Seriously, we woke up this morning at about half past six. The cats seem to be settling into something resembling a routine and half past six is pretty good for us - it means we can get out and do a bit of exercise and still be starting whatever work we have lined up for the day at a very respectable time. (I should note that Helen has been doing the getting up at 6.30am routine pretty much since we got here.)
I managed to get out on my bike again and climb the four miles to San Quirico while Helen hit the kettle bells. It was another beautifully fresh but mild start to the day. I'm really enjoying the riding over here, in this weather at least, not so sure about doing it in the midday sun, but that'll come some time.
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| Nice quiet lanes in the valley again. |
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| Destination San Quirico. |
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| Grapes in the foreground (of course) and our house somewhere down the bottom on the left ridge. |
Anyway, after cycling past a handful of guys strimming at 7am this morning, I was inspired to get our strimmer out as soon as I got back to make the most of the cooler air in the morning. I think that's the way it needs to be - strimming through the hottest part of the day is murder and really does take its toll on us the following day.
So I did an hour and a half of strimming until the strimmer's fuel tank was empty - I make that about €0.80 of fuel, another terrace cleared and starting to see progress we can latch onto now.
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| Neatly trimmed terraces 2 & 3. |
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| If only they all looked like this! |
After a shower, I joined Helen in the office to dive headlong back into my swim through treacle - that's what collating and sorting all the information on residency feels like. I now have a rather expansive spreadsheet full of information, so really just need to sort it out so that it makes some sense. I feel like I understand 80-90% of the process now, with the remaining amount something we'll find out as soon as we get into it, so I'm feeling much happier about having a firmer grasp on this next hurdle.
We had our usual lunch of tomato bruschette outside (I wonder how much longer before we have had our fill of tomatoes - hopefully it won't be for a while yet, as we have plenty still growing and yet to ripen). It was another very warm day, the mercury thermometer we had left lying on the table in direct sunlight all morning was registering 49 degrees - it wasn't anywhere near that hot, but still toasty.
After lunch we headed out for a very short trip to the post office in Pietrabuona. We didn't even know we had a post office in Pietrabuona until the postman phoned again today to tell me there was a 'pacchettino' for me at the post office there. This time, he'd at least scribbled a note and shoved it into the post box, but we still didn't know where the post office was. Pietrabuona is a small place, and with all the driving up and down the road we've done, we'd never spotted a post office. Google told me it was actually somewhere on our road between our house and the next village north (Vellano), and with the building number listed as 201 (and our house 182), that kind of made sense to us, although we couldn't imagine where on earth it could be. We headed out of our drive and drove northwards, but before we knew it we were in Vellano, with not a post office in sight. It was then that we noticed the house numbers on the opposite side of the road (the odd numbers) were way higher than on our side, so worked out that it MUST be in Pietrabuona village after all!
We did a u-turn and took a slow pass through the village, checking the building numbers carefully as we went. We spotted number 201 - a building with its shutters down. It didn't look like much of a post office, although it did have a post box outside it. Either way, it was closed, so we parked outside the small alimentari next door to get the cats some still mineral water - not their normal tipple, I hasten to add, but they have both had upset constitutions today, and as they haven't left the house, it's either the wet food, the dry food or the water (which locals don't drink unless boiled), so the first step is to try them on clean water. Lucca in particular usually prefers drinking from puddles, so it seemed fairly unlikely that their tummies would be sensitive to the tap water, but then maybe the water here is that bad after all?! Time will tell.
We had been meaning to investigate our local shop for days, but have always been too busy charging around up or down the road, so it was good to peek inside today. We grabbed some water and I helped myself to an ice lolly - I can't remember how long it's been since I last had one of those (before grey hair I should imagine). When the lady behind the counter had finished her chat with the only other customer, she asked if it was just the 3 bottles of water and lolly - in English. She had a bit of an accent, but not much of one. I complemented her on her mastery of the language, and she explained that her mother is English. We got into a nice conversation with her, telling her we we living just around the corner on the hill. She told us that she'd moved from Altopascio, 9km away near the autostrada, to a house in Vellano with her husband, and she loves it there. She now runs the small, but well stocked shop in our village - which carries all of the basic essentials (wine, pasta, water, cat food, ice lollies...). We parted company after checking her opening hours (and finding out from her that Pietrabuona post office is open Mon-Sat, mornings only) and promised to go back in again soon to support her and our little local shop - use it or lose it!!
After another couple of hours at our computers, Helen clocked off at around half past five to start a round of strimming while I continued to wrestle with my with Excel spreadsheet. It wasn't long after she went out that I heard her come back in, talking to someone, a man... from Yorkshire. Richard had popped in to see us, having been to the Comune office earlier to talk through the requirements with the less than helpful chap behind the glass screen. He confirmed what I already thought I understood, but also said that we probably need to register for VAT, national insurance etc. before they will let us register (as we will both be self-employed). So first job tomorrow is to contact the accountants to get that started.
Richard accepted the offer of a glass of wine while we talked this through, and before we knew it, we'd spent three very pleasant hours as the sun went down having had a very nice chat and catch up about the goings on in the valley. We also picked his brains on a strange bill we collected from our postbox today - it was addressed to the previous occupant, but was clearly something Italian and official of some sort, so we opened it to check. Yes, it was a bill, for around €23, but we couldn't make head or tail of what it was for. We even tried translating the words on the bill - which left us no clearer - and visited the website of the organisation that had issued the bill, which, again was no help. The only part we'd recognised was 'Padule di Fucecchio' - which we knew were 'the marshes of Fucecchio' - one of the largest wetland areas in Europe at 2,000 hectares, much (or all?) of which is nature reserve with rich natural history and strategic importance over the centuries. Of course, the idea of having a bill referring to the marshes confused us even more - the marshes are more than 30km south of us.
Anyway, it turns out that there is an organisation that occupies itself with keeping all of the waterways that feed into the marshes clear, to protect the marshes. And everyone in the relevant area (us included) pays a small fee towards the work they do. That is what the bill was for! Mystery solved!
We are planning to go to an African music evening (a.k.a. bongo night) at a cafe in the village above Vellano on Saturday (run by a friend of Michelle's) Richard has offered to pick us up on his way past, so that should be interesting. It'll be nice to see Michelle again too, but suspect her husband Mimmo will be tied to his porchetta truck as it's Saturday night.
Tomorrow we should be getting the keys and the log book for the Astra that's welded to our drive - they should be being delivered to us by Chris, husband of Sue who came to see us a couple of weeks ago (we'll explain more tomorrow). Fingers crossed, that will mean we can finally get rid of it, as Mimmo knows a mechanic who will take it for us!!!
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