Felice Anno Nuovo

Felice Anno Nuovo to all my readers – I trust you will both have a prosperous and happy 2016. Personally, I am looking forward to one that might be a little more settled and one where we can start to do some exploring of Le Marche and its envrions, house, weather and dogs allowing.

So, after a wonderfully quiet Christmas, how did we raise the roof to see in the New Year? Well, quietly again, only more so given the transformation of MSP into a ghost town. I should have been prepared for this eventuality, for when I asked Vittorio at the end of our last lesson what he was doing in his bar for New Year, his reply was, ‘Nothing.’ In fact, he said that he was going to the mountains. Apparently, people don’t go to bars to celebrate, preferring to stay at home, go out for a meal or, if you are young at heart, dance the night away in a club. How unlike home, where it seems that the main intent is to drink as much as you can as fast as you can and have a repulsively compromising photo going viral on Twitter.

New Year’s Eve therefore found us, after a morning and early afternoon of chores to get everything in order, heading to MSP to call at the flower shop and the pasticceria for goodies to take to Flavia to wish her happiness over the coming months. We were then due to collect our ordered Menu di Fine Anno from La Pasta di Maria Teresa, having decided earlier in the week that we would dine in style casa nostra. And this is where we entered the twilight zone, for the town seemed almost abandoned. The first sign was that there were very few cars parked at Sigma – which is most unusual as, even if there are only a handful of people in the supermarket, the car park, for some reason we have not yet figured out, is always full. The flower shop, when we got there, was shut and so no flowers; the pasticceria was likewise shuttered and so no crostata. Consequently, we arrived at the Stefoni house empty handed, with not even a lump of coal available for ready money.

After exchanging greetings with Flavia and Romolo, we headed, as we’d planned, to the pub for an aperitivo to pass the time before our food was ready for collection. Yes, it was shut and remained so after we had taken Bella and Harry for a stroll around town. In a last ditch attempt to find a pocket of life we drove to the town square, where we had a choice of parking spaces – an unheard of phenomenon – before downing a Crodino twist at the Bar Centrale. At last somewhere was open, even if we were the only two customers in the place.

From there it was a short hop back across the square and up the narrow street to La Pasta Maria Teresa where the sweet young man with the sharp sideburns said our order was more or less ready, he was just waiting for the frittura. He disappeared into the back leaving us chatting with the lady behind the counter – well, Stephen chatted while I perused the shelves. Stephen had a pleasant conversation with the lady, whom he had never met before let alone talked to although she knew all about us, including who we were, where we lived, what work we did and what our blood types were. The joys of being foreigners in a strange land.

Once the fried veg was ready, we made off with our festa food to hunker down till all the shouting and fireworks were over – a task made easier by having enough provisions from Maria Teresa to last three meals. Food, wine and bad Italian TV were, for us, a winning combination to see in 2016, followed by another day of doing very little other than taking Bella and Harry for a walk in the crystal light of a clear, blue Le Marche afternoon. It may seem dull to some, but for us, standing Janus like between the old and the new, there was much to celebrate in what had gone before and even more to celebrate in what is to come and no better place to do so that at La Casa dei Due Baffi.