Tumultuous Tuesday

On paper, today should have been a run-of-the mill day with a short blog post to follow. However, as you'll no doubt know by now (we certainly do), things are rarely that straightforward!

With the aid of my new alarm clock, I was up and out of bed before 7am today, and more importantly before my wife (even if only by a matter of minutes)! Jet lag aside, this must be the first time I've managed that since moving here.

As I packed my gear into the car to head out for a day's strimming, Helen was setting up for her exercise session and she was just finishing as I pulled away in the car, after having spent 45 minutes checking my emails and catching up on social media.

I was very pleased to find absolutely NO horse flies when I arrived for my day's work today - that, combined with a cooler day, seemed like it would make for a pleasant day's strimming.

And so it was until late morning when I was interrupted by a couple of guys who had opened the gate to the driveway, parked and then walked down towards the house and announced their presence by shouting at me.

I soon realised that they had been invited, as they seemed to think I was Gary (which, clearly, I'm not). Gary should have been there working with me today, but as yet there had been no sign of him, so I greeted the guys and told them that Gary wasn't here. One guy said something about the swimming pool, and then the other told me - in perfect English with a hint of London: 'Gary said he was going to meet us here to talk about the swimming pool'. His perfect English completely surprised me, which put a smile on his face and he said 'I made a surprise then didn't I?'! Turns out he (Donato) was born in Puglia, in the south of Italy, but moved to Crawley with his parents and grew up there - he even worked at Gatwick airport for a while before the whole family moved back to settle around here in 1980.

We had a great chat while Donato absent-mindedly squashed chestnuts with his feet and ate them (raw) and told me how rusty his English was. Our conversation covered where I live, where he now lives having built his own house, where his colleague lives, where Bob (or Jim) the Australian lives in Pietrabuona Alto, along with a load of other foreigners the pair of them have worked for. Donato now lives near Monte Carlo and has insisted we pay him a visit next time we're passing.

Once the pair of them had looked at the pool and measured up to replace the decking, they left me to my strimming.

Several more hours of strimming later, it was time to load the car with more surplus wood from the driveway to take home and go back down the valley to see what Helen had been up to today - with no credit on our mobile (another long story, and another issue to fix), I hadn't been able to call to find out how she was. Having said that, I couldn't have done regardless as the house landline is still not working, despite Sue having called Telecom Italia on our behalf to report the fault when we were away.

Firewood!

Helen had a busy day of her own, but with fewer visitors (we're still waiting for the return visit of the police officer who came while we were away and who said he would return after the 29th - how long after?, we're starting to wonder!) A combination of Virus Bulletin work, a bit of garden tidying, guest information pack updating and paint touching up in the apartment filled her day, so nothing too exciting.

What was exciting, however, was that I was due to collect my new chainsaw at 18:30 this evening, so at 18:15, I hopped into the car with cheque book in hand... only to find that the car wouldn't start. Again! (Haven't we been here before?!). I tried numerous times using both methane and petrol, but nothing changed. The starter motor turned happily, but it just wouldn't fire and I eventually had to concede defeat before I flattened the battery trying.

This was ENORMOUSLY frustrating. It definitely seems to be a problem requiring a mechanic - there's no hope of us getting it started ourselves - and we had plans to use the car in the morning. We have apartment guests arriving at lunchtime, and we need to get a few items from the supermarket in preparation. (Not to mention looking further ahead to the weekend when we have important visitors to pick up from the airport - let's not dwell on that for the time being though, with any luck it will all be fixed by then, and failing that we'll have got ourselves a hire car.)

After calming down and gathering my thoughts, I emailed Sue to see if she had the details of the mechanic they used some time back. As a Plan B, I also Googled to see if I could find one nearby. Lo and behold, there seemed to be one in Pietrabuona! I couldn't imagine where, as it's such a small village and we've walked around most of it - I strongly suspected this was an error on the part of Google maps, knowing what the Italians are like with their online presence and how out of date it tends to be if present at all.

I decided to call the number anyway. It rang! Someone answered! I was a bit unprepared, but managed to make the guy on the other end understand that our car would not start. He said he couldn't look this evening but could tomorrow - or at least that's what I THINK he said. He seemed a touch grumpy and probably didn't appreciate an Englishman phoning him, making an awful attempt at his beautiful language down the phone at nearly 7pm. Anyway, I persevered and agreed I would call him back tomorrow morning.

So tomorrow could well bring a trip to the supermarket on bicycles. I can't imagine how much fun it will be cycling back up that hill with a rucksackload of shopping...

