One moment, caller

Time for another bumper edition of this everyday story of Italian country folk, which I suppose is a bit like the Sunday omnibus of ‘The Archers’ only not as sensational and without all the moaning.

For those of you on tenterhooks since the last entry, I can put you at ease with the news that the gentle encouragement of the nice ladies at Dream Ceramiche worked its magic and, hey presto, Mirko the plumber appeared - if not in a cloud of smoke at least it was bright and early on Saturday morning. He may have taken his time getting here but I have to say that he almost made the wait worth the while. Not only did he replace the deviant pop up plug so that now it does actually pop up allowing the sink water to drain away, but he also attached the bathroom furniture (i.e. toilet roll holder and clothes hooks) and made a dramatic impact on the water pressure for the shower. Unfortunately, while the hand attachment now has enough force to strip paint the cascade still refuses to tumble at full spate and its days, I’m afraid, are numbered.

What Mirko discovered was that the pressure had suffered because, with the house being empty for such a long time, limescale deposits had built up in the pipes. These were then dislodged after the bathroom had been remodelled and we started using the water supply again. The deposits then clogged up the system to the shower. There, that is as technical as I get; should it all sound like hogwash to any practically minded person reading this then take it up with Mirko – if you can find him. We also discovered that the water feed to the house, which comes down the hillside from Mario and Luigi’s, has a significant amount of sand in it, and we therefore need to install a filter. This can either go on the main pipe in the garden (the preferred option but it depends on having enough room) or on the feed to the boiler.

In pursuance of all these new joys in our life at LCDDB, Stephen visited the nice ladies later in the week and scoured their catalogues for a new showerhead. One has been chosen, which Mirko will fit as soon as when it arrives (yes, and I’m Zac Efron’s body double) as well as installing the filter.

The rest of the week was taken up with minor bits and pieces. For those of you worried that we had not been to Corridomnia for at least two weeks, we headed there on Sunday to collect our new unit for the dining area as well as to stock up on Lindt chocolates and sweets. While we love the unit, others seem to be less impressed. Maddalena’s comment on seeing a WhatsApp picture was that it looked like a pile of boxes someone had put on top of each other (well, yes) while my mum on Facetime said, “Oh, that’s different” - and we all know what that means.

Being an obliging soul (which is self-glorifying way of saying that Stephen volunteered my services without asking me first) on Monday I helped one of the local factories that’s been in touch with Stephen by rewriting the English part of their Internet home page. That all sounds grandly technical, but all it means is that I took the couple of paragraphs existing on the page and rewrote them as a word document. The original seemed to have been written using a Prof Stanley Unwin version of Google Translate, and hopefully my lyrically golden upgrading will have customers now flocking to their site.

Wednesday saw my first lesson with my two new students, Massimo and Laura. Massimo is the brother of Sergio, with whom Stephen worked several years ago when MKP was in its original incarnation as RemRom and who had the good sense to get out early, and Laura is Sergio’s girlfriend. As seems to be the usual case with my students, they both have a reasonable standard of English but want to refresh what they learned at school and to become more fluent and accurate, Massimo because he has recently become the Ecommerce manager for a local shoe company and Laura because she is graduating as a lawyer soon and wants to sit the Cambridge English proficiency exam. Again, I have been very lucky as both are lovely people, and Massimo is remarkably striking as he is quite a tall chap. He’s a good two or three inches taller than I am, making him 6’4” or 5”, a virtual giant when compared with most Italians.

So what to do to finish off the week? Using some of my hard earned money and treating myself to a new phone seemed like a jolly wheeze. Since arriving in Italy, I’ve made do with a basic model so that I can be contacted and to have an Italian number to give to the various tradesmen to avoid them having to call Stephen’s British number. However, now that our deal with TIM includes a SIM card and all that stuff about minutes for this and that which I can’t be bothered to understand in English never mind Italian, Stephen thought it time I rejoined the modern world of instant mass communication and bought a new smart phone.

Consequently, we were beating on the doors of Cuore Adriatico at 9am this morning demanding entrance, my wad of euro bulging in my pocket. Well, that’s not quite true; we meandered in sometime just after 9 and stopped for a cappuccino and brioche before heading to the telecom shops. The make was easy: an iPhone to marry with my iPad and MacBook (I like to give the impression that I am media savvy), but should it be a 5 or a 6? The head said 5, with it being cheaper but still providing all the things I need, but my heart had other ideas. Once I held the elegantly slim and altogether more glamorous 6 in my hand it was my fate was decided. Why save money when it means spending the next few years looking at the clunky 5 and thinking what might have been. Call me shallow, call me a spendthrift or just a fool parting with his money but I left the shopping centre quite a bit poorer but aglow with expectation of building a long and meaningful relationship with my new iPhone 6.

We did not, however, live happily ever after as Stephen had overlooked one small but important detail (yes, I blame him being the practical one of the family). Having carefully unpacked and charged my new toy, Stephen came to put in my sim card – only to find it was too big. Who knew there were two sizes? Well, probably everyone under 16, but not me. The only thing to be done is a dash back on Monday morning to see if we can exchange our mammoth sim card for a micro version. And who said size doesn’t matter?