Highs and lows

The week just gone has been one filled with heartache: after 4 days at the veterinary clinic in Monsummano Terme, we lost our gorgeous little Lucca, aka Little Bear. He was taken from us way too soon and will leave an enormous hole in our lives.

Sleep tight our gorgeous, funny Little Bear. 

So, after a week that left us feeling wrung out and devastated, we were looking forward to a peaceful, quiet weekend in the winter sunshine, turning our attentions back to outside work. More fool us for having set our sights on a relaxing weekend - you'd have thought that after living here for a year and a half now we'd have learned that life is never quite that simple!

Saturday - ending on a high

I got up on Saturday morning, went to brush my teeth, turned the tap... and nothing came out. 'Here we go again,' I thought. We'd noticed over the previous couple of days that the water pressure seemed to be low, and now it seemed it had dropped right off altogether. Sure enough, the toilet cistern didn't fill, nothing came out the kitchen tap and only a very slow dribble came out of the taps in the apartment - most likely due to the pipes emptying rather than there being any flow of water from the main pipe. The previous evening the pressure in the pipes had dropped significantly, so it didn't come as a great surprise, although the lack of surprise really didn't help soften the blow.

Not wanting to get hot and sweaty without the prospect of a shower at the end of it, I shelved my morning's exercise and instead waited for Stuart to get up so that we could head out with Reggie. Of course we stopped at our local coffee bar Nerone for a cappuccino and a breakfast pastry each before heading further on to the river to the 'chicken run' walk. It was noticeably colder this morning than it has been in several weeks, and we bundled ourselves up against the cold to walk along the river bank.

Walk done, it was back to the house to scratch our heads over the lack of water. The last time this happened (just a couple of weeks ago), Stuart had been on the brink of fitting pressure gauges in the water pipe when the service resumed, so he hadn't ended up fitting them. This was now the perfect time to get those gauges in though, so while Stuart drove off down the hill to fit one of them at the water meter, I went to check on the chickens, fill up their food and water bowls, clean their 'poop deck' beneath their roost and collect the day's eggs.

By lunchtime, Stuart had pressure gauges fitted both at the meter and at the house, so we headed indoors to fuel ourselves and to crunch some numbers so that we could work out what was going on with the water pressure.

Down at the water meter, we had a reading of 4.7 bar; at the house, which is 44m higher than the meter (measured by GPS), the reading was just 0.25 bar. After some number crunching, we concluded that, in order to get 1 bar at the house, we would need 5.3 bar at the meter - so we were clearly low on pressure at the meter. Since there didn't seem to be anything we could do ourselves to rectify the problem, we did our best to turn our attention to other projects.

Low pressure at the meter.

Low pressure at the house.

Frustratingly, without the relative safety net of a shower at the end of the day, several jobs were ruled out. We were due to go for dinner with some new Italian friends in the evening (a somewhat daunting prospect), and didn't want to turn up looking and smelling like complete riffs, so both heavy manual labour (sweaty work) and bonfires (smoky work) were off the cards. While Stuart played around with the water pipes some more - taking the opportunity to re-route one of them, moving it from across the guest path/extension area to neatly along the side of the house, I went down to the vegetable beds and spent a couple of hours making a start on some much needed weeding.

As soon as the sun dipped behind the ridge opposite us, the temperature plummeted, so I headed inside to light the fire, while Stuart finished up arranging pipes until the plumber arrived with a delivery for us. Sadly this wasn't a plumber coming to fix our water supply (it doesn't really work like that here anyway), but the plumber who is going to make a start in a week or so's time on installing our new hot water system. The plumber had come to deliver the bulky shiny new hot water tank, which will live in one section of the shed along the side of the house, and which will hold enough hot water to feed the whole house. Exciting stuff - although, to be honest, even stone cold water coming out of the taps would be more exciting at this point in time...

By the time the delivery had been made (and Reggie had done his best to bark himself hoarse), we were heading towards needing to get ready for our night out and desperately wishing we could jump into a hot shower to prepare ourselves for the evening. Who needs fairy godmothers when you have great friends who can answer your wishes? As we sat contemplating the evening ahead, a message came through from David and Sarah who, aware of our plight, were offering the use of their facilities. No sooner had we accepted their generous offer than we were hopping in the car with our towels and wash bags and heading uphill towards Vellano.

