Best anniversary ever?!

{WARNING: THIS BLOG POST IS LENGTHY!!}

There... you have been warned, so go and get a cup of tea and make yourself comfortable, because this one's a biggie.

It was the 6th of the 6th yesterday: our second wedding anniversary already. We've been so busy over the last few years, what with planning the wedding, planning (and doing) the big bike ride, then planning and preparing for the move over here, that we have no idea where the time has gone.

We agreed last week that buying each other anniversary cards and presents would be silly this year - we have one car and we spend almost every waking minute together, so being able to covertly acquire such a simple thing as a card was not going to happen. Instead, we agreed that we would treat ourselves to a day off together and spend some quality time with each other.

Of course, that could only happen AFTER we had been to the notary and finally completed the purchase of the house! The meeting with the notary was set for 11:30am.

We later learned that the notary (who deals only with house sale/purchases and rentals) is so busy that it had taken two weeks for us to get our appointment. Notaries are appointed for a local area - the one we went to see was in Borgo a Buggiano, about 5km from Pescia. We also learned that being a notary is a very lucrative way to spend your time and that it's a position for life that is fought over fiercely when any such position becomes vacant (strange being a 'state' job).

But, as always, I'm getting sidetracked, and this blog post is going to be long enough already, so let's get back on track.

With the day being a 'non-work' day, we slept in until around 8am. Helen headed straight out with her kettlebells and exercise mat, and I decided I would finally build my turbo trainer (a Christmas present from Helen last year). This took a while longer than I had anticipated, and I soon realised that my exercise window had firmly shut by the time I'd finished, so instead, I fitted my new speed and cadence sensor to my bike - nothing like a new toy for added motivation, can't wait to get back out on my bike Monday!

Not quite my usual cycling gear.

Helen, meanwhile, had finished with her kettlebells and moved onto taking the lawnmower for a test drive. The verdict was a big thumbs up, and we now had a very neatly trimmed lawn.

It works!

Just look at that neat and tidy lawn...

Time was ticking on by this point - we'd arranged to meet Richard at Andrea's (the geometra's) office at 11am to give us time to go for a coffee before the meeting, so we packed up and headed indoors for showers and to gather our paperwork together.

We headed out into a baking hot morning, and found Richard in Andrea's office along with Michelle (a Liverpudlian lady who lives in Vellano, who had been left with power of attorney for the previous owners). After brief 'hello's, we all piled into Andrea's car for the short trip to Borgo a Buggiano, halfway between Pescia and Monticatini Terme.

Andrea dropped us off in the square and went to park the car while the rest of us headed for a coffee shop. A quick cappuccino later, we headed across the street to the notaio's office where we met Andrea. We handed over our Codice Fiscales (these are basically cards, the size and shape of a credit card, that carry a unique code, not dissimilar to the tax reference you have in the UK - you can't buy much of any significance here without one) and our passports (everyone needs copies of passports here - even when you check into a hotel or buy a car), and after only a short wait, we headed into the notaio's office, pretty much on time.

So there we were: two Italians, a Brummie, a Bristolian, a Liverpudlian and a Yorkshireman.

The notaio introduced himself (Alberto Carapelle), and immediately seemed to live up to his billing as a very nice man - a warm smile can say a lot about a person, and we immediately felt at ease.

The plan was for the notaio to read out the contract of sale from his PC screen while Andrea followed along with his own notes, interjecting to correct the notaio when needed. After that, the mortgage agreement would be read out in the same manner.

So off the notaio went at a right canter - Richard had told us he was a fast reader and he was not wrong! We soon realised that trying to follow along was futile. I remember thinking that even with Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Mary Poppins had NOTHING on Alberto, whose speed of reading made it seem as if he was saying one enormously long word, with barely a breath taken. Our ears pricked up after a while when we heard our names and places of birth (I was apparently born in 'Beeeer-mingham', although I'm sure it doesn't say that on my birth certificate).

From time to time, Richard was brought into proceedings to translate things. We had imagined every word having to translated, verbatim, so it turned out to be much less tedious than we had been expecting.

The whole affair was quite jovial and good fun, and even when the woman from the bank arrived with the piles of mortgage paperwork (evening up the Italian to Brit ratio), it was still an informal affair with much joking and laughing at various points.