Feeling re-aligned

Today started out bright and early for me - or rather, it started out dark and early. With the seasons marching on towards the end of the year, we aren't seeing proper daylight until around 7.15am at the moment, so when I got up at 6.45am, it was in darkness. Thankfully, Stuart has rigged up a light in the woodshed as well as an outdoor 'exercise light' in my exercise area(/the bike repair area) for the winter months, so I was able to find my way out through the woodshed without tripping over anything or falling flat on my face. While the light is enormously helpful in the not-falling-over and not-walking-into-anything respect, one respect in which it is less helpful (for me, at least) is that it illuminates and highlights the enormous cobwebs (and their inhabitants) in the woodshed. Shudder.

Anyway, once I had negotiated the cobwebs and set my kit up, I pedalled away on the turbo trainer, watching my surroundings gradually appear from out of the darkness, and by the time I'd finished 45 minutes later, it was broad daylight.

After a shower and change, I settled down to my computer to get a couple of hours of work done. Sue was due to come for coffee and a catch-up mid-morning, so I put in a solid couple of hours until then. Stuart, meanwhile, was in the apartment by 9.15am - with guests arriving on Wednesday, he planned to do a big tidy and clean up in there today, leaving us just the finishing touches and a final once-over to do on Wednesday morning. With the apartment not having been occupied since early August, a number of beasties had moved in and made it their home - as is the way with buildings of this age in the countryside (particularly those that until recently had very poorly fitting doors) - and a fair bit of dust had accumulated (not least the sawdust from the fitting of the new doors). So, Stuart went in armed with a Henry vacuum, a box of cleaning products, sponges and cloths.

Come 11.10am I heard voices, signalling Sue's arrival and the time for me to down tools for a social break. It has been over two weeks since we last saw the Phillipses (before our trip to Seattle), so there was a lot of catching up to do. We left Stuart to his cleaning in the apartment (he was merrily whistling along to 1980s tunes on the CD player, and seemed happy enough, especially when I took him a cup of tea), while Sue and I sat on the patio with a pot of coffee and had a good old chat. It was lovely to catch up with Sue - after coming back from our week the States I'd felt a bit disorientated and not quite in the groove with life here, and while that feeling gradually dissipated over the last week (I think a lot of it was due to tiredness and jet lag), it was really good to see Sue, hear that she had had similar experiences, and more importantly, just feel a lot more in tune with things simply by chatting about every day life (chickens, geese, olives, vegetables, wood cutting, language struggles... etc.).

By the time Sue left, I felt suitably re-aligned with Italian rural life. What's more, very excitingly (if a little scarily), Sue has managed to persuade an Italian friend of hers to give me/her Italian lessons. Gulp! Sue has suggested that she and I have lessons together, which is a wonderful plan, but I think I will also need some on my own, just to get my confidence up and to attempt to reach anything even vaguely approaching Sue's level. It all sounds great fun and completely terrifying all at the same time, but I am SO grateful, and if it means I am eventually able to communicate a little better and feel a little more relaxed and less ignorant (rather than constantly feeling on edge in case someone tries to talk to me/I need to talk to someone), it will be a massive weight off my shoulders.

It was time for lunch after Sue had gone, so Stuart and I ate our lunch on the patio in the beautiful sunshine - it was another lovely day today, starting off with a distinctly autumnal nip in the air, but warming up to a summery mid-20s with a gentle breeze for most of the day.

After lunch it was back to the computer for a short while for me, while Stuart strimmed the edges of the lawn (after I'd done the mowing yesterday) and the terraces in Goose Island.

We had an appointment with Andrea, the geometra, at 6.30pm this evening and a few errands to run, so at 5.30pm we headed for town.

Our first stop was the gas shop where we took our two empty gas bottles to exchange for two full ones. Next, we parked up in the main piazza and walked to the shop that sells a comprehensive array of electronic items - from alarm clocks and toasters to iPods, gaming devices, hair straighteners, bread makers, ice cream makers and mobile phones. In cleaning the apartment this morning, Stuart had discovered that the toaster down there did not actually work, so we needed to buy a new toaster, and... finally, after five months of going without one, an alarm clock for Stuart.

Electronic items duly purchased, it was still only 6pm, so we headed for one of the cafés in the square for a cup of coffee to fill the time. We each had a caffè ginseng - an espresso shot flavoured with 'ginseng', I've no idea what the 'ginseng' flavouring actually consists of, other than something very sweet and delicious tasting. Anyway, since we each had downed our tiny thimblefuls of coffee within approximately 3 minutes, we decided to have another round. We thought we ought to stop at two though, as it was already gone 6pm and after last week's disturbed sleep patterns we weren't prepared to risk the potential effects of strong coffee any later into the evening. Besides which, it was by now time to head across town to Andrea's office.