We availed ourselves of the luxurious facilities at David and Sarah's house - a warm room, running water and a hot shower seemed like the height of luxury to us - and once clean and changed, we spent a lovely half hour or so chatting with our friends and sipping wine. Come 7.40pm, though, we could put things off no longer and, feeling apprehensive (or that might just have been me), we left David and Sarah's and headed off into the night to face the music: an evening surrounded by 8 Italians, only two of whom we barely knew! We had been thrilled to have received the invite, and we knew that it could only be a good thing, but the prospect of potentially having an entire evening speaking Italian was daunting to say the least (even though we knew that Mara speaks very good English).

We first met Mara and Franco, our hosts for the evening, in June 2014, at the bongo evening we went to at the pizzeria/bar in Goraiolo with Michelle and Richard. Since then we have bumped into both Franco (who, it turns out is the nephew of Antonio, the guy who we bought our chainsaw and hedge trimmers from) and Mara on a couple of other occasions, but never really had more than a brief chat with them. We found out several months ago that they had bought and moved into a house on the hill opposite us, above Pietrabuona, and on one of the occasions we'd bumped into her, Mara had promised to invite us over. We knew that we were not their only guests this evening, and had no idea who the other guests would be and how the language situation would pan out!

Although Mara and Franco live almost directly above Frateschi's builders yard in Pietrabuona, reaching their house by car involves taking the road towards Medicina before peeling off along a long track for almost a kilometre. Mara had instructed us to stop short of their house and park the car at a spot from where she would come and pick us up - and as we bounced down the steep, uneven track in her little Fiat Panda, we began to understand why!

On arriving at the house and stepping through the front door we were confronted with 7 broadly smiling faces (plus Mara, who had come in with us). I knew I'd never remember all of their names as I went around shaking all of their hands, but without exception every one of them gave us a warm, friendly welcome and seemed genuinely pleased to meet us. It turned out that both Mara and one of her friends speak exceptionally good English, which was a relief, but the rest of the party were more or less Italian-speaking only (with a bit of French thrown in, which I think was meant to be helpful when I told one of the non-English speakers that I knew some French, and he did too, but it had my head spinning in confusion - although I was pleased to find that my natural reaction appeared to be to respond to the French dialogue in Italian - that has to be some form of progress, right?!). Despite the language barrier, they were all very kind and patient and very keen to speak to us. We were pleased to find that we understood the majority of the conversation and with our shaky Italian, helped along every now and then by the English speakers in the party, we all got along famously. We had a truly wonderful evening - I felt as if I'd spent the entire night smiling and laughing. Not only was the company lovely, but we also found out that Mara and Franco are very much on the same wavelength as us. They moved into their old Tuscan farmhouse last May, they already keep bees and produce their own honey, and are working towards getting chickens, planting an orto (vegetable garden) using permaculture methods, clearing their overgrown land and basically living a simple, natural, self sustainable life.

I felt as if I'd never eaten as much in my entire life (although if truth be told it was more likely that I hadn't eaten as much since Friday morning when our chef friend Dave had cooked us brunch). We were treated to a delicious pasta dish with squash, followed by an evening of necci - chestnut pancakes. Franco busied himself with making the necci in the kitchen, which we ate with cold cured meats, with hot sausage, with ricotta cheese, and of course with Nutella. Just when I felt like popping, Franco came out of the kitchen for round two of the necci - the evening's main cultural event.

This time Franco tried making the necci in the traditional way: using flat stones that have been super-heated in the fire. Once the stones have been heated, they are piled up ready for action. The first is laid at the bottom of a metal frame, then damp chestnut leaves are placed on the stone, followed by a ladle of the pancake batter (literally just chestnut flour and water), followed by more damp chestnut leaves, followed by the next hot stone. The layers continue until all the batter/all the stones have been used up. The smell of the wet chestnut leaves heating up between the stones was incredible.

Franco layers batter onto chestnut leaves.