I was amused by the Italians' struggle with British bank details. Since we were purchasing the house from a British couple, we had made both the deposit payment and the second payment to them in sterling, with the final balance (which the mortgage covers) going to them in euros. This in itself caused much confusion, but not as much confusion as the fact that the deposit and the second payment had been made from two different bank accounts and to two different bank accounts. They needed to record full details of each of the bank payments, including the bank addresses, so the fact that postcodes looked so different from Italian ones, and that nobody (except the Brits of course) had heard of 'Coventry' meant that there was much head scratching... it amused me greatly how simple things can become difficult, and that for the briefest of moments, the tables had been turned.

And so it went, for two hours solid - not that it felt that long to us, although Helen later told me she had spent the whole time worrying that Alberto had all that reading to do and didn't even have a glass of water.

Anyway, suffice to say that we now officially own the house, and the whole morning's proceedings were very much pain-free, bar a dose of writer's cramp from all the signatures that were required! As an added bonus, we ended up saving a not inconsiderable sum on what we had been expecting to pay in terms of taxes, fees, etc. - this was largely thanks to Alberto and the way he represented the house/land value (too complicated to explain here - and I think I'm already in danger of losing your attention...).

We got back to Pescia a little before 2pm, and after popping into Andrea's office to pay his fees and discuss the transfer of utilities to our name, the four of us decided that lunch was in order. Mimmo (Michelle's husband) had just arrived, so the five of us headed out of town to one of the many roadside restaurants offering 'pranzo di lavoro' (workers' lunch).

A pranzo di lavoro is a set menu affair that is usually very reasonably priced and consists of two courses with a small selection of dishes to choose from for each (the options are read out in front of you, there's no menu to read). In this case there were around 4-5 pasta dishes to choose from, followed by 4-5 main courses. Helen opted for a vegetable pasta, while I had pasta with ragu, then we both had scallopine with a Gorgonzola sauce and a side salad. Delicious.

The whole lunch experience was very enjoyable - conversation flowed in a combination of Italian and English (Mimmo is Italian), which was great for us. Mimmo spoke nice and slowly to aid our comprehension, and we learnt quite a lot more about the area, people, wine, and beaches to head for, amongst other things (as well as being given some tips and pointers on managing our land from Michelle).

Mimmo, by the way, owns and runs a food wagon from which he mainly sells porchetta (roast pulled pork) and spicy Calabrian sausage sandwiches (he comes from Calabria in the south of Italy). I was lucky enough to sample some of his delicious food when I was over here doing a week's plastering with Richard in March. Helen still has that treat to look forward to!

Mimmo IS the boss of panini!

As lunch drew to a close, Helen and I decided to pick up the tab to show our appreciation of the help and warm reception we'd received from our new friends - Michelle had given up her morning for our cause (not at our request, of course, but still, she'd been left holding the baby so to speak), Richard was there in a paid translator capacity, but with his help and contacts we'd saved thousands.

So we stumped up the €65 euros for lunch... YES, €65 euros for a two-course lunch for FIVE people including several bottles of mineral water, two bottles of beer and five coffees. Amazing value. Nothing fancy, you understand, but very delicious, very good cooking with good local, seasonal ingredients.

As we said our goodbyes to Michelle and Mimmo, I found myself in the midst of my first man kiss (Mimmo was on me before I knew what was happening) - I guess I have to start getting used to that!! We managed to offload the pile of 'stuff' that the previous house owners had left behind for Michelle - we couldn't quite read her expression, but I think she was as bemused as we were by the random selection of items they had set aside for her (which included half-used jars of spices, some half-used cleaning products, some tea bags, a dusty and greasy halogen cooker, and a few items they wanted her to store for them).

We dropped Richard back to his car where he refused to take any money from us for his services (he'll be getting some whether he likes it or not) and then headed out to tick off two more jobs before we could go HOME!

Our first stop was MercaTutto, the Albanians' second-hand furniture shop. It turns out it's a bit of a treasure trove inside - while there's a fair bit of tat in there, there are some really nice pieces of solid furniture and some interesting items including old gramophone players and even a selection of vintage wines, complete with dust. Flamur (the guy in charge) needed my passport details to enter me onto the computer system, as well as a couple of signatures on a contract confirming what he will pay us for each item. If/when he sells the furniture we have given him, he will split the proceeds 50/50 with us. I was a little nervous about handing over my passport (although we're kind of getting used to having to do that), but we'd been assured by Michelle that they were nice guys. Seems we could be in line for €100 euros next month - which would cover what we gave them to dispose of our enormous pile of rubbish, so all good on that score.