Andrea greeted us as warmly as ever, and we sat down to hear what he had to report from his meetings with the comune regarding permission to cut down our fir trees and our plans for an extension. First, he let us know that there is no problem with us cutting down bog standard fir trees. While cypress trees and Italian stone pine trees are protected (along with chestnut trees and olive trees), bog standard firs are fair game. This was good news - although things are not quite as straightforward as that as we will need to find a professional tree cutter to come and take them down for us, not only because of their very large size but also because of their close proximity to the house and to the electricity cable that supplies the house. Still, Andrea told us that if we couldn't find anyone, he would be able to make some calls and put us in touch with someone who would be able to do it.

Next, he told us what he had found out about the extension. His main finding was regarding the size by which we would be allowed to extend the house. Taking into account the footprint of the old lean-to/storage building that used to stand at the end of the house, he had worked out that we would be able to add an extra 40 square metres to the house, over two floors. This would be enough for a compact, but comfortable holiday apartment. This threw us into something of a quandary as, imagining that the amount floor space we would be able to add would be tighter than this, we had pretty much decided between us that we would revise our plans and instead build an agricultural building for use as storage and as a workshop - which would both be of greater use to us at the moment and less expensive to construct without the added cost of fixtures and fittings. What we asked Andrea in the end (which is something else we had talked about between us) was whether we could build the extension for use as an agricultural building now, but with the possibility of converting it to a habitable dwelling (holiday let) at some point in the future. Andrea told us that as far as the comune is concerned, they aren't bothered about what the building is used for, so that would be fine. However, we do need to get some plans put together and submitted to the comune pretty quickly in case the special regional provision which allows us to extend our property by 20% of its total square meterage is not renewed at the end of the year.

Plans have to be approved by the comune, and by a regional office in Florence, and have to be signed off by some form of geological/seismological experts in Pistoia. Once all the plans have been approved (assuming they are, of course), we would then have three years in which to complete the construction.

The meeting with Andrea was over within the space of about 20 minutes, but with the whole thing being conducted in Italian, it felt pretty exhausting. Andrea does speak very slowly and clearly for us, which is great, but we both thought that he had speeded up by the end of the meeting and our flagging brains struggled to keep up. Anyway, the next step is for Andrea to take some more detailed measurements and draw up a set of plans that he can submit to the comune.

After the meeting, we came straight home in the quickly fading light and set straight about our evening chores: washing up, blogging, preparing dinner, test-driving the new toaster, showering and finally a bit of TV to wind down with.

Sunny Sunday

Breakfast on the patio this morning was a slow sunny affair with plenty of strong coffee while we chatted, soaking up the amazing view. We got lost in the view for about an hour today looking at the various isolated houses on the mountainside opposite and using our binoculars to try to work out just how you would access them by car. From our viewpoint they look like they've been dropped there from above and the only access must surely be by helicopter - it's not that way, of course, the woods surrounding us and them are very good at swallowing up the roads and hiding them from view, which only adds to the magical quality of our vista. The hard work that must have gone into building these places all those years ago is mind boggling - it really makes you wonder why they bothered in the first place, they really must have valued a good view back then!

By the time we had put away the binoculars it had already gone 11am, and we'd had a thoroughly enjoyable and relaxing morning at the perfect pace for a Sunday.

We decided to head out for an hour to see if we could find the large convent (Convento Colleviti) on the edge of Pescia. It's hard to miss, perched up on a hill, when you approach the town by car, but as yet we've not seen it up close and personal and we'd read that there are some excellent panoramic views from up there. So armed with a map, we drove through town, took a couple of wrong turns until we found the signposted road to the convent. The road was very straight, very steep and very narrow (single car width), so we were glad when we arrived without having to pass another car in the opposite direction.

It's certainly an impressive building from what we saw of it, and from the glimpse we took, the views are lovely, but we didn't get out of the car. There were a couple of old men picking olives at the entrance to car park at the front of the convent who watched us arrive with some curiosity, and the (empty) car park was in such close proximity to the convent itself that we didn't feel we should have been parking there. All in all, it was a bit odd. Not helped by the fact that our driving up the narrow road had set off a couple of very noisy dogs who continued to bark their little heads off even after we'd passed, all making us feel a little as if we weren't supposed to be there. So, after turning the car around, we decided to head along the road towards Lucca.

