Reggie benefited from this in that, when I left the house to try and calm myself down, I took him with me, figuring I could walk him and give myself time to calm down at the same time. This meant that by the time I got home, I was in a good enough frame of mind to be philosophical about the recent loss and start on version two before carrying on with the rest of my day.
Tuesday was the day Helen was due home after her flying visit to England - but before she got home I had a few things to do!
Having got to bed early, I got up early and was out walking Reggie by 10.30am, having already put the first coat of plaster on the blocked up doorway in the kitchen.
Feeling very pleased with myself for having already achieved so much, I decided I had time to pop in and say hello to the Philips household on my way home, and we spent an hour or so chatting over a couple of pots of coffee. It was great to catch up with Chris and Sue - it felt like it had been months since I was last there (and quite probably was!).
Once home and after eating a quick lunch I made an effort to tidy up and do a few chores before hopping in the car to head to Pisa airport.
As I exited the autostrada I saw the familiar orange-and-white of an Easyjet plane coming in to land - 20 minutes ahead of schedule - which meant that Helen was through passport control and we were leaving even before we exceeded the free ten minutes of parking outside the terminal.
I was as happy to have her home in our little piece of Italy as she was to be home after a day of travelling by train, plane and automobile, and even Reggie made a really good show of being excited when he realised upon our return that I wasn't alone.
On Wednesday morning it was back to work for both of us, but not before heading into to Pescia to the bank to arrange a transfer to pay for the solar panel that had been delivered last week. Of course we also stopped for a quick a coffee before heading home, although not at our favourite haunt Franco's, as they were closed - as were almost all of the businesses in town, since today was a bank holiday. Luckily for us, the bank itself seemed to have missed the memo on that.
While Helen switched on her PC for the first time in almost a week I put a second coat of render on the wall in the house, which took us up to lunchtime.
After lunch we headed up to Vellano for our group Italian lesson. For those paying attention and wondering why our lesson was in the afternoon this week, it was because we had been asked the previous evening by our teacher Johnny if we would mind switching the lesson to the afternoon for this week (only). We didn't know why he'd requested the change until he arrived for the lesson - it turned out that he'd spent the evening of yesterday's festival at a club near Pisa, not getting home to bed until 6am today! Oh to be young again.
The lesson took us up to around 4.30pm after which it was time to go home and for Helen to do another couple of hours' work. While she got stuck in, I headed straight out up the valley again, this time with Reggie in the car. We stopped in Vellano to collect David for a short walk at the quarry before the daylight disappeared. Reggie thoroughly enjoyed himself, as he had clearly given up all hope of a walk today - not only that, but the extra treat of having his second-favourite male person join us for the walk was almost too much excitement for him to bear.
On Thursday there was due to be a break in the weather, and David had offered me a couple of hours of his time - which of course I accepted. Dave and I therefore spent the morning erecting the poly-tunnel that we'd ordered months back and which had been in its box being moved around since then.
It was a cool but beautifully sunny morning, which made for an enjoyable couple of hours' work while we built the tunnel and put it in position. By the time the tunnel was in place, it was time to stop for a beer and lunch - Dave and I had the beer that is, and then Helen and I had lunch before we tidied the house ready for Samantha.
After having my homework marked by Samantha, I ducked out of the lesson to get back to the poly tunnel, hoping to bolt it down before the winds of the last couple of days returned and blew the entire thing down the hill and into the river Pescia or beyond.
After a lot of walking up and down from the shed to the tunnel to find the right combination of drill bits and bolts I had the tunnel safely (I hope) anchored to four very heavy and dense concrete blocks.
After then plumbing in a standpipe and tap outside for watering whatever may be in the poly-tunnel in coming weeks, I headed up to the house to call it a day.
As I approached the door it opened and Reggie wobbled out - he didn't seem right at all, and I dropped to my knees to catch him as I could see he was about to lose his balance. He seemed unsure of what was going on and although he was standing, his back legs had gone completely and it was only because I was holding his hips that he didn't fall over, then his bladder gave out and he urinated where he stood - not good signs, and Helen wasted no time in asking Samantha to call the vet for us. Thankfully, Helen's lesson had just come to an end and ten minutes later we were Pescia-bound to go and see Alessandra, the nice vet we saw with Reggie a few weeks ago, to get him checked over. By this time he was much more himself, whatever crisis it had been having passed, and he put up the usual fight when we tried to get him to go into the vets.
Once in the consulting room, I had to sit on the floor in the corner of the room with him before Alessandra could get near enough to get a stethoscope on his chest to see what was going on.
She said that his heart was giving an odd third beat - nothing at this point to worry about, and she didn't think it was related to the earlier episode. In fact, she thought that the most likely explanation for the earlier episode was a mild epileptic fit (although he is quite young for this, epilepsy not usually showing up until around the age of 3), so we went away with instructions to watch him and if the same happened again to check the colour of his gums and his pupil response immediately to try and help identify the source of the problem.
Feeling somewhat drained, it only having been a few short weeks since we lost our poor little Lucca, we headed straight home for a glass of wine, bypassing the supermarket shopping which we had considered doing while in town.
Before we knew it, Friday was once again upon us and Reggie and I started the day with a walk as he had clearly been frustrated yesterday when we drove him all the way into town merely to be prodded and poked at the vet, and not even stopping at the river for a walk on the way back.
I decided to head for the "chicken run" stretch of the river and was surprised to see evidence of how high the river had been in recent days by means of a tide mark high up on the bank.
I'm pleased to announce that Reggie had his first swim this morning - he hadn't planned it though! He spotted a couple of Mallard ducks within reach of the bank and charged at them in full-on predator mode. Of course, as soon as they saw him coming they took to the air, but Reggie was determined and kept gunning for them - all of a sudden disappearing into the river up to his collar.
I stood speechless for a second, expecting the still raging water to take him off down stream. Thankfully those strong limbs of his carried him straight back to dry land with something of a surprised look on his face. By now I was almost wetting myself with laughter, which he chose to ignore as he came as close to me as he could to shake himself dry.
Once home and with the doggie dried off, I started work on the final and third coat of plaster on the wall in the kitchen. I'd been looking forward to putting the final coat on all week, and had Dave not offered to come down and help out yesterday I think I'd have been doing it yesterday despite the weather being dry. As it was, I'd made the best use of the dry weather with Dave, and was finishing the final coat as the rain started coming down outside.
When Helen had finally clocked off her office work for the week, we braved the supermarket shopping, after having avoided it yesterday. While it is amongst our least favourite chores, our cupboards, fridge, and most importantly wine rack were entirely empty, so if we wanted to eat, we needed to shop! Of course doing the shopping on Friday meant that we would have that particular chore out of the way for the weekend, which we felt good about.
After having done the shopping and put it all away, we lit the fire and settled down with a glass of wine at the end of another lightning-fast week.
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