A holiday and a Friday, now for a birthday.

Yesterday we were intending to repay Alex and Donatella for the lovely lunch we had at their place back in January - back then, we had a thoroughly good time but trying to organise a date for them to come down here in return has taken some time, due in no small part to the storm trying its best to destroy their poly tunnel and veg garden.

Despite playing a huge game of catch-up, we were pleased that they found time to come and spend the afternoon with us yesterday in the glorious sunshine, and after spending an hour or so talking 'shop', we finally sat down on the patio for lunch in the sunshine, which (to our relief) turned out to be a hit!

We hit them with a selection of artichokes, peppers and olives in oil (we cheated here, all bought in jars from Esselunga) as well as our home-made three-bean dip, a carrot salad made with chickpeas and raisins, a version of our lentil and tomato ragu turned into a dip and our quinoa salad with radish, avocado and a lemon from our own tree. It was all delicious thanks to my clever wife, and we took our time over the whole affair under the shade of the umbrella - and with bottles of both red and white open on the table, we really felt like we were holidaying with friends.

We finished the meal with vegan chocolate brownies, courtesy of Jamie Oliver (and cooked in the working oven in the apartment). If you don't like your chocolate mixed with nuts then look away now because it had hazelnuts AND pecans mixed in with it!

Before we knew where the afternoon had gone, it was 5pm and time for Alex and Donatella to leave and get back to their own farming duties before the day got too late. We had had such a lovely afternoon catching up with them over a leisurely lunch - great company and a lovely way to spend the afternoon. What were we to do now though? The day was wearing on and any chance of us doing anything useful was rapidly disappearing - that is unless you call sitting in the sun with another chilled bottle of white useful. Either way, we enjoyed watching the sun go down and entering into a more profound dialogue about life here and the universe in general!

Needless to say, we slightly overdid it yesterday and paid the price today - there was no exercise for Helen this morning, and later starts than usual for both of us (even the dog had a lie-in).

Once we were up, however, Helen spent most of the day at the computer working both her allotted hours and the hour she missed yesterday, and for most of the morning I worked alongside her, dealing with various admin jobs, two of which were to pay a geologist and architect for services rendered (both of which were for services involved in looking into the possibility of building an extension). Previously, we have paid such invoices by paying a personal visit to the bank, but as of recently we both have access to internet banking. Yes, you heard me correctly, Italy does internet banking! Of course, Italy doesn't do internet banking in quite the same way as we had become used to in the UK: it seems a third party provides the service for the banks, meaning that you log into a website that is completely separate from that of your own bank. Were it not for the two passwords and code generated by the electronic key fobs we were given, I might be a little more worried about using it.

Anyway, after setting up the required payees I tried to process the payments but got an error saying that the password was incorrect... "here we go again," I thought!

I was faced with the option of calling a phone number or sending an email to get help. I know all too well how useless Italians seem to be with email (it's one of their many endearing qualities until you need something), but today, with a foggy head, the thought of calling a customer services department to try and explain my predicament was far from attractive, so I decided I would send an email then get on with planting some seeds instead and deal with the bills next week by going into town to the bank. (I should mention that we thought we had paid the architect's bill way back in June last year, but unbeknownst to us the amount that we paid in the bank had been returned to us four weeks later due to some error in the payment, so the architect was still out of pocket but only now questioning it!)

After planting all of our marigold and nasturtium seeds, I went back indoors to check my PC only to find that the customer services department had already replied to my email, asking if they could call me to sort the problem! I couldn't quite believe it - what I had fully expected to be the start of yet another unnecessarily difficult process seemed like it might break all records for getting a solution.

Over lunch, I arranged (by email) for a customer services representative to call me at 2pm, thinking that would give me enough time to finish my lunch in the sunshine. It was, and at 2pm exactly, the mobile phone rang and Enrico was on the other end - a lovely man who spoke very decent English but still apologised for it. We chatted briefly about where we lived and what we did for work before he turned his attention to my problem. He guided me through setting up a new password so that I could process payments, and just ten minutes later all was sorted and we said goodbye (although he later emailed me to compliment us our our place, having found our www.numero.com website, presumably by tracing it back through my email address - how lovely of him!).

By this time, it was getting on for mid to late afternoon and Helen was finishing up her office work for the day, so we headed out to take Reggie for a walk. We decided to attempt another section of the path to the abandoned village of Lignana - this time, driving through Sorana and up a quiet road to a spot where we could leave the car before joining the track a little further along than we have managed before. We walked along the track until we came across a sign telling us that the village was an hour away - at whose speed I don't know, but either way we'd already walked for 20 minutes so were approaching the time at which we'd need to turn back for the sake of Reggie's still developing puppy legs, so not long after that, we did an about-turn and headed back to the car. The afternoon had turned into what we Brits might class as the height of summer - Reggie got so hot his tongue was lolling out the side of his mouth until we managed to get back to the car and give him some much needed water, and both Helen and I felt way over-dressed, wishing we had changed into shorts for our expedition!

On getting back to the car, we headed home to start the weekend proper on the patio with an Aperol Spritz and some peanuts - it is, after all, a birthday weekend (and not just any old birthday)! I'm not sure yet what tomorrow will bring, but I plan to spend my 40th birthday at a leisurely pace and really enjoying my surroundings.