On numerous occasions, we had noticed a turning right off this road that is signposted with more than its fair share of brown tourist signs and had always meant to take a look at some point - so today, we did.

Almost immediately after turning off the main road we were confronted by a lovely villa proudly standing alongside the road basking in the midday sun facing due south. On the opposite side of the road was a picture-perfect field of vines, with a view looking back towards Pescia and our valley. These views alone were worth the exploratory trip!

We continued along the lanes, winding our way past vast more vineyards whose grapes had by now been picked and were probably right at that moment being squashed under the feet of an Italian farmer. (I joke, of course, I'm sure vineyards of that size have long since moved on to more speedy and industrial methods, but that seems to paint a less romantic picture in my head.)

We stopped in the village of Gragnano and admired the rather healthy looking olives on the trees there - they didn't seem to have been afflicted by the olive flies that have caused some serious devastation to many of the crops in Tuscany this year (ours included - not that ours was ever going to amount to anything!).

We rounded a bend to see some rather grand gates leading to Villa Fanini. We stopped to take a peek, but couldn't get any closer than the gates which afforded a tantalising view of the enormous villa at the end of the driveway. Villa Fanini now appears to be a very exclusive venue for weddings, parties, meetings and the like.

We drove aimlessly  around the flat, quiet roads in the area between Pescia and Lucca for a while, and it soon had me itching to come back to these roads on my bike - it's beautiful cycling country around here, that's for sure.

By the time we got home, it was nearly 2pm. Our second meal of the day was once again on the patio - the sun was at its hottest for the day, but it was just comfortable enough to sit in its full glare today and there was a lovely gentle breeze to accompany it.

After lunch, we decided to do a few little jobs around the house. I went to assemble the new portable gas heater for the apartment and test it, while Helen weeded the herb gardens. At one point, Helen shouted to me - I was indoors and ran out, all my senses alert trying to work out what was happening in case something was wrong. It took me a few seconds to grasp what she was saying - she was indicating that a car/motorbike on the road below was driving past with a loud speaker blaring: the first of many clearing the road for the cycle race happening this afternoon. We'd realised there was a cycle race in the area yesterday, when we saw lots of temporary road signs being put up for 'Gran Premio Ezio del Rosso'. We'd Googled it once we got home, but the website we ended up on was vague at best about the route - however, we were were pretty certain that it would be coming past our house at some point.

We grabbed the camera and ran along the drive to find a few people already parked at our gates, having obviously been driving up the road and made to stop by the race officials. Soon enough, the police and team cars soon came tearing down the hill, followed by dozens of cyclists. It made for a great 5 minutes of excitement, and once it was all over, we bounced back along the drive feeling very pleased that we'd got to see this without even having to leave the house (as such).

The rest of the afternoon saw Helen doing lots more weeding and mowing the lawn, and me trying to figure out how all of the somewhat inadequate outside security lighting was wired so that I could re-jig things a little and fit a nice new A+ rated LED security light in place of a costly halogen one with a view to replacing all the halogen lights with LED units should this one perform suitably.

We finished the day with a beer and nuts on the patio before yet again retiring indoors to blog, shower and cook dinner. Altogether a very satisfying Sunday!

Is it really October?!

After the (non)sleeping shenanigans of the last few days, I was nervous about going to bed last night. Despite falling asleep on the sofa halfway through 'Mock the Week' (darn it!!) at around 9pm, I refused to go to bed, and instead mustered all my energies to stay awake until Stuart started to feel ready for bed. We carried on watching TV, having some glasses of wine, and at periodic intervals I asked him 'are you tired yet?' ('no'), 'now are you tired?' ('no')... until eventually, at midnight, he decided that he might feel able to sleep.

Thankfully, there were no mosquitoes to disrupt our sleep last night, and we only had to share the bed with one of the cats last night, as Florence decided to stay downstairs. As a result, we both had a more or less decent night's sleep! Ha! At last!!

Having had a fairly late night, and still making up for lost sleep earlier in the week, I struggled to get up early in the morning, and it wasn't until just after 9am that I padded downstairs in my gym kit to go and throw some kettlebells around. I almost didn't bother, given how late is was, but decided I ought to show willing after only having got back into my routine a couple of days ago.

By the time I went to put my kit away, Stuart was up and preparing to drink coffee on the patio so, after a quick shower and change, I joined him and we had breakfast in the sunshine looking across the valley. We still have to keep pinching ourselves and reminding each other that we're eating breakfast al fresco - and wearing shorts, t-shirts and sandals - in October. Several different people who live locally had told us on many occasions that autumn is a lovely time of year here, but we hadn't really been prepared for quite how lovely the last few weeks have been. It might rain solidly now for the rest of the month (I hope not, as we have important visitors coming a week tomorrow, and more after them!), but even if it did, we'd have already had a lovely autumn.

