Well, hello spring!

The week started with a day of terrible weather - lashing rain and squally winds gusting to 65kmph. A good day to spend sitting tight in the office or else working on the plastering in the apartment. At least it would have been that way had the septic-tank-pumping company not actually sprung into action (which came as something of a surprise after Stuart had contacted them only a few days beforehand) and decided they would come and do their thing mid afternoon, just when the weather was at its worst. Poor Stuart had to dash out to greet them, show them where the relevant receptacles were, and hang around in the wind and rain while they ran about trying to get their pipes to reach the tank on the terrace beneath the house. Turns out that, while they had come prepared with their 'mini' tanker after Stuart had warned them that the driveway and the space for turning in were not suited to the normal sized tankers, what they hadn't bargained on was how far down the tank would be, and they weren't sure they had a hose long enough to reach from the tanker to the tank. When they eventually sorted things out, they realised that their pump wasn't working - so after about an hour of messing around in the lashing rain, they got back in the cab and left, needing to come back after their pump had been looked at and fixed!

It was hard to imagine on Monday that the weather would ever improve, but just as the forecast had promised, we woke up on Tuesday to clear blue skies and bright, bright sunshine - that's more like it! Stuart spent the morning working in Vellano with David then came home to do a few more pieces of tidying - painting and putting skirting boards on in the bedroom of the apartment. Meanwhile, after a morning's work at my computer I spent the afternoon cleaning and tidying the house and cooking in preparation for having guests to dinner. The septic tank guys also came back on Tuesday afternoon, this time with a fully functioning pump, and duly did the pumping, much to our relief.

Two weeks ago we'd had Samantha and Mario for dinner; this week it was the turn of Samantha's sister Amanda and her partner Alessio. After Samantha had described to Amanda the food we had cooked for her and Mario, and Amanda had made suitably envious remarks, we decided to keep it simple and repeat exactly the same menu. (By the time we've cooked the same menu for all of our Italian friends we should be getting good at it!). And so it was that we sat down to a meal of pear, walnut and gorgonzola salad, followed by individual cottage pies with cheesy leek topping, finishing up with Tunisian lemon cake. Unlike Mario, who speaks no English at all, Alessio turns out to be very good at English - we still tried to keep to Italian where possible, but there were times when it was easier for everyone to revert to English. It also turns out that Alessio is a chef. I'm very glad I hadn't realised that at the time I was doing all of the cooking and also very relieved to say that all of the food met with his approval - in particular the Tunisian cake, for which he requested the recipe (and seconds!). We had a great evening with them, lots of laughs and some serious chat as well, and Alessio has insisted that we go to theirs soon so that he can cook for us (traditional Tuscan, of course) in return.

By the time we'd chatted the night away and gone through the grappas and limoncellos, it was a bit of a late night on Tuesday, so it was with bleary eyes that we turned up at David and Sarah's house on Wednesday morning for our weekly Italian lesson with Johnny. We stayed on for a little while after the lesson to share a(nother) cup of coffee with David & Sarah and soak up the glorious sunshine and stunning view from their patio before heading home to more indoorsy tasks including office work and more tinkering in the apartment.

Towards the end of the afternoon we downed tools and headed into Pescia to run a few errands - visit the post office, pay the electricity bill, and go and buy a small gift for our neighbours as once again we had been invited to dinner with Valerio and Rossana. And so it was that shortly after getting back from town we changed into slightly smarter clothes and braced ourselves for another evening of Italian. On arriving at our neighbour's house we spotted another car parked outside - and suddenly realised that, unlike on other occasions, we weren't the only dinner guests! Feeling slightly panicked, we knocked on the door and went in to find another couple already seated at the dinner table. We immediately recognised the man as a friend of Rossana and Valerio's who had been there when we called in for coffee on Christmas eve and with whom we'd had a brief chat. This time, he had come with his wife. So it was another nice but very challenging evening (the late night the previous night probably didn't help matters!), with four Italian speakers to contend with. We find it particularly hard when two people speak at the same time - our poor brains and ears struggle to decipher what one person is saying, but try throwing into the mix another person speaking at the same time and it's virtually game over! - and on this evening there were at times three people speaking at once. After a while I have to confess that I gave up even trying (and failing) to interact with the group and resorted to listening and attempting to follow as much as I could. As lovely as the dinner was (prawn and asparagus risotto, followed by slices of pork with "Lucchese" beans and salad, followed by fish with sliced potato, followed by cheese, followed by fruit, followed by pear cake, finished with coffee and vin santo), and as kind and friendly as our fellow diners were, we were both feeling tired and struggling with the language, making the evening seem to drag on forever and we were both ready to come home about an hour and three quarters before we finally did leave!

