A moving experience

Finally, after waiting for new windows and floor cleaning and painting and light fitting and bathroom completion and what seems to have been countless other small bits and pieces, Stephen and I have taken up residence in La Casa dei Due Baffi – and very happy we are to be here. Not that it is by any means in a finished state. The house is still very much a work in progress and we are living in four rooms, which are more or less as we want them if you don’t count the missing skirting board in the bedroom. Stephen has also yet to execute the set decoration, but that will have to wait till we eventually open the boxes with the bizarre amount of objets (or knick-knacks depending on how you see them) that we have brought with us.

We started the process of moving in on Wednesday afternoon (Stephen has been working in the mornings), but with the short winter days we only managed a few pieces of furniture for the bedroom before it became too dark to continue. Marco, the builder, had more success than us, though, as he spent the day fitting new sills to the door and window of the downstairs office. As ever, this took longer than anticipated as copious amounts of plaster decided to crumble away from the wall while he was working. The result, though, looks wonderful.

In another step forward the telephone engineer from TIM came on Thursday to check the line for the phone and Internet connection. Bless him; he didn’t know what he was letting himself in for. He arrived about 1.45, only forty-five minutes late and after Stephen had to go and guide him to the house. Presumably he thought it would be a quick job. No chance. Ninety minutes later, when I returned from my lesson with Rocco and Vittorio, he was just finishing off the final touches. The problem? Having to run a new cable all the way down the hill to the house. I like to think that the various workmen appreciate coming to us as they know they’ll have a challenge on their hands rather than the dullness of all those routine jobs they have to carry out.

As for us, Thursday saw the erection of the bed (now, now, children) along with licking the bedroom into some semblance of order, while on Friday we put the new dining chairs together and continued sorting through some stuff though it was slow work. Stephen’s progress was a bit hampered while I was away giving a lesson because Bella and Harry were up to their old Colditz tricks again, making a bid for freedom. This time they added an elegant variation as Stephen, thinking they had gone very quiet, went to investigate and found that not only had Bella pushed open the ‘gate’ at the top of the outside steps but when he went round the corner of the house he was just in time to see Harry’s bottom scuttering under the fence, the corner of which Bella was holding up in her mouth to let him out. I can tell you, if they start doing exercises on a pommel horse I’m calling for Herr Flick.

Yesterday we spent nearly the whole day at the house, with a break at midday to return to Flavia’s for lunch, stopping on the way to shop for essentials at the supermarket: coffee, milk, bread, gin… In the morning we moved the settees and cabinets for the snug and the table for the kitchen, while in the afternoon we started off by sifting through the sixty odd boxes to find the ones that said ‘Kitchen’. These we wrestled upstairs in twos and threes, where we opened them and unwrapped the contents. It was then a matter of deciding which to keep in the upstairs kitchen, which to save for the summer kitchen and which we really should have jettisoned in Britain. The first lot we put in cupboards and the other two lots we wrapped up, put back in the boxes and returned downstairs. Why get rid of things when you can use them for clutter?

Which brings us to today and the big move. This morning we ferried all our goods and chattels from the Stefoni house to LCDDB before giving our little flat a good clean, then after lunch it was back to what is now home. Not that it was easy for Stephen; he has been living off and on at Flavia’s for almost twenty years so it was like leaving home for both of them. We are incredibly grateful to her, and Remo and Romolo, for taking us into their home, feeding us and looking after us. Without Flavia’s help, to be where we are now would have been a much harder journey. Thank you so very much.

And what of our first afternoon and evening in our new home? Why, unpacking boxes of course. But then it was gin and tonic time, pizza and all four of us snuggling on the settee. Bliss.