We were undecided as to what to do with the day - I think we're both still finding that we haven't quite got back into the groove of things over here since coming back from the States, and the long night's sleep had left us feeling a bit dopey and indecisive (more so than usual). Since we couldn't think of what we'd really like to do if we were to take the whole day off, we decided we should use the time to run some useful errands - starting with going to buy some roofing for the goose house, some guttering and a water butt.

We started by trying to find out the Italian words for 'guttering' (grondaia) and 'water butt'. Well, this is one of the many situations in which Google Translate falls down. THANK GOODNESS we didn't go into a shop and ask for 'culo acqua' - which translates quite literally as 'water bum/bottom/backside/derrière/buttocks...' you get the picture (or rather, we did when we Googled it). Turns out that what we were actually after was more like 'contenitore raccolta acqua piovana' (container for collecting rain water)...

Anyway, armed with the correct terminology, we set off in the car - we first tried some local builders' yards, but they were closed. so there was nothing else for it than to head to Obi. We were surprised to find sections of corrugated bitumen roofing sheets (exactly what we needed) before we even entered the shop (on display outside the shop), which was a good start. However, that was  pretty much where our Obi luck ran out - we scoured the shop for water butts but found nothing, and couldn't even find any guttering. Stuart even stopped to ask a shop assistant, showing him a photograph of a water butt on his phone to aid his description, but the assistant just smiled and shook his head. So, in the end, we left Obi with three sheets of corrugated bitumen roofing, a box of roofing nails, some wire and a motion-sensor LED security light.

I suggested we could try Brico for water butts/guttering, but the nearest Brico to Obi (in Montecatini Terme) was closed for lunch, and with the other branch in Altopascio, we decided to head home and go out again after lunch in order to combine a trip to Mercatone Uno with a trip to Brico in Altopascio.

Back at home, we ate lunch on the patio with the umbrella down. The sun was shining hot and bright, but today was the first day that the temperature, while very warm, was comfortable enough (just) to sit out without putting the umbrella up. There was a lovely gentle breeze, which took the edge off the intensity of the heat - all in all a beautiful day.

After lunch we got ready to head to Mercatone Uno. You may recall that, way back in June, we were let down by Mercatone Uno when they failed to supply the kitchen we had ordered in time for us to fit it before our first set of apartment guests arrived. Instead of refunding the deposit we had paid for the kitchen, they gave us a voucher for the same amount to spend in the shop - with an expiry date of 15th October. Said voucher has languished in Stuart's bag ever since then, and only every now and then have we remembered that we really need to use it! With the deadline looming, today seemed like a good day.

There were two items we knew we wanted to spend the voucher on: some bathmats for the apartment and an office chair for Stuart. However, with these in the trolley we were still €100 short of the total value of the voucher. We added a shower curtain and a full size blanket for the apartment (in case it gets cold in there in the autumn/winter months) to the trolley, as well as two packets of cat treats. In the UK, these are known as 'Dreamies' and our cats LOVE them. We hadn't seen them anywhere in Italy before, but we spotted them in Mercatone under their Italian name 'Catisfaction' (quite how that is any more Italian than 'Dreamies' we're not sure).

So, off we trundled with our trolley load and our voucher to the tills. The lady rang everything through... including a special €20 discount (today was discount day).. which meant that we were still €10 short of our voucher value! We quickly decided to top up our purchases with a handful more bags of 'Catisfaction', so I sprinted back to the pet food aisle and literally emptied it of cat treats, leaving us with just €2.90 to pay in cash. What a bizarre shopping trolley that must have seemed to the other people in the queue.

Our next stop was Brico. Once again, we scoured the shop for water butts, but to no avail. We did find some guttering, but decided that it wasn't worth buying any until we worked out whether or not we can find a water butt. We were about to leave the shop when we spotted a display of portable gas heaters at the front. This was something else that had been on our shopping list - we had been planning to visit a shop in Pescia that sells gas appliances, but the prices of the heaters in Brico were cheaper than those we'd seen in the local shop. So, after an age trying to work out which one we wanted (we couldn't for the lives of us work out why the ticket information for each of them was talking about infrared as well as gas), we took the plunge and left the shop with another item ticked off our to-do list!

By the time we'd left Brico it was about 4.30pm, so we headed straight home in order to try and fit in a small amount of work before darkness fell.

