Lightning fast

Today started with a mad-cap drive back to Castelfranco di Sotto to return the trusty van to Rossirent. Again, Stuart set off in front in the van, with me following behind in the car. We almost didn't even make it out of Pescia together as twice the lights went against me, and all I could do was to watch the van disappear into the distance. Thankfully, Stuart managed to slow down and let me catch up. We then followed the most bonkers route to reach our destination. Stuart had plugged the address of Rossirent into his phone's sat nav app (neither of us could remember the way from Saturday), which sent us around the houses (literally in some cases) and through the back of beyond before incredibly (well, I was surprised) bringing us to the exact spot we needed - 10 minutes before the deadline for returning the vehicle!

Mr Rossirent came out to inspect his van and, satisfied that we hadn't been rally driving or doing handbrake turns in it, completed the paperwork and sent us on our way.

Next stop was Mercatune Uno to pick up a cheap office chair. After two weeks of switching between sitting at my computer on a foldable wooden garden chair and sitting at my computer on a kitchen dining chair, my back was telling me in no uncertain terms that it had had quite enough last week - and considering that having a working back and useable limbs might turn out to be quite useful with all the work there is to do in our 12-acres of land, we agreed that finding an office chair should be a high priority. We duly left Mercatone Uno with a suitably squishy and supportive-looking chair.

Once back at the house it was back to the unpacking slog. After going at it full steam yesterday, we were both a bit jaded by the whole thing today, and depressed by the sheer mountain of stuff compared with the tiny amount of space we have. Just one example: we knew the kitchen was small, but we hadn't bargained on there only being one kitchen drawer. Said drawer is too small to fit our drawer tidy/knife & fork holder into, so is now rammed to bursting point with cutlery, kitchen knives and utensils.

Shortly after lunch we had a call from Brad (Mr Satellite) who was trying to find us but despite being on the right road, seemed a bit lost. Stuart went off to stand at the end of the drive to flag him down.

He returned about 15 minutes later with not one, but two people. Mr Satellite had eventually found us, and so had one of the previous owners' friends - a lady called Sue who lives in Pescia and had come to say hello.

Brad got on with doing his thing, while Stuart and I chatted with Sue. Again, it was lovely to talk to someone else, and to talk to someone who's been there, done that, as it were. It was very reassuring to hear that someone else also feels overwhelmed by it all at times (and did so especially when she first arrived here). Sue, her husband and two boys live on the outskirts of Pescia - she seemed really friendly and after a cup of tea and a few useful pieces of advice and tips, she left us with her phone number and the offer of any help, should we need it. (Top tip of the day was that each year the local supermarket sells squash (a la Robinsons) between the months of June and August - we'll definitely be going there to stock up when that comes in, as we've never found anything even remotely resembling squash in all of our previous trips to Italy, and that's the single 'British' food/drink item I'm missing the most.)

Shortly after Sue had left, the Albanian crew turned up again - this time there were three of them. Somehow, they managed to fit all of the rubbish pile, plus the old sofa bed and the hacked-in-half bedstead into their van. They also left us with their number, in case we need anything else disposing of (not sure whether they deal in old Vauxhalls...)

Rubbish - GONE!

Brad continued to work all afternoon, fixing a satellite dish to the front of the house and then fixing a lightning rod to save our electricals from getting fried in a storm.

At around 6.15pm, Stuart had to leave to go to a meeting with Richard and Andrea (the geometra) to discuss the various payments that we will need to make when we have the final meeting to complete the purchase of the house (these include Andrea's fees, the notary's fees, land tax and so on). We were both going to go to the meeting, but with Brad still not finished I stayed behind.

Brad finally finished at close to 7pm and left us with... a FAST INTERNET CONNECTION. And it really is lightning fast! Woohoo!

Unfortunately, that comes at the expense of having an ugly great satellite dish and lightning rod on the front of the house, but I guess that's just the price we have to pay:

Not an attractive addition.

Stuart eventually got back from his meeting at around 8.45pm - having been furnished with a list of all the costs, and instruction to go to the bank tomorrow to get us some cheque books as we will need to be writing some cheques on the 6th!

As he now tries to set up the TV so that we can finally watch some iPlayer without it freezing every 20 seconds, I'll leave you with some pictures of our cornflowers that have just come out in the garden.