Not for the faint hearted (or weak of stomach)

After the events that unfolded on Friday afternoon, this weekend was all about the clean-up operation in the apartment.

Saturday

After a fitful night's sleep, disturbed by thoughts of deceased chickens and rivers of sewerage, we were up almost before it was light. The plan was to get out as soon as possible, walk Reggie, buy as many cleaning products as we could find, as well as rods for drain clearing, then get back home to tackle the apartment.

Of course, we couldn't head straight out as we still didn't have the car - Enrico had dropped it off at Amanda's on his way home at 8pm last night after having fixed the brake pump, but we'd decided on balance that we would rather leave it there and settle down by the fire for a relaxing evening - after all, Stuart had already done the walk up the hill twice!

Since Amanda doesn't open her shop until 8.30am, we waited until 8.10am before setting off. While we were waiting, Stuart went outside to check on the chickens and make sure none of the others were showing any signs of distress or illness. Shortly after he left the house, I heard Reggie kicking off very loudly, followed by Stuart coming back into the house saying 'did you hear it?!'. Other than Reggie kicking off, I hadn't heard anything, but I soon guessed that what had caused Reggie to react was that our cockerel (who we have named Cristoforo Colombo, or Colombo for short) had found his voice for the first time, and was practising his cock-a-doodle-doo!

Colombo finds his voice!

After last night's upsetting discovery, this put a smile on both our faces - and we were relieved to find that Colombo has a quite respectable-sounding cock-a-doodle-doo (some of the ones we've heard when out and about sound utterly ridiculous, so there was always a worry Colombo would embarrass us with his crowing).

When it got to 8.10am, we headed out, taking Reggie with us, which meant that he'd already had a 20-minute roadside walk before we even reached the car. After popping into Amanda's shop to collect the keys and have a quick chat with her, Samantha and their Mum, we headed off into Pescia - making a quick stop at Nerone's for cappuccino and a breakfast pastry, of course.

Saturday is market day and although it was still before 9am, we could see as we crossed over the bridge that the car park alongside the river was already full. Rather than take our chances with finding a free spot, we headed instead to the 'chicken run' walk and let Reggie run along the river bank and splash through the water. Since he'd already had a 20-minute walk along the road, we cut this one short before we reached the 'chicken house' so were able to do the whole thing without having to leash him, and by the time we got back to the car he seemed suitably wet and tired.

Next we headed in the direction of Montecatini. Our first stop was Maury's - a shop that sells all manner of household goods including cleaning products. I had plans to buy up their entire stock of disinfectant. We left the shop having bought a modest three bottles of disinfecting floor cleaner, two packets of jay cloths, two packets of washing up sponges, two packs of 2 pairs of rubber gloves, some squeegy mops, some firelighters and some cat food (the latter two purchases just in case we didn't get around to getting to the supermarket today).

The next stop was Obi for a drain clearing rod, a couple of mops and a tin of wood stain (for the shed). I scoured the shelves for hazmat suits, or even boiler suits, but they didn't have any such protective items - it seems that Obi will help you protect your eyes (goggles), your ears (ear defenders), your head (hard hats) and your nose (face masks), but nothing below the neck!

As we left the Obi car park Stuart asked if I'd like another coffee - whether it was that we both felt we needed all the help we could get with the day, in the form of another caffeine injection, or whether it was procrastination and putting off the inevitable for as long as possible I don't know, but we were soon pulling into the 'Delice' café, which we sometimes frequent at the end of our 'chicken run' walks.

Coffee dispatched, I remembered we needed to make one more stop - at the stationery shop to see if they had any suitable packaging materials for sending parcels to the UK. The shop was buzzing with people and was a veritable Aladdin's cave of stationery-type items - at least the best range of this type of fare that I have seen around here (it's all relative!).

Finally, it was time to take the ever patient Reggie back home. By the time we got home it was just gone 11.30, so we decided we would have an early lunch before tackling the mammoth task at hand. A couple of egg mayo sandwiches later, we could put it off no longer. I changed into an old pair of Stuart's work trousers (which, with several holes in them, were heading for the bin in any case), and we both donned our wellie boots.

The first task was to try and locate and clear the blockage in the pipe, of course - there was no point in cleaning up without sorting the problem out first. So, while Stuart fiddled with pipes and rods, I busied myself with taking the wrapping off the new mops, preparing some bowls of disinfectant for our feet when we left, and trying to work out how on earth to start the clean-up task.

Eventually, I could put it off no more and I headed into the apartment. It looked like a scene from a horror movie. Anyone remember the toilet scene in Trainspotting? Well, it really wasn't far off... maybe a little worse. (Just to reiterate to Paul & Marie and any other future guests: rest assured that by the time we have finished up in the apartment, it will have been cleaned to within an inch of its life and in all likelihood will be cleaner than it has EVER been before.)

It wasn't long before Stuart joined me, having managed to find and clear the blockage in the drain. His opening line was 'What can I do'? My response: 'Wake me up and tell me this is all just a hideous dream!!' Sadly it turned out to be real, so the next two hours were spent mopping, re-mopping, re-re-mopping and re-re-re-mopping.

You will be thankful to know that we didn't take any photographs of today's activities.

When we were finally happy with the state of things for stage 1 of the cleaning process, we closed up the apartment with the plan to return again tomorrow for yet more cleaning (as I said, it will be cleaned to within an inch of its life!) and turned our attention back to the pipes outside.