On arriving back at the house, our first job was to put a second coat of wood stain on the goose house. Once that was done, we turned our attention to the roof. We laid the corrugated bitumen - which, by the way, is green although it's not the 'GREEN roof' à la Kevin McCloud/Grand Designs that we had been contemplating (we realised that such a roofing choice would be both costly and high maintenance - and with geese, vegetables and olives to tend, terraces to strim, wood to cut and cats to care for, we decided that the last thing we needed was, well, a needy roof). Stuart then stood on a pair of ladders with me anchoring them at the bottom and nailed the roof down, meaning that the goose house is now complete!

With that done, we retired to the patio for a celebratory glass of beer until it was too chilly to stay outside any longer. We came back indoors to wash up (roll on the day when we can fit a dishwasher into our kitchen and have our own water source/heat source to be able to afford to run it!), update the blog and start cooking dinner. Stuart is in charge of dinner tonight - and is happily preparing a mushroom risotto while supping a bottle of cider that Louise and Dan brought from the UK for us. He had forgotten that the ciders were stashed in the bottom of the fridge - the look of sheer delight on his face when he re-discovered them was quite a picture. Little things!

October also seems to be a favourite time of year for butterflies - we spotted no end of them in the garden today.

This one narrowly escaped the paws of our cats...

It was a conspiracy!

It was a conspiracy. A conspiracy against me sleeping!

As predicted, I was not ready for for bed at the same time as Helen last night, and while she was nodding off on the sofa shortly after 9pm, I was still wide awake. After convincing Helen to retire to bed for a good night's sleep, I stayed up not wanting to head to bed until I was convinced that I'd fall asleep without hindrance. Yet, after watching the NFL highlights show and reading a few more pages of my book ('The moneyless manifesto' by Mark Boyle) I was still no sleepier and it was gone midnight, so decided I should give sleep a go.

At 2:15am, still awake thanks to my ever present friend jet lag, with two cats sleeping close up against my legs, heart palpitations in full swing and a mosquito dive-bombing me, I angrily got up to leave Helen and the cats in bed and went to the office to stare at my tablet PC for another couple of hours until I eventually fell into a fitful sleep. The world seemed to be conspiring against me and it felt as if  I'd never have a decent sleep again. Helen came in at 9am after her workout, at which point I stomped upstairs for another hour's sleep until Helen arrived (on my instruction) to wake me with a cup of tea (not on my instruction).

It took me another hour and 20 minutes to drag myself out of bed. I'm not usually one for just lying in bed (well, not since my teens anyway), but that was all could face and I was trying to decide what job I could tackle - even the tiniest of jobs felt unachievable. I hadn't yet realised that I was having a bad thyroid day, although I guess the palpitations should have been a warning.

I finally dragged myself out of bed and promptly slumped on the sofa, browsing the web for inspiration for our eventual kitchen revamp, so it wasn't completely wasted time, but could definitely be classed as procrastination.

Lunch(/breakfast) was under the shade of the patio umbrella. It was another beautiful day today - hot, but a couple of degrees cooler than of late, making it a very comfortable temperature. All I could think about was finishing my breakfast, getting one of the sun loungers from the guest patio and going back to sleep in the sun.

I didn't though, and instead the pair of us headed out to the supermarket as we realised we had missed a couple of vital bits on Tuesday in our attempt at shopping while jet lagged. It was around 2pm by the time we arrived, but thankfully it was still nice and quiet in Esselunga and as we didn't need much, were in and out quickly.

I caught sight of my face in the rear view mirror while leaving the car park park and was shocked to see how rough I was looking. I looked like I'd literally just woken up, one eye more closed than the other, with a full set of luggage beneath each eye and still sporting bed hair. I didn't care, but it was poor Helen I was feeling sorry for, who must have been wondering exactly what she'd married.

Once we got home, Helen went to work on finishing the fencing on Goose Island and I decided I could at least wave a brush (dipped in wood stain) at the goose house - no matter how rubbish I was feeing, at least I'd ease the guilt of being lazy. After she'd finished with the fencing, Helen got another brush and came to help with the painting.

By the time 6pm chimed in, we were done for the day, the fence now finally finished and (hopefully) fox proof, and the house now with locking doors and a first coat of stain on it. We still need to fit a roof covering, sort out some form of easy access up the terraces for the geese, fit a gutter and small water butt to the back of the roof, and put in a pool. Yes, our geese will be getting a pool - a small one, but apparently it makes geese very happy, and happy birds lay more eggs!