Finally, it was back to the car dealer in Porcari. After realising that acquiring residency was going to take a little while longer than planned, we had contacted the car dealer to ask whether it would be possible for us to reserve the car with a deposit. They were happy to do so for a €500 payment, so off we went in the baking heat to do just that. More passport photocopies and half a dozen more signatures later, we left with a copy of the contract and promised to return in the next few weeks with our Italian I.D. cards (when we get them) to finish the paperwork, pay the balance and take ownership of the methane-powered 'bus'/'postman pat van'.

We FINALLY headed for home sometime after 5pm. I've no idea what happened to our anniversary, but it was certainly memorable, and one we won't forget in a hurry - and for all the right reasons too!

We sat on the patio for a couple of hours or so, feeling unexpectedly excited about the fact that we now own the house. Neither of us had anticipated feeling so excited - after all, we have been living in the house for nearly a month - but there was obviously some part of each of us, on a subconscious level, that was holding back, knowing all along that the house wasn't really ours. There was also always the niggling worry that if the previous owners had for some reason pulled out, we'd need to explain where their furniture was, and with every day's hard graft improving the place, I was wondering for whose benefit I was doing it! Now all of those niggles and concerns have been put to rest and we can happily throw ourselves full pelt into improving and enjoying our property (well, ours and the bank's).

So, we ended our anniversary day with a couple of bottles of fairly low ABV bubbly in the very warm evening air. What an amazing day, and what a lucky guy I am!

A buzzard enjoying the evening's sunshine with us.

We did it - two years anniversary and a house in Tuscany!

As the title says, we did it!!! We are now the official owners of our house (albeit part owned by the bank). It feels much more special and exciting than either of us was expecting, as well as being a BIG relief to finally be the bona fide owners!

We will bring you the full story of the day (which has been quite long, but all good) in our post tomorrow (we promise!!), but for tonight we hope you will forgive us for having the night off a fully detailed post - it being both our two-year anniversary and the day we eventually finalised the purchase of our house.

Happy days.

New vocab and a BBQ

Ugh. What a terrible night's sleep we had last night. I've no idea why, but we both struggled to sleep (my mind was running wild with thoughts of bugs and beasties - which is disappointing as I thought I was starting to get over that a little bit - I'm not sure what kept Stuart awake). Nevertheless, I slumped out of bed at 6.45am and went outside to do a half-hearted exercise routine, definitely not feeling my best.

Stuart struggled to winch himself out of bed at 8am, never mind any earlier, and we both wondered why we had slept so badly and why we felt so ropey.

Thankfully, after a shower, some breakfast and a little bit of waking up time, we both started to feel more awake and ready for the day.

My morning held nothing of any particular interest - lots of office work. Stuart, meanwhile, put a new frame around the window in the apartment shower room, put some more filler on the bedroom ceiling in the apartment, and built a wooden rack for baskets to stand on in the bottom of the wardrobe, to keep them away from the damp surface of the earthquake protector step.

It was lunchtime before we knew it (leftover rice/pepper/courgette/kidney bean/egg salad), by which time the day was really starting to warm up - it took a lot of will power for me to make myself head back inside to the depths of darkness in the office cave.

After a couple more hours of work, I decided it was time to call it a day as we needed to head out to pick up some shopping and pay a visit to the post office.

I collected Stuart from the apartment (and inspected his handiwork while there), and we shut up shop at the house to go on another adventure.

Our first stop was a hardware shop that we'd found a couple of weeks ago. Our aim: to find a cable for the lawnmower. First step, find out the word for lawnmower: tosaerba. Second step, find out the word for cable: cavo. (We also found out the word for wire - filo - just in case 'cable' wasn't the right word, as we've found that sometimes these things get lost in translation.) Armed with our new vocab, we went into the shop and explained that we wanted a cavo for our tosaerba, and showed the man a photograph of the plug/socket on the lawnmower that was missing a cable.

He understood exactly what we meant, but initially seemed a little doubtful as to whether he had the right parts to give us. Eventually, though, he managed to pick out all of the relevant pieces we needed from his shelves, and after clarifying with us what length of cable we wanted, we left the shop armed with what was essentially a cable, two plugs and an adaptor:

This is the magic that will make the lawnmower work!

It seems a very inefficient way of making an electrical item work, but who are we to question?!

Next stop was MercatoTutto - our Albanian(?) friends at the second-hand furniture store. We realised last week that there were still three sofa cushions in the apartment that should have been taken away with the sofabed, so decided to take them down to the guys in the shop so they could sell a complete sofa.

