjoyable evening with plenty of wine, a big bowl of vegetable pasta, great company, and the happy knowledge that we only had to turn a tap on to access clean running water. We had been without running water for a total of around 21 hours, but it certainly made us appreciate the simple things and put everything into perspective.

After the Phillipses had left, we headed for bed, exhausted, but relieved. I don't like to imagine in what state we would have ended the day if it hadn't been for Chris and Sue coming to help, but I don't imagine it would have been a happy one!

The car and the internet are battles for another day (er.. tomorrow).