We make no apologies for yet another photo of the goose house, it's all we have for the day:

Not the colour of wood stain we would have chosen, but it was free (found in the woodshed)...

We sat on the patio with a glass of beer and a bowl of nuts for an hour before retiring indoors for dinner and hopefully a wine-induced coma on my part. I'm taking no chances and hoping to wake up with a settled thyroid. It seems that missing two nights' sleep out of eight, and messing around with medication timings because of the time difference, has just been too much - and quite probably too high a price to pay for a week's work in the States.

We now need to settle back into our rhythm and enjoy the last of the warm weather. Next week we're welcoming more paying guests, followed by Helen's Mum and Dad for a week and then Allison and Q for week after that - so we have an exciting and busy month ahead.

NOT so back in the game!

The age-old advisory phrase 'don't speak too soon', or even 'don't count your chickens before they're hatched' could well have been echoing around our house yesterday, but the pair of us were oblivious - high on the exhilaration of having got plenty achieved on Goose Island during the day, we were busy celebrating our apparent ability to show jet lag who's boss. Well, it turns out that jet lag was still very much the boss, after all.

We headed to bed feeling too tired to stay up any longer at around 10pm and went straight to sleep. Two and a half hours later - PING - we were both awake. The long and short of it is that we each fidgeted, tossed and turned, trying to get back to sleep, but to no avail. Stuart got up and went downstairs to read his book at about 2.30am, while I battled with trying to get back to sleep. I think I started to drift off again some time around 3.45am, and Stuart came back to bed to give sleep another try at some point after 4am. Suffice to say, it was not a restful night!

Naturally, by the time my alarm clock went off, I was having a lovely sleep - but, having been disappointed to have missed my opportunity to exercise yesterday morning, and feeling decidedly unfit after a week of US-sized food portions, too many fried foods and too many sweet treats, I hauled myself out of bed to face the fresh air and the turbo trainer.

I have to say that, as hard-going as I found it (my legs were starting to complain after the first two minutes), I really enjoyed my hour-long turbo training session. I don't think that is a phrase I will be repeating too often!

By the time I had finished my exercise and packed everything away, it was 9am, so I headed for the shower. Stuart appeared to be sound asleep, so I tiptoed around the bedroom so as not to wake him.

I then headed downstairs to boot up my computer and start on some work.

At 10am, I used the excuse of going to get another jumper to go back upstairs and check on Stuart - he was still sleeping soundly, and showing no signs of getting up. So I went back to my desk. At 11am, I was starting to worry a. that something else might be wrong with my husband (other than the five hours of missed sleep during the night), and b. if he was just making up for the jet-lag-induced loss of sleep, then by sleeping in he was running the risk of perpetuating the problem and being unable to sleep again tonight. So I finally went back to the bedroom and started attempting to make the gentle suggestion that he ought to get up now. I started by taking him a cup of tea. He really did look wrecked and as if he could have slept for several hours longer, but he drank his tea gratefully and eventually hauled his weary body out of bed.

We then spent a couple of hours both working in the office, with Stuart tinkering with some tweaks to our website, while I ploughed on with some editing work. Come 1pm, it was time for lunch (for me) and breakfast (for Stuart).

After the sodden and misty day that most of yesterday turned out to be, today was crystal clear, with hot sunshine and blue skies. Somehow, with the changing autumnal light, the view across to Pietrabuona at lunchtime today seemed to be extra sharp and clear, almost like the difference between watching a normal TV and watching in HD - except of course, it's real and far more vivid than anything a digital image will ever be able to produce.

This doesn't really do it justice.

After lunch, I tied up a few loose ends in the office before heading out to join Stuart on Goose Island. My job for the afternoon was finishing off tying the new chicken wire to the old and pegging in the new sections along the ground, while Stuart pushed on towards getting Goose House finished.

Come 6pm, I had had enough, so I headed indoors to make what will probably be this season's last batch of home-made pesto, while Stuart worked on until 7.30pm - by which time darkness had fallen and I was beginning to wonder as to the advisability of working with saws and hammers in the dark!

Goose House now has a new set of "upstairs" windows, and cladding all around. While we were working this afternoon, Stuart casually asked me what I thought to the idea of a green roof for Goose House. 'Er... yeah, I don't mind green,' was my reply, at which point he laughed at me and explained that he meant a green roof - as in one that has alpine plants growing on it. All very 'Grand Designs'. Kevin McCloud would be impressed.

Architect, project manager and main contractor.

We await the visit from Kevin McCloud...

So there remains the issue of the roof to ponder, and two coats of wood stain to be applied, some kind of ladder device to be built to help the geese wander up and down the terraces, yet another strim of the terraces to keep those dastardly acacias and brambles in check, and then we should finally be ready for our new neighbours...

