Still struggling with my tiredness, I didn't surface until gone 11am, by which time Mom was already awake and had been for hours, so we sat around drinking tea until Kerys and Ben both surfaced, which wasn't too long after me.
Once breakfast/brunch was over, Mom, the kids and I headed into Pescia, the plan being to drop mum and Kerys at Giannino's department store for a bit of clothes shopping while Ben and I went to refuel the car and grab a few items from the supermarket.
That plan fell at the first hurdle when Giannino's was closed, so instead we dropped them into the piazza for a walk around. The piazza was also deserted - I'd failed to take into consideration that not only was it a Monday, it was a Monday, in August, at lunchtime.
Ben and I went off to do our chores and arranged to meet Mom and Kerys for coffee in the piazza afterwards, which we did and in new funky glass thermal-ware too:
After coffee, I dropped everyone back to the house for lunch while I headed with my book to the doctor's surgery to request a blood test for my thyroid hormone levels. I was later than usual arriving so was pleased to find only two other people waiting at this point, although a steady stream of people arrived after me, almost filling the waiting room by the time I left.
The doctor arrived and let out an audible sigh when he saw how full the room was, before trudging into his room. It wasn't long before the usual blood pressure test was done and I was leaving with my slip of paper to take to the Misericordia the next morning to have some blood extracted.
When I got home I finished off the last of the lunch that mum.and the kids had prepared while Ben and Reggien played on the lawn - they have become best play mates over the last week and Ben seems to enjoy nothing more than trying to teach him new tricks.
The afternoon passed by with Ben and me making the first of our new "bug hotels", which will hopefully attract ladybirds and lacewings (the first of which I spotted on our cupboard door last week) as the first baby step in our integrated pest management system in the veg garden.
While Ben and I played with tools, Mum and Kerys made countless pear crumbles using just some of the pears we had picked at the Phillips farm - most of which went into the freezer but we couldn't resist digging into one of them after dinner and before all cramming into the living room to watch American Sniper.
Tuesday was another slow start for everyone apart from Helen - with the weather turning up the heat again, we felt as if we were slowing in tandem so it wasn't until late morning that once again Mom, the kids and I headed into Pescia.
Yet again, Mom and Kerys's trip to Giannino's was foiled - today the shutters were up, but we'd left it so late this morning that by the time we arrived we were in the middle of lunchtime, so we gave up and headed into the Piazza for a drink and some pizza at the now favourite Bar Pulter.
After pizza we left the shade of the large umbrellas at Bar Pulter and crossed the square to the shade of those outside the new ice cream shop, which has only been open for a few months - a very modern Italian-style place with a limited selection of ice cream flavours (only 10 or so, and yet another gelateria WITHOUT mint flavour). They had better up their game as competition in town is heating up and there is no room for slackers in the ice cream game! What this place does have going for it though is the quality of their ice cream - it was genuinely home-made artisan gelato of the highest order.
As it was still some time until the end of the lunch break, we gave up on the idea of shopping and instead headed home. When we got home, we left Mom to cool down in the apartment, while the kids and I collected Helen and Reggie and headed off to the Cava track so that Reggie could expend some energy off lead.
On the way back we stopped for a quick drink in the Bistrot in Vellano and a couple of games of table football. After being beaten by Ben (twice), I handed my position over to one of the African refugees staying there, who duly gave Ben a thrashing back - but Ben was pleased to have scored five goals against someone who was clearly a pro!
Evening was approaching by the time we got back to the house and we set about lighting the BBQ and firepit and preparing food to cook on them for dinner: steaks, sausage for Ben, vegetable kebabs, veggies in a griddle pan and BBQ'd potato slices - which worked spectacularly well. It was well into the evening by the time we were finally ready to eat, but it was well worth the wait.
After a couple of relatively sedentary, days Lucca (the city, not the cat) could wait no more, so I woke the kids up "early" (before 10am) and after a bit of breakfast, Mom, the kids and I headed into Lucca for a few hours.
We parked up and walked around quarter of the enormous Renaissance wall that encircles the city to a bike rental shop that offers 4-seater rickshaw-type bikes. We (or should I say the kids) had been hoping to have a go on such a bike after having been disappointed last year when there were none available when we visited on that occasion.
Luckily enough (partly due to our lunchtime arrival), there was one available - and not just any old 4-seater bike, but a brand new one that had only arrived that morning: we were the very first customers to have a go in or on it.
Once the bike had been given the once-over and its tyres had been were inflated we were off up onto the walls for a lap in the 'riscio'.
While the kids 'debated' who was the better driver, Mum and I kept our feet off the pedals in the rear seats and kept an eye on traffic while trying to enjoy the view at the rickshaw's sedentary pace, courtesy of its go-anywhere gearing.
Having completed a lap of the city's walls in under half an hour, we decided to drop into the city itself for the last half hour and amazingly managed not to scratch the bike's shiny new paintwork while negotiating the tight one-way systems!
After an hour's rickshawing there was nothing else for it but a refreshing drink the Piazza Anfiteatro - a beautiful spot, but one that costs for the privilege: €15 for a pint of beer, a coffee and two cokes! Certainly not Pescia prices!!
The exertion of the rickshaw and the heat of the day then saw us heading for the car and home to collect Helen and Reggie for a walk along the river in Pescia which we followed with a quick drink in (you guessed it) Bar Pulter. While there, the kids also snuck in a slice of pizza each as something of an appetizer before we headed home for dinner and an early night.