When enough time was judged to have passed, Franco began unloading the stones and we all held our breath as the first chestnut leaf sandwich was peeled open to unveil a perfectly cooked, beautiful pancake complete with pretty leaf imprint. Granted the texture of these was a little firmer than those cooked by the modern method, but we really liked the crispy bits and the flavour of these was noticeably more chestnutty than the modern ones. Everyone agreed that Franco's traditional-style necci were a great success!

After this, there was yet more for our ever expanding waistlines - coffee with panettone, crema, pineapple slices and grappa to follow! It was a delicious meal, but for us the real thrill of the evening was encountering the warmth, friendliness and generosity of such a lovely group of people and the prospect of two of them becoming real friends.

By the time Franco ferried us back up the rocky track to our car, it was gone 1am, the stars were bright and frost was glittering on the car. We hurried home to our cold house, gave Reggie a quick cuddle on the sofa before heading to bed - it had been the perfect end to what had started out as a largely stressful and frustrating day.

Sunday - from low to zero

After our late night, we had a lie-in until gone 9am this morning. Both tiredness and the chilly temperature of the room prevented us from venturing out of bed any earlier. Of course, the water hadn't magically reappeared overnight, so we braced ourselves for another day of drought and chasing around after a problem we hadn't foreseen.

First things first, we thought we'd wrap up warm and take Reggie out for a walk - it was the first hard frost we'd had since November and even by mid-morning the air was still bitterly cold. As we headed down the hill, I suggested we stop by the water meter to check the reading just to see if there had been any change in pressure overnight. So, while Stuart waited in the car, I hurried up the bank to our meter - to find the gauge reading zero, zilch, niente. This was considerably worse than the situation had been yesterday and our half-hatched plan to botch things by buying a pump to help get water up to the house went straight out of the window as there was clearly no water in the system to pump!

A chilly zero pressure.

Frost.

We carried on to the village for our regular pre-walk stop at Nerone's for coffee and a croissant before continuing into Pescia, where we walked along the river in the opposite direction from normal.

Next, we tackled the supermarket - we'd not managed to fit this particular chore in yesterday, but thankfully we managed to get in and out without too much hassle. Finally it was our regular Sunday stop at Amanda's to see Amanda, Samantha and their parents, to buy our lunch and of course to collect my homework from Samantha. After a good chat with them all, we headed home to heat our lunch of pork escalopes in mushroom sauce, breaded chicken in tomato sauce, a delicious mix of vegetables in garlic and of course some roast potatoes,

Once lunch was out of the way, it was time to try and work out what to do with the rest of the afternoon. Stuart attempted to phone Acque, the water company, to report the lack of water at our meter, but found that the '24-hour' free phone number ('free from a landline or a mobile') was indeed totally free - because it didn't work. Feeling frustrated, we went to find other things to occupy our time.

Before that, though, we heard a car draw up - it was Paul, who was passing on his way back from Pescia and had called in to say hello. We had a good chat and catch-up with Paul and learned that his wife, Kathy, will be coming out again soon, so we look forward to seeing them both before too long.

Finally, it was time to pick up our tools. With the temperature still decidedly on the chilly side (there was still frost in the shade), we chose to spend the afternoon working in the sunshine on the vegetable terraces, weeding, re-laying the ground cover fabric that had come loose in the wind, and starting the long process of preparing the beds for planting.

Once again, the temperature plummeted the minute the sun started to dip below the ridge of the hill opposite, so we came indoors to light a fire and warm up. Not long after we'd lit the fire, Donatella arrived - having heard about our water problems, she'd offered to help with contacting the water company. That was another offer we certainly weren't going to turn down. However, Donatella too found that the free-phone 24-hour number didn't work - so she helped us file an online report of the problem which we hope someone will find, look at and respond to!

So, we have now been without water for nearly 36 hours - the longest spell we've ever had with this particular problem. There are reasons to be thankful - it's a good job it's not roasting hot, it's a good job we don't have vegetables in the ground to water, it's a good job we don't have guests staying with us at the moment, and we are forever grateful to our generous friends - both those who have helped us out and those who have offered. Nevertheless, this particular 'challenge' is beginning to lose its novelty, so we wait to see what this week brings!