While there, Stuart ascertained from the guy in charge that we need to go back with our passports so they can take a copy (seems that's quite a common thing over here), and once they have that paperwork in place, they will put the furniture & other items we gave them on sale, and if/when anything sells, they will split the proceeds 50:50 with us. Seems reasonable to us.

Next stop was the post office. This was 'my' thing so I had the honour of doing the talking (well, the single sentence that needed to be spoken). That was once we'd worked out the slightly complicated ticket system. Rather like at the deli counter in Waitrose, you have to take a ticket and wait for your turn to be called. Unlike the deli counter, you have to press a particular button for your ticket, depending on what service it is you want (imagine having to press different buttons at the deli counter depending on whether you want cheese/meat/fish...).

We eventually worked out what we thought was the right button for 'I just want to send some birthday cards to friends and family back in the UK' and waited our turn. The lady did slightly squinty eyes when I announced in my best Italian that I wanted to send these items to the UK, but I guess that the fact I had thrust 4 envelopes at her, all of which bore addresses with 'UK' at the end probably helped her understand my terrible accent and she realised what it was I wanted. She duly stuck postage labels on the four cards and charged us €3.40 - so, Dad, Mary, Lena and Tash you will all hopefully receive birthday cards from us. I've no idea when, but hopefully before your next birthdays roll around...

What we thought would be our final port of call for the day was Esselunga. We'd run out of drinking water again (tap water is not drinkable here - at least not without boiling it first, so we have to keep a stock of bottled water), and it was time for our weekly shop. While pottering around the aisles looking for bargains, the idea popped into our heads that if we bought a disposable BBQ we could actually cook outside this evening. The idea was tantalising and Stuart was soon off to the sausage aisle drooling over the various Tuscan sausage varieties.

We finished our shopping and suddenly remembered that in order for our plan to work, we needed a disposable BBQ (one of the many things on our list of things to do is to build a proper BBQ and/or pizza oven here, but like so many other things, we haven't got around to it yet). We went up and down the aisles searching for BBQs but to no avail - Esselunga had nothing for us!

I reasoned that, perhaps, over here nobody has any need for disposable BBQs - the weather is always great in the summer, so everyone already owns a real, full size, bona fide BBQ (why would you not have one, and why would you ever want to throw one away?). We decided in a last ditch attempt to save ourselves from having to cook the sausages under the grill that we would try Lidl.

Success! Lidl came up trumps and we drove home with a boot full of lawnmower pieces, our weekly food shopping and two disposable BBQs.

As it was already 6.30pm by the time we got home, we decided to start a BBQ and sit on the patio enjoying the sunshine while we prepared our dinner.

Veg prep.

Salsiccia Toscana.

Well, our tiny BBQ soon looked ready - the flames had gone out and the coals were white hot, so we started with the vegetables. Except rather than a satisfying sizzle with each vegetable that went on, there was a disappointing 'fzzz' but nothing much else. This was going to take a while!

We eventually decided that, if we were to eat dinner this side of midnight, we would have to give up on the idea of cooking the sausages in the great outdoors and resort to griddling them on the hob. In fact, we ended up having a sausage sandwich back indoors. The BBQ'd courgettes and aubergines were delicious though - and have definitely spurred us on to get the BBQ sorted sooner rather than later!

The zucchini eventually got going.

We sat outside looking up at the moon in the completely cloudless (bar a few aeroplane trails) sky. Our weather forecasts are all saying that we are in for a heat wave this weekend (30-35C) and into next week. We can barely believe that summer hasn't even really got going properly yet and we've already seen so much sunshine and warm weather. I wonder whether we will ever get used to it!

La bella luna.

Tomorrow is the big meeting with the notary to complete the purchase of the house (eek!). As it's also our anniversary, we've decided to give ourselves the day off work. The meeting is at 11.30am and looks set to be quite a long and drawn out affair, as everything (including the mortgage agreement) has to be read out in front of the notary in Italian and then translated into English too. I think we might deserve a drink once all of that is out the way! Wish us luck!

Mid-week... again!

I think I must be getting older quicker over here, and I'm not just talking about the ageing effects of all this sun that I'm so unaccustomed to - blink, and half the working week has gone!! I'm sure there's a saying about time going quickly when you're having fun, but think it needs to have some small print added to say 'time also flies when you're flat-out busy'.

