On a roll, two in a row!

As Monday morning ticks away in the background I sit down to write my second blog post in as many weeks, aided largely by a new tablet PC bought this very morning.

I had bought my first tablet PC a few months before leaving England as a means of having some useful form of internet access while on the move between England and Italy - particularly as we had a very important funds transfer to arrange while en route, believing that we would be having a meeting with the notaiao to finalise the purchase of our house the day after our arrival - little did we know we'd be waiting a month for that, but I'm straying from the path somewhat...

That first tablet was a revelation and many of our first year's blog posts were typed on it, so it was a sad day when it died, earlier than expected and probably still within warranty (just), but such was our distance from the store from which we bought it and our workload that it got put into a dusty corner of the house and forgotten about.

It is only now that I have been able to find the funds to purchase a new one - not expensive when compared to a mobile phone, but there is always something more important to spend our limited funds on than gadgets, though we had agreed that having a new tablet would be useful, not in the least so that we might keep on top of the blogging a little easier.

That might all sound like a poor excuse, but five days a week Helen is in the office in front of her computer while I'm busy with other things, often outside, and at the soonest moment possible she likes to leave the office for a change of scenery (even if in the winter months that is just as far as the living room, it's still a change of scenery). This means we are somewhat reluctant to do any of our own admin during the weekend, so as to give Helen an all important break from her desk (a desk that of a winter's weekend is a cold place to be as we only light the wood burner in the living room). And so it has come to pass that we've acquired a new tablet. Let's hope that equals more regular blog posts from the comfort of the living room.

Last week was business as usual really, with very little to report.

Sunlight on the hill above us.

Monday evening saw us putting our Italian comprehension to the test when we attended an open meeting between residents and politicians (from the local council and from the provincial level) at the Circolo in Vellano about the state of some of the local roads (in particular Il Traspo - the road that Donatella lives on, which has been in a terrible state for quite some time) and the hydrogeological problems that urgently need addressing in our valley.

The period between Christmas and New Year saw a large landslide on the road that runs along the bottom of the valley and from there on up to the villages of Lanciole and Crespole, as well as a subsequent additional slide at the same site a couple of weeks later - the road was closed, re-opened after some clearing work, and then re-closed when the secondary slide occurred, and it now remains closed (or closed-ish - while officially closed, it seems that frustrated motorists are in the habit of removing the barriers and driving through regardless). The village of Vellano itself is classed as "R4" on the scale of hydrogeological risk - meaning it is an area of very high risk. A project is already in place for addressing various issues to help secure the village, but such is the scale of the project that it has been split into three parts - the first part was completed a while ago, but the rest still remains to be done. As we understand it, the landslide that happened over Christmas is all part of the overall issue affecting the area.

The evening saw first a detailed description of each of the topics of discussion - technical details as well as the current situation - followed by questions from the members of the public on each. The discussion was fairly technical, and quite heated at times, as worried and frustrated residents put their views to the politicians. As with so many of these things the overriding theme of the evening was "there's not enough money to do what needs to be done".

Come 11:50pm, emotions were starting to run high amongst residents and politicians alike and, having concentrated on the discussion for more than two hours already, and with voices starting to be raised to levels that were uncomfortable to listen to, we decided to call time on our participation and make our way home.

If you look carefully you can see our concentrating faces.

We had our group Italian lesson on Wednesday morning - David had returned from a visit to England the evening before so joined us here at our house for our lesson with Johnny on what was a horrid day: cold, wet and windy.

After an enjoyable lesson translating a story about the history of St Vitus's dance, I spent half an hour fitting a new automatic door closer to the front door, the idea being that, now, when Reggie opens the door to let himself out (as he does at frequent intervals), he will no longer leave the door gaping wide open and letting all the warmth out (especially on days like today).

It's a simple spring-loaded mechanism but seems to do the job perfectly, gently closing the door once he's gone outside. It should also stop the door slamming open against the wall when he decides to launch his full 30kg at the door at top speed. 

After lunch and a worsening in the weather I decided I couldn't face heading out to work in what is still practically the outdoors over at Mara and Franco's, so with a pitiful message sent on WhatsApp I retired to the seat on the sofa next to the fire to continue making notes from my book on olive pruning, in readiness for the pruning season late winter.

