After something of a disaster yesterday, this morning I woke full of aches but with a plan. My plan was to dust off the mountain bike, head up to Alex and Donatella's to retrieve my phone (which I'd accidentally left in their car when Alex kindly rescued me and dropped me off last night), then head over to the car dealer to throw the keys at them and give them the address of where they needed to collect the car from, then cycle to Chiesina to see Nicola who is selling a used tractor that we're very interested in, then grab some pancetta from Esselunga and cycle home to do what little work I could in the apartment before the day was out...EASY.
It was a daunting challenge ahead of me, but nevertheless I was quite looking forward to a day out on my bike so after breakfast I changed into some suitable attire (baggy shorts, wicking t-shirt and merrel shoes) and was gathering my stuff together (list of car-related words in Italian, list of questions for Nicola and other detritus) when Helen appeared to say that Sue was on the phone. She wasn't on the phone of course but calling via Skype on the tablet PC, as the land line is still not working, the Skype phone is in a box having been returned to us by DHL before it had even left the country never mind got to Hong Kong, and the mobile phone was a couple of miles up the road.
Anyway, Sue thought I was mad for considering doing all of that by bike after two days strimming work and insisted she come up and ferry me around for the morning. As I stood there shouting into the tablet PC with its satellite delay, I could feel my limbs aching so I put up nothing even vaguely resembling a fight and 20 minutes later Reggie's barking heralded the arrival of Sue.
After a cup of tea on the patio and a discussion about what to do, I was quite rightly persuaded not to take the 'throw the keys at the car dealer and let them sort it out' option and instead to first try the car so that if it started (which we all expected it would), I could take it to them rather than wait for them to leave it stranded up in Lanciole for weeks first.
Sue and I therefore left Helen at her desk and headed off first to retrieve my phone from Alex and Donatella - once again thanking them for sparing me a night in the car yesterday - then we wound our way up the valley to Lanciole and the car - which of course started first time of asking.
I decided we should head back to the house to talk to Helen about what we should do about it now, and after another cup of tea we decided that before doing anything else I should email the dealer to list the faults, demand our ownership documents and ask for a car on loan while they fix ours. I was glad I did that, as a reply came straight back to me saying that nobody was available to look at it until next Wednesday (despite telling me last week that this week was OK to go see them! - they may yet get keys thrown at them!
So we decided to stick with the car for now and limp through until next Wednesday, making sure we always try and park on slopes in the meantime to allow a bump start if necessary. So, instead of the rest of the visits I had planned, I emailed Nicola about the tractor and then got to work in the apartment.
It wasn't long before lunch - for which we had a luxurious whole goose egg EACH today as we'd amassed three now. Mrs Goose, having slowed right up with her laying, has caught us out this week by still laying the odd egg, so we were able to treat ourselves to a whole egg each with the remainder of yesterday's Ligurian style potato salad.
After lunch it was back to the apartment for me, where I managed to get all of the remaining plasterboard on, the shelves cut and in place, and new sockets fitted in the wall. It still leaves me a lot to do to finish the job, but I'm much further ahead than I thought would be when I woke up this morning, so I was very pleased with progress and the effect it's had on the room. Tomorrow will be a day of filling and sanding the board joints and staining the last two shelves to match the ones Holly did for us last month.
By 4pm, Helen had appeared with Reggie and was ready to head out for a walk so I quickly locked up in the apartment and we headed out to the Vellano quarry track for a good walk.
After walking Reggie for an hour so that he could thoroughly burn up some energy, we headed out to Obi, if I had any chance of getting close to finished in the apartment (I'm kidding myself of course) I wanted to have the missing materials 'on site' rather than have to shop for them in the morning, so the three of us drove over to Montecatini. This also gave me the chance to buy some legs for our new outside fire pit.
After a quick trip around Obi, Helen and I hopped back into the car... which didn't start! We heard Reggie take a deep breath in and then exhale as if thoroughly exasperated, which pretty much summed things up for all of us and made us laugh before we both sunk back into despair, wondering how and when we would get home. I tried one more turn of the key before either of us uttered a word, and much to our enormous relief it sprang into life - now it was our turn to exhale deeply but with relief! This car will be a real test over the next few days but, in a way, I hope the problem persists more regularly so that the mechanic gets to see it, which can only help.
When we got home we sat on the patio in a cool and partly cloudy evening with a beer and some toasted pumpkin seeds. I couldn't help but get to work on putting the legs onto the washing machine drum fire pit, and five minutes later it was done and just begging to be tested. After another five minutes, we had a small (for the capacity of the drum) but toasty fire going - much warmer than I'd imagined it would be and I'm very pleased with it too, especially for the grand sum of around €20 for the legs and bolts.
The veg wouldn't wait any longer though and when the fire started to burn down it was time to head off down the terraces for watering duties. Having missed out on my daily visit to the veg only yesterday, I was amazed to see the tomatoes making an appearance as well as some of the squash, a couple more artichokes and the zucchini, as well as the nasturtiums having doubled in size along with the sunflowers - a real buzz of excitement, I can't imagine how it will feel to see this all in fruit!
No comments:
Post a Comment