It was back to another sedentary day the following day, with little more planned for our guests and me than lunch at the Toti restaurant near Montecarlo. We'd tried to go for lunch at this restaurant last week knowing that the owner was back from his holiday in Sicily, but it appears he uses the week following his holiday to do a bit of work around the place so it wasn't until this week that he re-opened.
The place is an old vineyard wine cellar in full romantic dilapidated state - on the outside at least. I don't know why places like this look so much more beautiful and romantic when they are a little on the tired side than when brand spanking new in this context - is that just a foreigner's view? We can't resist the romantic charm of an old place slowly falling apart, although I suspect the Italians have a slightly different view of matters.
Anyway, the place inside is no wreck, it's a lovely cool place for a mid-summer meal complete with brick vaulted ceiling and old wine barrels that give off a slight odour of years of wine making.
Today being Thursday the only menu was the workers lunch, as is common around here: basically a fixed price two-course lunch with drinks for €10 per person, so we dined on plates of pasta, main courses of meat and side dishes, washed down with water, wine and coffee, what a bargain! The kids had room for a pudding at an extra €3 which was described as a 'vanilla tile with chocolate'.
With bellies full of food, we wobbled out to the car to head home to collect Helen and walk Reggie, has been this week's routine, of sorts.
The evening saw the kids making their own pizzas with salami and mozzarella while the grown ups had a potato salad to try and balance out the lunch (at least mine and Mom's) to some degree.
Third time lucky, and Mum and Kerys finally made it into Giannino's on Friday morning for a look around the sale rails while Ben and I went to a couple of agricultural merchants for some metal fence posts and a new pair of safety boots before parking up in the piazza and sitting down for a drink (you guessed it, at Bar Pulter) while we waited for the girls to come back. They were obviously having a good time as they were longer than the agreed hour of shopping time!
The weekend started for all of us after a late lunch at home and after I been back to the doctor with my latest round of blood test results. The doctor has declared that I need to increase my thyroid medication dosage. This actually came as something of a relief, as when I had collected and read the print-out of the results the day before (here in Italy it is the patient who is responsible for looking after all test results and medical notes), they all seemed fine to me - or at least each test result fell within what I know are the target ranges. However, the doctor took one look at the results and said that, while they were within the limits, they were not high enough - so fingers crossed, increasing my medication will be an easy fix to this latest round of debilitating tiredness which couldn't have come at much of a worse time, slap bang in the middle of the kids' summer holiday.
After lunch, the kids wanted to help with some chores ("fun" ones, that is), so we set them to work painting the water storage tanks we acquired some months back - the idea of painting them black is to reduce the amount of light that can get into the tanks and thus reduce the build up of algae in the stored water.
This involved removing two retaining bar from each cage so that the plastic tanks could be removed and painted. After helping with the first, I left Kerys and Ben to their own devices with tools and cans of spray paint while I tried to figure out a permanent home for the tanks and Helen, who had finally packed up her office for the week - went off up the driveway with the strimmer on her back.
With the 9 cans of spray paint exhausted (on just 3 tanks), the kids both set to work on building some more bug hotels. They beavered away, as did Mom cleaning in the apartment, and so did Helen with the strimmer - leaving me in something of a site manager type role. I couldn't quite find time to get into anything myself so stood by and helped when needed with the re-fitting of strimmer cord and helping screw together the bug hotels, etc.
By the time 7.30pm approached, we had three almost finished bug hotels, Ben having made one complete one earlier in the week. It was then time to see about getting some dinners, so we cleaned up and showered and got into the car on a mission to find our friend Mimmo and his legendary burgers and sausage sandwiches as a weekend treat.
We had something of a tough time finding Mimmo (Ben suggested this would make a good name for an animated movie about a fish...) as he has recently relocated from his old spot outside the train station in Pescia to a new spot somewhat further afield in Chiesina Uzzanese.
Luckily, Mimmo's wife Michelle had given us the heads up as to where exactly his new pitch was, although even armed with that information we very nearly didn't find him! After two attempts of driving through Chiesina Uzzanese and out the other side without sight of him, we were on the verge of throwing in the towel and going for pizza instead, but we regrouped and made one final attempt with the help of my phone's sat nav app, finally finding Mimmo and his van fully illuminated with a spread of table and chairs around his truck and candles on the tables.
After ordering our burgers and sausage sandwiches we sat down with drinks and waited for food to arrive, which it soon did along with a plate of hot chips as a gift from Mimmo - chips that we had to fight for before Ben hoovered the lot up with his voracious teenage appetite.
We were soon tucking into burgers and sausage sandwiches which were as tasty as ever, with every one of us saying how glad we were that we didn't give up trying to find him, and Mom declaring it was the best burger she had ever eaten.
As we headed back into Pescia we made a last-minute decision to stop for ice cream beside the river to soak up some late evening atmosphere before finally wending our way home for a quick glass of wine before bed just before the witching hour - as late a night as I've had for many days with my thyroid.
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| I forgot to mention that Mom and Kerys spent hours slaving over a hot pan to make us some pear and plum chutney from the Phillips' fruits! |
So, the weekend has finally arrived, meaning Helen can join in with the fun rather than having to slave away in the office - and although she has managed to dodge some serious calories this week, I know that she would have been much happier joining in with our trips out!
Brilliant time had by all. ...
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