On Thursday Helen had her lesson with Samantha in the afternoon while I was back working across the valley at Mara & Franco's house, and again had her spinning class at the gym in Pescia in the evening. This week, however, instead of going alone I drove her into town and did the food shopping while she was exercising. That worked extremely well for me, as there must have been only half a dozen other shoppers in Esselunga at that time of night - I doubt I'll make a habit of it though!

On Friday evening Paul and Kathy came round with their friend Simon who was visiting from England. We have got to know Simon pretty well over the last year or so, and it's always nice to see him when he comes for a visit - especially when he comes bearing gifts/swag! On this occasion we'd asked if he would bring us a precious jar of Pataks lime pickle (something we plan to further educate our friends Mara and Franco with the next time we cook them a curry). After a pleasant couple of hours catching up with them all they left us to the remainder of the evening, heading home to pack overnight bags ahead of their weekend trip to Rome for the Italy v. England rugby game.

Saturday was yet another horrid day, but we braved the cold, wet weather for a coffee and cake in Pescia before trying to get lost again in the foothills between Pescia and Lucca, this time with the added goal of trying to climb up into the snow that had fallen overnight and that we could see tantalisingly dusting the tops of the hills.

On the first objective we excelled and found some yet more glorious countryside and yet more enormous villas before popping out on the road that heads up into the Garfagnana. It's clear that between us and Lucia we are already running out of places to indulge in our new-found hobby. On the second count we failed - it seemed the higher up we got, the further the snow retreated,  and we found no sign of it.

Stunning views from Matraia.

Lucca is down there somewhere.

We had to give up at that point as we needed (or should I say the chickens needed) more grain and we had only half an hour in which to buy it before Signore Perondi (Mr Chicken man) closed his doors for the weekend. With grain purchased and a chat with Signore Perondi Junior, whom I had not met before and had just returned from a business trip to Telford (of all places), we headed back up the valley and decided that we would give our snow chasing one more try, this time driving up our own valley towards Pontito... and bingo, we found the snow!

The snowy rooftops of Pontito.

As we turned around and wended our way gradually back down the valley, the snow slowed, turned to sleet as we passed through Vellano, and by the time we'd dropped down to our altitude it was mere rain. So with the fire lit we resigned ourselves to an afternoon indoors.

Over the course of the afternoon and evening we binge-watched six hours of Inspector Montalbano (all in the name of homework, you understand). Helen astutely surmised this week that while our language is improving, and more or less sufficient to get by here day to day, we still don't yet hear the words like in our native tongue - by that I mean, if we sat next a table of people conversing loudly in Italian, it would still largely just be noise to us unless we actively tried to tune in to listen and understand, whereas were they talking English, we would have to try to tune out so that we didn't hear what was being said. It's an odd stage to be at, and it may always be this way, but we have decided to watch as much Italian TV as we can cram in, in an effort to address this, and in an effort to try and improve our comprehension of Italian spoken at speed - which may well turn out to be our ultimate hurdle.

Sunday was an altogether different start to Saturday: it was still cold, but patches of blue sky greeted us and we were feeling more motivated to get out into the fresh air, but not before cappuccini and pastries in Pescia. Sadly, by the time we got back home the weather had worsened and it tried to rain, which dented our enthusiasm for anything but retreating indoors again.

That said, we had committed to giving the chickens some much needed TLC so, having lured them into the top of their enclosure, given them a large pile of fresh vegetable peelings to keep them busy and closed the makeshift gate on them (all in a bid to give us the freedom and safety to do what we needed without having to worry about unexpected attacks from the ever aggressive Arthur), we were able to give the coop a full clean out, repair one of the large doors which had become jammed, refill food and water receptacles, and replace the exit ramp which was about to collapse. That and collect a basket of eggs, of course.  

We then rather unenthusiastically wandered around trying to get motivated before finally settling on a couple of hours more tidying work below the car park, cutting up a couple of fallen trees that were lying across the bank and clearing more bramble from around them.

Such was the state of our enthusiasm that we were thankful when the clock struck 5pm and we felt justified in calling it a (somewhat unproductive) day and returning to the comfort of the sofa and the log burner to re-charge for the week ahead.

(This blog post covers the week 29th January - 4th February 2018)