It was back into the apartment again for me this morning - where else!? I decided that my next job would be to repair the couple of joints in the plasterboard ceiling in the bedroom where the boards had been moved over the winter in order to access electrics (or so we were told). Once this has been done, the bed can go down and we can start to make it look like a real room.

(Despite finding the traditional tiles and beams behind the ceiling boards the other day, the final verdict was to put the plasterboard back - the boards are hiding waste pipes from the kitchen and shower room above, and it would take too much time, effort and money to make it look presentable. Maybe one day we will be able to uncover them, once we have everything else under control and time on our hands (ha!).)

So, I took a scraper to the ceiling to remove the flaky sections of plaster before repairing it, and... well... this kind of happened:

Multiple choice time now: is it (a) Tuscan snow, (b) mouse droppings, or (c) lime finish plaster?

The answer, of course, is (c) lime finish plaster, although you can have half a point if you chose (b) as there were quite a few of those amongst it all. In fact, I received a mouse dropping shower for my efforts whenever I moved one of the ceiling panels, and I had to move all 12 of them. I now suspect that the reason the previous owners had moved the boards to get into the ceiling space was not to look at the electrics but to 'remove' a family of squeakers that had somehow invaded.

Anyway, I fixed lengths of timber to the back of the plasterboard joints to remove the sags in the boards and level them with each other so that I could then start the process of filling the joints before painting. I'm not sure quite what sort of finish I'm going to achieve with the Italian ready-mixed filler I have, but it's got to be a darn sight better than what was there previously. In fact, this has been the only setback I've been happy about - the thought of a bodged ceiling being the first thing that paying guests see each and every morning was starting to give me sleepless nights!

Shortly after I'd finished making the mess, I spied a strange face outside the apartment door - it was a bit of a shock to see someone I didn't know and hadn't invited (we don't exactly get passers by here - not even the postman comes anywhere near the house, what with the post box being 160m away at the end of the drive). I went outside to say hello. In those initial few seconds of meeting, I couldn't quite decide what nationality he was: he was certainly tanned enough to be a local, but as I wasn't expecting anyone, the only person I could think it might be was Chris, husband of ex-pat Sue who paid us a visit last week. Based on this, I opted for a 'hello', which I soon discovered was the wrong choice! That was no problem, however, as the man, who introduced himself as Sergio, spoke very decent English and seemed to enjoy the chance to practise it! We had heard of Sergio through the previous owners - he, or at least friends/colleagues of his, had been responsible for sand blasting all of the internal ceilings and beams in the house, re-roofing the house, and rendering it. He had also given the previous owners an estimate for building the extension.

We had a good chat about 'stuff', and then I took him upstairs to the house to write down his mobile number. Helen got say hello too, and we also picked his brains about solar thermal heating as it seems that he can help us with getting that sorted too. He has invited us to his house next week to have a look at his own solar heating system, excellent!! He seems like a really nice guy, and fun to talk to, so we'll look forward to developing that relationship soon.

So, after waving goodbye to Sergio and sweeping up the 'snow' (I must have accumulated about 25kg of the stuff), it was already time to repair to the patio for lunch - see what I mean about time flying?!

After lunch, I was in need of another trip to Obi for more filler and there was a long list of other items that we now needed for the apartment too: a loo roll holder, a towel holder, a new bathroom bin, a new loo brush, a shower curtain, some wood to make a new frame around the shower room window to tidy that up (Helen's biggest aggravation), a pole to hang coat hangers on in the newly constructed wardrobe... the list went on.

Helen jumped at the chance to come along and see the outside world, so off we went. We've noticed that leaving the house feels like a bit of a treat, something we really quite enjoy and we miss it if we don't do it for a couple of days - not because we're glad to leave all the work behind, but I think because being up here on this hill of ours, it's all too easy to forget where you actually are. The sun is out most days, so it's fairly obvious you're not in England, and the old stone buildings in the village below are something of a giveaway too, but still, without close-up contact with people or other scenery, we tend to forget where we are, so going out kind of has the feeling of being on holiday - because all of a sudden you actually are in Italy! Simple things!

By the time we got back (complete with lawn mower that Helen snuck into the trolley - that definitely wasn't on my shopping list), there was only an hour or so of the working day left. Helen went back to her office for another hour and I tinkered around in the apartment putting some of the new fixtures in the shower room.

Things are starting to take shape quite nicely now:

Clearly the ceiling needs finishing and re-painting (white).

The curtains need adding to the wardrobe - oh and the bed needs putting back in.

There will be a shower curtain on those curtain rings....

