Make mine a half

It has been a significant couple of days, perhaps not so much for us but certainly for the civic life of Monte San Pietrangeli and definitely for the incarcerated tortoise.

If we take ourselves first: yesterday we visited La Casa dei Due Baffi with Maddalena and Claudio – the young man who painted her and Marco’s house. He was a man of few words but, judging by the quality of M&M’s walls, someone who knows what he is about. Yes, he can do the work for us; no he can’t do it until September. Can he paint the area where the kitchen will be in the interim? Maybe. What does make the waiting more than worthwhile, though, is that he said he would remove the cast iron radiators, paint them then replace them. A sainthood beckons.

Our other news is that we have finally said farewell to hire cars (we hope). This afternoon we returned the current one, the cheeky four door Smart car, to Avis in Civitanova. We have built up quite a rapport with the staff and fully expect an invitation to their Christmas do – after all, we have probably paid for it single handedly.

Talking of dos, this weekend sees what is probably the social highlight of the year in MSP. You can forget the horseless palio and the festa of wild herbs; what everyone has been waiting for is the five-day beer festival. Not that it is all good news as the venue is the campeggio just across the way from the Stefoni house where the bar Chupito is situated, so not only is the main road lined with cars but we can say goodbye to seeing dreamland till the early hours of the morning until next Tuesday.

The campeggio has been commandeered for the duration, the entrance being sectioned of with gates so any camper vans (not that I have ever seen any mooring up there) will have to find another berth. A large stage has been built at one side, complete with rigging for speakers and lights, while at the other is a line of kiosks, some enclosed and some open. The open ones are where the food and beer is served while the closed ones house the cooking areas. At the far end, the bar is still open for business and seems to doing well for itself. The large space in the centre is filled with trestle tables and benches, which is where you sit to eat, drink and merrily watch the entertainment.

Luca (of the family) was very keen for us to go there for pizza yesterday, and so we went en masse (the ladies following later, of course) to set up stall at one of the trestle tables. Luca’s son Marco was with us, as were Romolo and Pierot and a very jolly company we were.

The organisers have a wonderful system to make sure everything runs smoothly. Near the entrance there is a booth that displays the food and drink menus (there are also smaller versions under the plastic covers on each table) and this is where you order and pay. They in return give you a small self-duplicating chit that shows what you have chosen. Drinks you have to collect yourself from the bar kiosk but for the food you give the top copy of the chit to one of the several volunteer ‘runners’ in blue beer festival polo shirts who take it to the food counter. When it is ready, they return with the food, check it against your duplicated copy and you tuck in.

I have to say that the food was good – we had a variety of antipasti (even at a beer festival, some things gastronomic are sacrosanct) then pizza – which was also all cooked by volunteers. The family rumour mill had it that somewhere behind one of the sheets, Samuel (of Fisherman’s chalet fame) was sweating over a large vat of tortellini. And you don’t even have to clean up after yourself as there are teams of youngsters with large plastic bags trawling the tables for discarded plates, beakers and boxes. There were some boys amongst these pint-sized MSP Wombles, but mostly they were girls being as self-importantly efficient as only ten year old girls can be.

As for the entertainment, we actually left before it started but not after we had sat through the sound check and shared in the bottle of limoncello that Pierot had bought from the bar. Not that we missed out on the music, what with it flooding loud and clear through our bedroom window later that night. Still, it is all in a good cause as the profits go towards various community schemes in the area, mainly involving young people I believe.

And finally, the Tortoise in the Iron Mask was eventually liberated today. Stephen has built the extension to the fencing and no longer does it have to slide around the bidet like a reptilian Torville and Dean (it does have four legs after all). Let’s hope it appreciates the trouble people have gone to and accepts that the bottom of the kitchen steps is where it’s destined to live. After all, there is always the toilet…