Blink and it's gone

When Friday morning came around it felt as if this week, even more than all others recently, had vanished in the blink of an eye - and with it the frosty mornings as the temperatures had risen a few degrees as the wet weather moved in mid-week.

Monday

Monday morning was a slight departure from the norm in that we had to head into town to pay the first of the plumber's bills to cover the cost of the 300 litre boiler tank that is now sitting in our shed.

We managed to find a spot to park in the square - not always so easy on a Monday morning, but today was OK fortunately as we had Reggie in the boot ready for his walk.

After negotiating the usual glass cylinder air lock and finger print recognition entrance to the bank we soon seen by Gianguido, the nice smiley chap with a good English vocabulary, which was something of a relief as we needed to pay this bill in a particular way.

As the new water heating system is partly solar-powered, meaning that we are significantly improving the energy efficiency of the house, the Italian government will allow us to deduct the entire cost of the work from Helen's income tax over the next ten years. However, in order to qualify for the deduction we need to make all the payments via a particular kind of bank transfer - unfortunately we didn't realise this when we had all the windows and doors replaced (which would also have qualified for tax deduction), so we wanted to make sure we did everything properly this time. So, armed with a few choice words on a scrap of paper, we told Gianguido that we wanted to pay the amount Anton the plumber had scribbled down for us on another scrap of paper to the account number he had also scribbled.

It was soon clear that, without an actual invoice displaying Helen's tax code, we wouldn't be able to pay in the correct way to get the right paperwork for the tax deduction, so we left the bank having failed. Not wanting to feel as if the journey had been entirely wasted, we trudged across the square for a coffee in Franco's - in our opinion the best coffee in town.

After ordering coffee we went to sit down and realised that we we'd sat down at a table right next to Carolyn from San Quirico and her husband Gerry, who we had not yet met. We had a good chat and catch-up with Carolyn and Gerry over coffee for half an hour or so before finally leaving to go and walk Reggie.

Having lost a large part of the morning, we settled for a little walk along the river in town so that we could get back home to get some work done.

By the time we got home it was approaching midday, so we decided to have an early lunch before getting stuck into anything meaningful, and seeing how well our winter wood reserves seem to be lasting us, we decided to light the fire so that we could eat in the warmth - real luxury.

After lunch Helen settled in her office while I went outside to work on the tractor park. Having concreted the final four posts in on Sunday, I was ready to start constructing the roof, so I spent a while with lengths of chestnut and an 18v impact driver creating something that reminded me a little of the kind of wood structures that early US settlers would have made, albeit on a much grander scale and without the help of an 18v lithium powered screw driver.

After finally deciding on how best proceed to proceed, I soon had the structure built ready for the new banner material roof to go on but decided to leave that until the morning, instead turning my attentions to some new steps at the rear of the house, in the process making somewhere to unload the gravel sitting in the back of the tractor.

It wasn't long before it was dark, but I felt I'd made an encouraging start and was quite pleased with my day's efforts. The 'curb appeal' of the approach to the house is starting to shape up - there is still a huge way to go, but we can now see tangible improvements.

Tuesday

On Tuesday morning it was straight out to work as wet weather was due to arrive in the afternoon. I really wanted to get the tractor under cover before the rain started and the wet spell that was forecast was due to stick around for a few days, so time was of the essence.

A 6m by 3m roof of heavy banner material (the sort they use for the curtain sides of trucks) is deceptively heavy, so I was glad I'd decided to put four beams across the roof from front to back for strength, as this gave me something to drape the banner over as I spread it from one end to the other and I soon had it roughly in the right place.

The next job was to thread some 8mm elastic cord through the reinforced eyelets around the edge so that I could lash the banner to the frame beneath. The elasticity will, I hope, provide some form of gale force wind suspension, but time will tell on that front - when it does decide to get up, the wind can be viscous, so we cross our fingers that this machinery shelter won't need rebuilding in the near future.

By late morning I had the roof on and the tractor safely in the dry. Feeling very pleased with myself, I turned my attention back to the steps I had started yesterday until lunchtime, shortly after which Samantha arrived. In a break from the norm, Helen's lesson started with my homework being checked by Samantha. Yes, you heard right, I had homework too this week. Fortunately it was much easier than Helen's, although I still found it hard as it was only the second time I'd done anything on the passato prossimo (recent past) - it sometime feels as if I will never get the hang of this language.

Shortly after having my homework corrected and leaving Helen and Samantha to their lesson, Anton the plumber arrived with an invoice for us so that we could go back to the bank and have another attempt at making the payment. He was soon on his was way, as was Samantha leaving us to finish up our day with a little more office work for Helen and more work on the steps for me.

Wednesday

Wednesday started, as usual, in Vellano with our group Italian lesson. Although things went very slowly, we all felt as if some pennies (or should i say cents) were starting to drop as things slowly clicked into place.