When Helen logged off for the day she came down to the apartment to find me, excited about the prospect of getting the shiny new lawn mower out of its box and putting it to work on the lawns (which have gone somewhat out of control since their last haircut a couple of weeks ago). After her previous attempt to trim the lawns with a strimmer she was excited to give them an altogether neater look with the new lawn mower.

I duly started unpacking and assembling the mower. A fine looking thing:

Certainly looks the job.

Unfortunately, I had to break it to Helen that she would have to keep a lid on her excitement for at least another day - the one thing the lawn mower did not come with was a cable. In fact, I'm not even sure where to find the sort of plug/cable combo needed for this thing:

You what?!

Just like everything else we're discovering with this house, nothing is ever straightforward!

So that was our day, a bit more progress in the apartment - we must be running out of backward steps down there now, so each new day should (I hope) bring it forward in leaps and bounds.

Happy halfway through the week, folks!

A new day, a new outlook

So after a down-in-the-dumps day yesterday, you'll be pleased to hear that today was a turnaround. Helen arose for her usual exercise session at 6:30am while I opted to sleeeeep some more. I didn't dare wake up in the same state as I was in yesterday, so reasoned that if I wasn't short on sleep, then there was nothing more I could do to help myself today. So, after rolling out of bed at 8:30am, I eased into breakfast while Helen was already busy at her computer - she came in to ask how I was feeling, but seemed almost worried to ask the question.

After placating her, I went to work in the apartment again, not completely sure how the day was going to go. However, an hour into it, I was flying - and relieved to be back to 'normal'. Not only did I feel back to normal but I was singing along to Eminem (where possible) - suffice to say, I enjoyed my morning working towards getting the apartment bedroom finished. I decided I would tackle things in the same way as I would walking or cycling up a mountain - there's a famous quote somewhere about it (probably one of the Dalai Lama's nuggets - I tried to find it on the web but gave up, life's too short), anyway it goes along the lines of: 'don't look at the top of the mountain which seems unachievable, just keep your focus on the next step'. I think that it was looking at the top of the mountain (everything that needs to be done) yesterday that tipped me over the edge.

So a productive day in the world of refurbishment ensued: face plates cleaned off and fitted to all the sockets and switches, mastic applied to wall and floor junctions, grout reapplied both to the shower cubicle and the tiled shelf in bedroom, a new mirror hung in the bathroom, two canvas prints hung in the bedroom, a curtain pole hung in the bedroom and the tiled floor (which was filthy) scrubbed on hands and knees!

New mirror (well, re-purposed from old spare room in Abingdon).

Re-grouted.

Cleaned.

We're now so close to having the apartment bedroom finished that I can actually visualise it. Of course, it's always the finishing off bits that take the time, but by the end of the week the bedroom should be done and just in need of a chest of drawers. The bathroom won't be far behind either, and by the time next week is out I should be able to focus all of my attention on the living room and kitchen, just in time for the kitchen's arrival. What a difference a good night's sleep makes!!

In the middle of all of that activity was, of course, our lunch break - baked potato with tuna mayo today for a change. It did start to rain halfway through lunch (the second time that's happened since being here), but it was still warm, so we ate under an umbrella again. It was good for Helen to be out in the open after a long, chilly, dark morning in her cave, so being the gent that I am, I ate one-handed and held the umbrella with the other (a perfect example of true love if ever there was one!).

At around 4pm, Helen appeared in the apartment wearing baggy trousers, an old university rowing top and wellies. Safe to say she'd finished the day job for today and, having been keen to do some outside work, had been getting stuck into trying to clear the terrace immediately above the house, where we have planned to put our vegetable plot. We'd not touched it since last week, and although we know we've missed the planting window for a lot of things already this year, we're working towards a winter crop of kale and cabbage now - how's that for forward planning?!

When Helen appeared, it was because she had been savaged by flies. Tiny kamikaze flies. I guess they were all so annoyed at having their homes destroyed by a giant in flowery wellies, they had taken it upon themselves to fly directly into her eyes, up her nose and into her ears! After she'd doused herself in chemicals and readied herself for round two, I decided it time to call time on my day job and go and join in the 'fun'.

