Busy doing nothing

Ian
Oct 23, 2015
3 min read

A whole week in one blow, which should indicate that nothing very much has happened either on the house front or in our hectic social life. I will, therefore, try to make this as painless as possible with a quick resume of seven days in the life of MSP’s premier ex-pats (not that there’s a lot of competition for that honour).

Last Saturday followed what has become the usual pattern with Stephen working on the house in the morning while I had my lesson with Lorella before hopping into the car after lunch and heading off to Stephen’s latest second hand emporium, which had some lights he’d spotted on subito.it. This one was in Osimo, about 30 kilometres north from here, and unlike Smile the goods were arranged in serried ranks, easy to see and inspect and therefore just a bit dull. In the event the lights weren’t really what we were looking for, and while there were some other items of interest nothing grabbed us enough to result in a purchase – though I would still like to find somewhere we could use the bank of old cinema seats that were going cheap(ish).

Sunday was a day at the house, spent trying to maintain some order by clearing and cleaning. I keep brushing up the dust in the hope that it means we will soon be moving in, but with floor polishing, light fitting, skirting board fixing, shower cubicle hanging, windows installing etc., it is becoming my Cleopatra act: Queen (or in my case King) of Denial…

Monday Stephen had an interesting conversation with young Debora from the factory, who, with her boyfriend Maicol who also works there, is in the process of moving into a flat in MSP. Seemingly she is in a bit of quandary: she has seen a range of 3D bedding on Amazon and was asking about how we had found ordering from the UK (no problems, as it happens) as in Italy they only have it with wolves, whereas what she really wants is the 3D dolphin option available in Britain. Maybe he should have pointed out to her that some people would be more than happy to hop into bed with a bit of a wolf… ask Red Riding Hood.

Tuesday saw the delivery of the wardrobe from Montegrenaro, which Stephen oversaw while I had my first lesson with Giordano. There were more arrivals and another first on Wednesday when the Stefano brought his Smile van with the various goodies and deposited them at La Casa dei Due Baffi and Lucia of Dream Ceramiche phoned to say that the glass for the shower had arrived. Meanwhile, I made my first joke in Italian – well, maybe ‘joke’ is going too far but it kept Flavia chuckling all afternoon. And what was this gem? It was when she remarked, as we were leaving the factory to go to the house, that we seemed to have lots of furniture, to which I wittily replied: “Yes, but we can’t sit down.” I guess you had to be there.

With the shower screen having arrived, Stephen once more took to the helm of the factory transit van to collect it as it was too large to fit in the plumber’s vehicle. After his success with the wardrobe from Civitanova this should have been a piece of cake for him but it was still a bit like chewing over baked parkin. Nevertheless, we arrived in one piece with Stephen gaining an honourable win on points - but he threw in the towel when the nice ladies asked him to reverse up to their warehouse door to make moving the parcel easier. Thankfully one of them leapt into the driver’s seat and manoeuvred into position with sickening ease. Undaunted, we took the screen home and it is waiting patiently for its imminent installation.