A good night's sleep later, things were better by Thursday morning and Stuart headed off to Donatella's house to help with the digging of some trenches in preparation for the laying of fencing. He spent all morning up there while I worked at my desk, but he made it home in time for lunch and then our weekly Italian lesson with Samantha. This week we covered the connettori (congiunzioni) - all those useful little connecting words that are used in conversation all the time but which are really quite hard to define (and it definitely seems virtually impossible for us to remember their meanings). In English these are things like therefore, neither, even, however, until, provided, although, even if, except, apart from, so that, given that, rather... and so on. That was enough to frazzle our brains for the day - nothing really complex but just a lot of words meaning fairly similar things - and so we opted to spend the end of the afternoon going to do the supermarket shopping rather than anything more taxing.

The weather from Tuesday onwards was beautiful, but it actually seemed to improve each day as the week went on and by Friday it was simply glorious - rather like an English summer's day. Stuart went up to Vellano to spend the morning working with David, while I put in a couple of hours at my computer. David being home alone for a couple of weeks with Sarah off working in Singapore, he came back here with Stuart for lunch. The three of us sat under the pergola drinking in the view and the sunshine and feeling very lucky to be in this beautiful place.

Once lunch was out of the way, David and Stuart turned their hands to a couple of hours of olive pruning while I dusted off the strimmer and turned my attentions to the unruly and almost out-of-hand grass on the terraces above the house.

If anything, the weather just got better over the weekend (it's nice to be able to say that - how often does that happen?!), so we well and truly made the most of it and spent as much time outdoors as possible,

We started Saturday, after a walk around the woods with Reggie, with a trip out to the Delice cafe for a cappuccino and a pastry. We then went to the agraria (agricultural supplies shop) to buy some more seed trays and a length of ground cover fabric to put over the ground in the area that is to become the guest pergola. Of course we stopped off at Amanda's shop on our way home to collect our bread and something for lunch, then headed home to eat said lunch in the sunshine on the patio.

As tempting as it was to just sit and relax and enjoy the sunshine, we knew we would feel cheated if we didn't get any work done so we collected our tools and headed to the end of the drive to the small quarry area (formerly "dead deer head clearing") where we have been stacking large logs in preparation for next winter. We took it in turns to use my chainsaw to cut up the wood and to split the wood, and spent a good couple of hours making a small dent in the large pile.

We downed tools a little before the end of the afternoon so that we could enjoy the end of the day's sunshine on our patio before the temperature dropped for the evening.

Sunday morning was our first al fresco breakfast of the year - admittedly the air was quite fresh, but the sunshine was lovely. After breakfast we went for a quick cappuccino at Da Nerone, our local bar, before coming home to set to work again. While Stuart spent the morning laying the fabric down for the area that will be underneath the guest pergola and starting to spread on it some of the gravel that he had previously raked up from the lawn, I spent the morning tending to the chickens - first topping up their food and water and cleaning out their house and then laying straw throughout their enclosure. This was somewhat more demanding than it may seem - prising the straw out of the tightly packed roll in the car park was surprisingly hard work, and it took about 8 rounds to cover the whole area.

After lunch, we continued to work outside on small tidying jobs, mowing the lawn, doing more olive pruning and so on. We stopped mid-afternoon when our friend Susan came round with her other half Simon and daughter Lilly, to have a look at the stonework (and pointing) that we've done recently as they have just uncovered the stonework in their house and are looking to do the same. After a chat and a cup of tea with them, we got back to some more olive pruning before heading inside to shower and change.. and then head off up the valley to Castelvecchio. The final social meal of the week was at Paul and Kathy's and was an *amazing* Sunday roast. We had a great evening with them and thoroughly enjoyed the delicious roast. Reggie came with us and had a great time tearing around Paul & Kathy's garden and barking at the local wildlife.

All too soon the weekend seemed to come to an end and while our lives here are such that it's not really quite the same as having to go back to a 9-5 job on a Monday morning, we do still treat Mon-Fri as working days and knew that the weekend's fun in the sun would have to be put on hold until next week - here's hoping the weather holds out. More of the same please!!