We both set about it at full speed in the late afternoon sun, with a good selection of tools from the man cave, but it wasn't long before I was reaching for one that was petrol powered. With the hedge trimmer started we each went at it all guns blazing, sweat pouring off us and flies bouncing off us like we were some kind of target being used for practice. I'm happy to say they stayed away from my nose and ears, but did seem to like my right eye for some reason - got 5 in there during the course of the activity - and on more than one occasion I looked up to see Helen standing in a cloud of them. It reminded me of the pig-pen from Charlie Brown - not an attractive comparison, but meant in the right way you understand, reduced to this purely from a tough afternoon's toiling. The flies certainly took a bit of a shine to her though (either that or their motivation was pure hatred for her having pulled up the grass they has been snoozing in).

This is what my wife looked like this afternoon. Except wearing wellies. With bits of tissue paper stuffed in her ears to stop any more flies going in...

We gave up at around half past six, having both hit the wall. We are still nowhere near having a vegetable patch, but definitely much closer than we were.

The hedge trimmer worked wonders on the long grass on the sides of the tier.

The veg patch is *starting* to take shape.

We sat on the patio and soaked up the last of the day's sun before retiring indoors so that I could write a blog post while my lovely wife cooked yet another dinner involving melanzane, zucchini and peperone.

Judging by the rate our potted veg are growing outside it wont be long before we will be eating our own veg!

A real, actual aubergine!

Subdued

It took an alarm clock to wake us both up this morning,but we hauled ourselves out of bed just after 6.30am and while I went to try out my new exercise circuit courtesy of Virginia (thanks V!), Stuart got his bicycle out of the shed, donned his lycra and set off for the first bike ride he'd done in many months.

I must admit I was a little nervous waving him off - what with there being precious little mobile phone signal in the area, and none at the house, I was worried in case anything happened he couldn't get in touch. Of course, I needn't have worried, and a while later he reappeared at the end of the drive, having tested out a route.

As we both headed back for the house to shower and get ready for the day we were met with wafts of the most wonderful smell of baking bread. Stuart had put a loaf of his bread into the bread maker last night, and set the timer to start baking early in the morning so that it would be ready at around 8am. This was the first loaf he's had a chance to bake since being reunited with the bread machine last weekend - and it looked (and tasted) every bit as good as it smelled:

There are few smells better than freshly baked bread!

Our next challenge on the baking front is to attempt to master a gluten-free loaf - while gluten-free products over here are available, the range is somewhat limited, the bread somewhat rubbish and all of it very expensive!

After breakfast we each headed to work - I had a long day of office work ahead of me, and Stuart headed to the apartment to put on another coat of paint and start removing the old grout from between the tiles in the shower room.

Unfortunately, today was not the best day for awkward, frustrating tasks (each coat of paint flakes off in the same areas due to damp in the walls, and Stuart is deeply offended by the state of the tiling in the bathroom and would ideally like to rip the whole thing out and start again, but we're limited both by finances and by timing - we were forwarded another enquiry about a booking for the apartment this morning, which would only be six weeks away if it comes off), and a big build up of tiredness really took its toll on Stuart today.

In the end he threw the towel in with the apartment and resorted to clearing some space in the woodshed by doing some runs to the communal bins - this means you can now at least move in the woodshed and we can go back to using it as a convenient short cut from the front door to the car (and vice versa), which is particularly handy when unloading lots of shopping.

We eventually ended the day at around 5.30pm sitting on the terrace and feeling rather overwhelmed by everything. No job seems straightforward, there is so very much to do, so little time to do it in (with a deadline for when our first paying guests are due to arrive), and we are mindful of whittling away our finance reserves.

In the apartment there's the problem of the damp in the walls, the bathroom needs re-grouting, the doors are awful and need replacing, the lock definitely needs replacing as it barely works now, the kitchen needs building (when it's delivered), shelves need putting up, furniture needs buying, linens need buying, garden furniture needs buying, a pizza oven/BBQ needs building, the lawn needs tidying, a screen needs putting up to hide the rubble from the old lean-to, and a screen putting up to divide our lawn from guests lawn for privacy. Oh, and we need to get residency sorted, get a new car, get the old one back to the UK, fit fly screens at the other windows in the house, sort out the office room so that it can be used as a bedroom mid-July, and we haven't even STARTED talking about the garden, the tiers, the olives, the solar panels, the heating...

Still, on the bright side, we worked out that we have a walnut tree in the garden:

Yay, walnuts! (If the pine martens don't get to them first).

A little bit of holiday

This morning when I woke up I could see from behind out towel-curtain that the sun was shining, and I mean properly shining. I felt like I was waking up on the first day of a holiday. We got up and had a very civilised and leisurely breakfast in the warm, warm sunshine on the patio. It was just like being on holiday.

