Men at work

I have come to the conclusion that Italian workmen really are like buses: you wait ages for one and then three come along at once. Not that I'm complaining…

This week started off auspiciously when Sabina, from the window people, phoned in the afternoon to say that all was ready and everything would definitely be fitted at the end of the week, and were we all right for Friday and Saturday. Well, yes. Things got even better when Corrado the painter also phoned to say that he and Maddalena’s father would be coming on Tuesday to start the guttering on the terrazzo. I know guttering is not painting and decorating but I wasn’t about to start asking questions. As long as it’s a good job I wouldn’t care if it were a Royal Ballet choreographer doing it.

True to their word, the two turned up on Tuesday, made great headway and finished the task on Wednesday – complete with Stephen’s dragon. A dragon, I hear you cry? Yes, as instead of a downpipe at the corner of the terrazzo to take the water away we have a spout in the shape of a dragon, complete with serrated mouth and wings, which feeds the water onto a chain where it either trickles or cascades down depending on the severity of the precipitation. Eventually, when Stephen has sourced something fabulous in stone, the water will find a home in a trough but at present it has to make do with seeping into the ground.

Wednesday also saw the arrival of Andrea the plumber to sort out the miscreant boiler, which he did with much bleeding of radiators. He then, with the arcane instruction manual in hand, entered a serious of cryptic codes into the thermostat and lo and behold we not only had hot water but also joy unbounded.

Wednesday was also San Martino, a significant day as this is when you eat chestnuts by the kilo. Why you eat chestnuts we have no idea, for any research on the saint will tell you about him being a Roman soldier and sharing half his cloak with a beggar during a snowstorm (if he’s a saint, why didn’t he give him it all?) but nowhere can we find anything about chestnuts. To celebrate, after rejecting previous invitations to join in eating at the pub with the men, this time we accepted – partly because Samuel and Zeppa were cooking up something I could actual eat and hadn’t come entirely from a butchers bran tub. And eat I did, two huge bowlsful of a remarkably fine bean and sausage soup followed by the obligatory chestnut. As there were quite a lot of people to feed, they had been roasted outside by Giordano, my student, in a Heath Robinson contraption brought out annually for this purpose that consisted of a gas burner, the tub from a washing machine and a motor to make it rotate. It may not have been state of the art (and we know how reliable those things are) but the chestnuts tasted mighty fine.

Despite filling our stomachs at the pub, on weighing himself this morning Stephen was pleased to find that he had continued to shed the pounds (we are not totally metric yet, just like Britain). This is one time when to say that he is half the man I married is actually a good thing – although the downside is he is in danger of losing his wedding ring as it has become so slack on his finger.

Maybe one of the reasons he has slimmed down, besides all the work he has been doing on the house and the fact that I’ve taken now over his mantle as the depository for the left overs at the Stefoni table (“No, I’m sure I don’t need a third helping of pasta, thank you”), is having to chase Bella and Harry around the fields surrounding La Casa dei Due Baffi when they escape. Today’s was a stunner as he spent 45 minutes with whistle, leads and treats roaming the countryside as they kept just those few steps ahead of him. Why would they want to come back when there were so many interesting smells and the promise of a rodent or two to chase down?

He did, eventually, collar them and praised them for (eventually) coming back then refused to speak to them for the rest of the afternoon. So how do they manage to get out when we have surrounded the house with fencing and blocked all possible escape routes? Easy: Bella chews the small ties securing the wire at the bottom and then pushes it open just enough to squeeze out. Harry, when he has figured out what has happened, darts after her. We have to admire her intelligence and perseverance but we really need to find a way to stop her.

In order for Stephen to regain his equilibrium, a jaunt to Corrodomnia was called for to source a variety of essentials and not quite so essentials. A quick recce round Maisons du Monde showed they had neither a suitable bath mat nor any rugs to our liking to scatter on our granito for the winter months. They did, though, have a desk that might work in the study/guest room, especially now Stephen has a vision for it after I started mentioning mirrors. We’ll think about it. The Chinese shop upstairs supplied plenty of cleaning materials for us to get stuck in at the house when the windows are finished while at the other end of the spectrum, the Lindt cafeteria turned up trumps with an Advent calendar and lots of boiled sweets. The latter are definite essentials as every Italian house I have been in has had a bowl of wrapped candies artfully positioned; not to be outdone I thought we should go for the premium end of the market just to show that the British know how to do things properly.

Elsewhere I took another step in my Italianisation when, on Stephen’s prompting knowing how cold it is going to get sometime soon, I bought one of those Michelin men padded jackets so beloved of the locals. This, ahem, is a Colmar jacket, which I am told is name all Italians want to be seen in. All I know is that I (think I) look good in it and being filled with duck down it is meltingly warm. Add to all these purchases five large plastic storage boxes on wheels and you will see that we had a most successful and varied trip.

It was back to the Stefoni ranch for dinner; Lara and Marzia were dining with us as their mum and dad, Elsa and Giovanni, had gone to Milan with their older sister Irene and cousin Marco to be part of the X Factor audience. If you recall, a few weeks ago we missed seeing Giovanni’s cousin, Giosada, auditioning but heard he had done well. Now he is in the finals and has survived for a few weeks. I guess it was only a matter of time, given talent shows’ rampant progress and the law of six degrees of separation, till we had a vague connection with someone appearing in them. From what I have seen of him on Facebook he is a talented singer with a distinctive style – which would rule him out of having any chance of winning the British X Factor. Let’s hope the Italians have more taste.