Stuart decided it would be best to dig the whole of the pipe out so that he can fit some inspection points in it - so that, should a similar situation arise in the future (hopefully not! and at least hopefully it wouldn't go unnoticed for so long!), it will be a lot easier to get rods down the drains to clear them. So while Stuart dug with a spade, I trowelled out the loose earth to uncover the pipes. It was while we were doing this that Stuart suddenly let out an exasperated, disbelieving sort of a noise (it might even have been a swear word...) - the piece of drain he had uncovered had an enormous hole in it which had clearly been there for a long while. How do we know this? Because it had been "fixed" by our predecessors. How? By laying a piece of rubber car mat on top of it. Yes, that just about sums up the quality of much of the work done by our predecessors here!

Looking on the bright side of things (when you are knee deep in drains and their contents [it wasn't really knee deep] it's a struggle to find a bright side, but you have to look for one!), by the time we have finished with this particular episode, we (Stuart) will have replaced broken pipes and fitted inspection points and we will have a much better, more robust system of drainage pipes between the house and the septic tank. What's more, we have realised that, if this was going to happen at all, it's a good thing we found it now, and not on Thursday (which is when we had originally planned day to go in and clean the apartment before the arrival of our Christmas guests the following day), it's a good thing this happened this year and not last year (all things considered, I think we would have struggled to cope with such a drama this time last year), and it's a good thing this happened in the winter and not in the height of summer!

We finally decided to call it a day with the drains when it became clear that the next job will be to rip up the old and install new - not a job to be doing late on a Saturday afternoon when builders' merchants and anywhere likely to sell the required parts are closed until Monday (been there, done that - remember the soil stack?!).

So, after thoroughly washing hands and boots, we headed indoors - Stuart tidied up a bit while I headed for a long, hot shower, then he headed back outside to fit the new bolts to the shed doors while he waited for Angelo and his plumber friend to come and talk through the quotes we have been given for our new solar/wood fuelled hot water system.

Once the guys had been and talked through the quotes, Stuart finally headed for a much needed shower before lighting the oven to roast some chestnuts and pouring a well deserved glass of wine.

Sunday 

It was a slightly slower start to the day this morning, although I still woke at 7.30am. When I looked out the window, I discovered that someone had stolen our view! A thick curtain of fog had descended on our hill and everything more than a few metres away had disappeared from sight.

It was going to be another busy and chore-filled day, so I got up to let the cats out and give Reggie his breakfast and was joined a little while later by Stuart. After breakfast, we put our coats on and headed out for Reggie's morning walk. We headed to the cava track and as we drove up the road we were surprised to emerge from the mists and find Vellano sitting in the clear while the clouds rolled around the hills and the valley beneath. The views were quite magical and from Vellano we could see across the valley to the little village of Aramo, another island in the mist.

We continued on to the quarry walked along the track, staying mainly out of the clouds but without any hope of a view of the valley today.

After our walk, we brought Reggie back to the house and picked up our shopping list before heading out to Pescia to do the supermarket shop. This must easily have been the single most expensive supermarket shop we have done since arriving here - dog food, cat food and cleaning products (yes more) seem to be the items that push the bill up, although we also stocked up on wine for next week and while the price of decent wine is a fraction of the price we were used to paying in the UK, the cost mounts up when you are buying it in bulk (what can I say: Sheila, Paul and Marie are arriving on Friday, we need to stock up!).

On our way home from the supermarket we made our regular Sunday morning stop at Amanda's shop to collect my homework from Samantha and to buy our lunch. Today we opted for portions of pork scaloppine in mushroom sauce, polpetini (pork meatballs) and involtini (rolls of pork stuffed with ham and cheese) - and of course, roast potatoes. Since the roast potatoes weren't quite ready, we stayed in the shop and chatted with Amanda, Samantha and their parents for a while until the potatoes were declared sufficiently abbronzato (bronzed) to come out of the oven.

We headed home with our goodies and popped them straight in the oven to heat up so that we could have another early-ish lunch before getting on with the dreaded task of continuing the clean-up in the apartment.

For some reason, despite knowing that the very worst of the clean-up operation was behind us, the thought of having to go back to the scene again filled us both with dread. I wished we had pushed on yesterday and finished the whole lot, but I knew that the way we'd decided to do it was more sensible. We therefore donned work clothes again and picked up our mops for yet more rounds of mopping. We came to the realisation today that some of the items of furniture from the apartment are, shall we say politely, "flood damaged" and will have to be replaced (this is a job for this week Paul & Marie, don't worry!), and in the end we realised it would all be a lot easier if we emptied the entire lot - both damaged and undamaged - out of the apartment to allow us more freedom of movement for the cleaning process. That is why there is now a pile of assorted furniture sitting on the guest patio underneath a tarpaulin, hoping that the rain eases up and that there are no strong winds to blow the protective tarpaulin off!

With the worst of the clean-up done yesterday, it was an altogether quicker cleaning session today (well, it was once we'd lugged all of the furniture outside), so we left floors drying and locked up with the plan to return in the morning for another check and once-over.

We retired to our house upstairs to light the fire, shower, change into comfy clothes and browse the IKEA website in search of replacement pieces of furniture - that will be a trip for early this week!

So, the weekend draws to a close - not a very restful or relaxing one, but we've made the most of the evenings with wine, Christmas music, a roaring fire and doing our very best to erase the memory of the disaster zone that we were dealing with downstairs. These things are indeed sent to try us!