After getting home we once again had an early lunch so that I could head off to the doctors surgery so that I could request a routine thyroid test and get a repeat prescription.

On arriving at the doctors I found an empty waiting room and a note in the window saying that the surgery wouldn't be until 3.30pm today - an hour later than normal. As my usual tactic is to arrive an hour before the doctor so that I can be first or second in the queue, I went back home to kill an hour before returning at 2.30pm, only to find another five people in front of me! Clearly this random change in surgery hours had thrown a spanner in the works and the waiting room soon filled with people, followed by the doctor at half past three, as promised on the note.

It was another 35-40 minutes before I got my turn, and I was in and out in five minutes getting another gold star for my blood pressure reading and heading home to do a little work.

Thursday

Thursday morning was a repeat of Monday, with us heading into town to the bank - except this time, armed with an invoice, we were able to pay the bill without incident. We left the bank feeling relieved as this payment had been floating around unpaid for nearly two weeks, and we were unlikely to see much movement on the plumbing project until we'd paid for the materials we'd already taken possession of. We then did a little more shopping in the square - nothing exciting though, unless you consider finding the best (in my opinion) bread in town in a panificio that we had not yet frequented. Their standard kilo of salted bread was amazing - the closest thing I've yet found to rustic English white bread with a very chewy and tasty crust. I'll definitely be a regular here now when time allows.

After a dog walk along the river we again headed home for lunch before starting work for the day.

This afternoon I'd decided I should plaster the shed-side of the now blocked up kitchen doorway before the plumber arrived wanting to fix pipes and solar 'kit' to it. I mixed up a bag of premixed render and trowelled on the scratch coat ready to put the top coat on Friday morning - this would be another of my 5 'urgent' jobs ticked off in one week, the first being to get the tractor under cover and the others being to repair the leaking roof window, get the inherited 3000 litre water tank cleaned out, placed up on the terraces and plumbed into the system so that we always have a reserve of 3000 litres of water to cover any outages in future, and to finish putting the inspection caps onto the waste pipes (a job that stalled the other week after finding one of the pipe runs stuck under a three-inch silver fir root, meaning I couldn't move or disconnect it to fit the aforementioned inspection caps).

Friday

My first job on Friday was to top-coat the blocked up doorway with render, and after a quick run into town for my thyroid blood test, that was exactly what I turned my attention to. Sue arrived for coffee around 9:35, so I joined her and Helen for a chat for half an hour before leaving them to catch up properly while I turned my attention to my plastering.

As lunch arrived and Sue left for home I had all but finished the plastering - it was on the wall and half rubbed up to a finish I just needed to wait for the bottom half to dry enough to finish the job so went indoors for lunch as it did its thing.

After lunch I pottered around in the driveway while Helen retreated into the office to knock out a few hours work in the hope that she could come and do some wood splitting in the afternoon when Dave and Sarah were coming over to give us a helping hand, knowing how much I'd been struggling with anti-depressant withdrawals earlier in the week.

I got the chainsaw out so that I could busy myself with logging some more of the acacia lying on the driveway ready for Helen to split later. Two tanks of fuel later we had a rather beautiful pile of logs waiting for an introduction to Mr Axe later on.

It wasn't long before Helen joined me with safety gear and said Mr. Axe, and set to work on the logs while I went back to finish the plastering work.

At around 3pm Dave and Sarah arrived in work clothing (thankfully, as within minutes Sarah was covered in muddy dog footprints courtesy of Reggie's enthusiastic greeting) and after a quick coffee we all went to work on the driveway. Sarah opted to grab hold of our second splitting axe and join Helen in wood splitting, while I set Dave up with a bucket of mortar and a trowel and let him loose on building up the rear of the wall behind the rain water tanks, the wall being the last remnant of the old chestnut drying building that was attached to the main farmhouse until a few years ago.

I had re-pointed the face of this wall and built it up some months back, but as yet hadn't finished the building part of the job so that I can set some tiles on the top to keep the rain water out, so Dave turned his hand to this while I did a little more organising in the shed before turning my attentions once again to the new flight of steps - a non-urgent job really, but I'm finding myself hooked on improving the parking area and side of the house in time for the holiday season.

We all worked until dusk fell, the rain staying away... just, at which point the girls had split almost the entire pile of logs I had cut earlier - a mammoth effort - and Dave had finished building up the wall, which is now only a couple of dozen roof tiles away from being finished, inching us ever closer to a presentable driveway and parking area. I found an old picture of parts of the car parking area on my phone this week and was quite shocked by the difference we have now made.

With darkness coming in quickly, we all put tools away and headed indoors to light the fire and have a quick glass of wine. The quick glass of wine turned into another glass, which turned into a lovely impromptu evening talking about life, the universe and everything until around 10pm when David and Sarah headed home to Vellano. We were sorry we couldn't offer them dinner in return for their efforts this afternoon, but as tomorrow is shopping day the cupboards were bare, we owe you one guys!!