We quickly decided that we would treat today as a holiday and go out and do some sightseeing in our valley - all in the name of research for our website, but equally as a day off from household chores.

I'd put a load of washing on when I got up - we realised last week (thanks to another handy tip from Sue) that electricity is less expensive between 7pm and 7am on weekdays, and at weekends - so I'd saved up a load of washing to get done at the cheaper weekend rate. We decided to wait for the washing machine to finish doing its thing so we could get the clothes out on the line to start drying before we went out, so while we waited, I turned my hand to a bit of weeding, while Stuart decided to get our bikes out to give them some TLC after their journey across Europe.

A happy boy and his bicycle.

There's something so satisfying about pulling a weed out complete with its root. I wonder if dentists feel the same about pulling teeth...

Once we'd got the laundry sorted we grabbed the camera and a local map and, feeling just like holiday-makers, headed out in the car.

For the first time since arriving here more than three weeks ago, we turned right out of the drive and headed uphill towards the village of Vellano.

We stayed in Vellano when we came over to Italy on our initial house hunting trip, so we knew it was a lovely little village with some spectacular views.

Vellano - this is the village we can see from the end of our drive.

Vellano didn't disappoint. We parked up and took in the stunning views of the valley, before climbing our way up the steep cobbled streets into the centre of the village.

Beautiful Vellano.

Vellano clock tower.

The views from here are stunning.

After a wander around Vellano and snapping some photographs for our website, we got back in the car to drive onto the next village. This time we headed back down the road, past our gate, and took the next turning off on the right from our house to take us onto the road that heads up through the middle of the valley.

Our valley is known as the Svizzera Pesciatina, or Pescia's Switzerland, and is famous for the 'dieci castelli', or ten castles - ten small villages that each has a castle (or remains thereof). Our closest village, Pietrabuona, is the first of the dieci castelli, with Vellano another one, and the next on our list was the pretty village of Sorana.

This was another village that we've visited before - in fact, we came very close to buying an unfinished newbuild house in Sorana, so again, we knew to expect pretty views and another lovely little quiet village. Sorana didn't disappoint either!

Pretty Sorana.

More lovely views from Sorana.

While we were wandering around Sorana we spotted a little tabby cat. We called it to see if it would come over to us. The little cat was as friendly as anything and rewarded our stroking with a very loud purr. Having been without our own cats for well over a month now, I think it made us both realise how much we miss their furry little faces.

(Mum, Dad, please don't show this picture to Lucca and Florence!)

By the time we'd wandered the cobbled streets of Sorana (and had gone to check on the house that we almost bought - it's still there, still half-built), our tummies were starting to rumble as it was nearing 1pm.

Since we were 'on holiday', we decided not to attempt to do any more sightseeing on an empty stomach and instead to head back home for a relaxing lunch and some wine in the sunshine.

Now that's what I call a holiday.

While we were eating lunch we decided to try to find out once and for all what some of our flying beasties are - as well as the enormous hornets our washing keeps being plagued by, we have some very large black buzzing creatures that seem to enjoy collecting pollen. On closer inspection they appeared to be very large black bees. After consulting with our book on the fauna of the area, we decided they might be violet carpenter bees:

A violet carpenter bee?

While looking at what was around, we also spotted this magnificent fellow - the closest we could find to it in the book is a Norfolk Hawker dragonfly (Norfolk? Really??):

Norfolk hawker dragonfly?

After checking up on the local wildlife, and having enjoyed a lovely relaxing morning and a lovely relaxing lunch, we somehow drifted back into household chores - we just can't seem to help ourselves!

I started by painstakingly reassembling all of our garden furniture that has been shipped from the UK, and then moved on to weeding the patio area next to the barbeque.

A couple of hours later - garden furniture.

Look - NO WEEDS!

Meanwhile, Stuart started assembling the storage unit we bought from Ikea yesterday.

Both his job and my jobs turned out to be pretty hard going in the end, and our lovely relaxing day ended up being not so relaxing after all.

However, we do have a lovely tidy cupboard/shelving unit and a much, much tidier living room to show for it (it will be even tidier when we eventually go back to get the cupboard doors...)

Tidy!!!

We ended the day with a glass of wine sitting at our newly reassembled garden table - tired, but pleased with what we achieved and feeling all the better for having had at least a morning's worth of 'holiday'.

Back to work in earnest tomorrow. It's a bank holiday here in Italy, but I have office work to do, and Stuart has more painting to do in the apartment.

Roll on next weekend!