This week has disappeared into thin air - I can't quite believe that it's Friday tomorrow already. I guess that's travelling and jet lag for you. Here's hoping for a better night's sleep tonight!

Back in the game... almost!

We had a much better sleep last night. Helen still woke regularly, but wasn't awake each time for much longer than a glance at the clock and a repositioning of herself around the cats, both of whom decided to sleep on the bed last night - very unusual! I, on the other hand, slept solidly and soundly, only waking a couple of times to move, again around the cats.

Through one half open eye I saw Helen leave the bedroom around 8.30am. It had been thundering and pouring with rain for some time, so I was a little surprised she was going outside, but it wouldn't have been the first time she'd gone out in the rain to jump around, so I closed my eyes again, only to wake up at 9.15am with Lucca shouting at me from beside me- he didn't want me to sleep, he wanted me to stroke him so that he could sleep. I couldn't placate him with a few strokes he just shouted again, so I was soon wide awake.

I decided not to get up and head for the shower yet as I thought that Helen would be coming in soon and needing one straight away, so instead I switched on my e-reader and got stuck into the last few chapters of Limitless.

When I next looked at the clock (having finished the book) it was nearly 10am!! I couldn't understand why Helen hadn't come back in. I went downstairs in my dressing gown to find her in 'civvies', working at her computer - she hadn't even gone outside! I can't say that I could blame her in the slightest - the rain really had been pounding down and the thunder clapping overhead when she got up - so I'd been wasting time in bed for nothing. I have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed the luxurious hour of reading though.

After breakfast (which was nearly lunch time), with the weather still decidedly soggy outside, I decided it was time to tackle the old freezer that we had inherited when we bought the house. Although it had been emptied, it was filthy and mouldy inside, and even Helen had been finding excuses to postpone the inevitable job of cleaning it out. However, we are now reaching a point where we hope to be more organised with our meals and the seasonal produce we'll have available to us will lend itself to cooking and freezing in batches - stews, ragu, etc. - hopefully meaning we can have some evenings without having to cook!

After removing and dismantling the drawers, giving everything two thorough washes followed by a wipe down with an antibacterial disinfectant, we now have a working freezer! A small job, and one we have wanted to do and kept talking about doing, but also the one that's been easiest to push to the back burner every time.

Although the rain had stopped by lunch time, it was still damp out, so we ate lunch was indoors, after which we both went out to work on the goose fencing for the afternoon. I think Helen was starting to feel a bit penned in after having missed her morning's exercise and having sat at her computer for 3 hours. Thankfully, now her work is a little less full-on (post conference), she has a bit more flexibility to do other things. So, as the sky started to clear and the sun attempted to break through, we both headed for Goose Island.

Today we started the anti-dig, fox-proofing part of the job. This involves fitting another chicken wire fence - with smaller holes - around the bottom of the existing stuff, but also bending it 8-10 inches outwards along the ground and pinning it into the ground. This means that when a crafty fox tries to dig at what he thinks is the bottom of the fence, he's actually trying to dig through the chicken wire that he's standing on and is thus thwarted. Well, that's the theory anyway!

After a solid three hours, we'd completed about 85% of the job - more than I'd imagined we would get done, which was great. It was one of those jobs where the second person counts as almost two, making the job much easier. So, as I went around fitting the fence, Helen followed behind me, nailing the wire to the posts, tying the new chicken wire to the existing stuff, and pegging in the sections along the ground with home-made tent pegs (made by re-purposing some wire coat hangers). When the grass and vegetation has grown through this part of the chicken wire, it will be tied in very securely so the pegs don't need to last too long.

As the light started to fade at around 6.30pm, I downed my tools to sit on the patio and start writing the blog while Helen finished off the section of fence she was working on. When Helen had downed her tools, we both took a walk to go and check for post. It seems that we're now having to do this surreptitiously, without the cats seeing us leave, as yesterday they decided they were going to be brave and followed us along the drive with no intention of stopping! Since we don't want to introduce them to the road (albeit some distance away), or lose them in the depths of the woods, we figure it best if they don't explore all the way along the drive - it's not as if they're short of land to play on after all!

So, after a slow start to the day (slower for some than for others), we ended up getting plenty achieved, so all round success. Let's hope that's the jet lag dealt with. Tomorrow, if all goes well, should see Goose Island finished and ready for inhabitants... as soon as we can find some!

As the rain clouds disappear, tomorrow promises to be a beautiful day.