Bedding in

A new week and one that started with a visit to Monte San Pietrangeli to buy plants for our lotto. Since Nazareno churned it over with his rotavator the other week, it had been patiently waiting for someone to get round to actually using it to plant things.

Presumably Stephen had been taking this downtime to consider his options rather than rushing into making rash decisions. The result of his deliberations: the purchase of several plugs of salad leaves (two types) and a smattering of herbs from the plant man on the market. These were safely bedded in on Monday afternoon, but do look a little lonely in their two solitary rows at one end of the lotto. Doubtless they will be joined by other life botanic after the lingering threat of an overnight frost recedes.

We also discovered at the beginning of the week that amongst the various birds hanging around LCDDB (including a very vocal nightingale or two that keep chirping away well into the night) that we have a couple of rooks nesting in the bird holes at the side of the house. That accounts for the pattering of tiny feet on the roof, but it also presents us with a challenge in keeping the paths clean. It is, though, a small price to pay for communing with nature… just as long as they don’t fancy a bit of tasty lettuce at any point.

Wednesday turned out to be quite a hive of activity, starting with the appearance of all three painters before 8pm. Beppe, who had been holding the fort on his own recently, was joined by both Corrado and Davis, and the three spent a very busy day working on the fabric of the house. Much gap filling and plastering was carried out and by the end of the day LCDDB had a distinctly piebald look but was almost ready for the painting part of the process to begin. Fortunately, Stephen and I had managed to settle on a colour by Monday evening. Beppe had painted up the four finalists onto plasterboard, which we then pondered over, much as Brian Sewell would have done over a display of minimalist abstract art at the Royal Academy’s Summer Exhibition. We narrowed the choices down to two, which Stephen then propped against various parts of the house to see how they appeared in different lights. It was with some nervousness that we decided on the mauve/grey colour as it showed the most variation in tone, being almost grey in the sunlight while morphing into a pinky violet in the shade.

As well as the painters, Stephen also had a busy day, starting in the morning with a quick outing to Francavilla D’Ete, a village four miles west of us, to collect a parcel. You can take heart from the fact that the Italian postal system is even more haphazard than Royal Mail, and why Stephen’s parcel had gone to a neighbouring post office Paolo in our local ufficio postale was at a loss to explain. Nor was he able to offer any sort of service to retrieve the item; if it was in Francavilla then that is where it had to stay until collected – or rather, for another day or two, he said, until it would have to be sent back. Spurred on by the pressure of time Stephen strapped on his proverbial skates and hastened to Francavilla to retrieve the parcel. This was easier said than done as not only are you unable to park in the centre of Francavilla (the town square being only accessible through two cobbled archways) but Posteitaliane likes to make things interesting by not having any sort of sign indicating where its office actually is. Not that there is all that much inside to give the game away, either, other than a nice lady sitting at a table with some semblance of official paraphernalia. His mission, however, was accomplished and he left a parcel to the good.

Buoyed up by his success, he spent a very profitable afternoon hanging pictures in the snug as well as a mirror in our bedroom. We’d decided that the bookcase in our snug was one piece of furniture too far, so after we’d moved it to a temporary resting place in the yet to be completed dressing room, Stephen began with the set decoration. After almost a year’s incarceration some of our larger photographs and prints have now found a new home and, I am pleased to say, look as if that is where they were always meant to be. So what, after so many months, had prompted Stephen into action? Partly, I think, because we were days away from our first proper dinner party here in LCDDB.

That is why Thursday morning found us wandering a little forlornly around Iper supermarket in Civitanova, searching for several elusive ingredients as we had decided to give our guests a British style menu. This was all very well, but we had not bargained on the difficulty of finding what in the UK would have been very common items. Roquefort cheese for Delia’s twice-baked soufflés? No chance. Baby onions, button mushrooms and redcurrant jelly for Simon Hopkinson’s coq au vin? You’re having a larf. And as for Nigella’s Anglo Italian trifle, well the Italian bit was easy enough with a wealth of limoncello and mascarpone to choose from and we did find some very fine Sicilian cakes that were like the Rolls-Royce of trifle sponges, but blackcurrants? Forget it. Surely then, there would be packs of frozen frutti di bosco (fruits of the forest). No way, Jose, so we settled for strawberries and hoped, with some lemon juice to sharpen them up, that they would do. I dare say that if we were shopping in a supermarket in some Northern Italian metropolitan powerhouse then we might have had better luck but down here in Le Marche life is much more provincial and food should be like nonna made.

After this mini-dilemma, the week finished, if not quite in a whirl then maybe in a sedate pirouette of domestic bliss. As I was busy with lessons on Saturday our cleverly designed menu meant that I could spend Friday preparing and cooking ahead so all that was needed on Saturday was reheating. This made for a relaxing evening with our guests, Computer Luca, his brother Alessio and his partner Oscar, both around the dining table and in our newly reconfigured snug. Then on Sunday we took a jaunt up to Corridomnia for a recce on terrazzo furniture in anticipation of the house painting being completed and the prospect of al fresco summer dining – though whether we will be enjoying the fruits of Stephen’s labour in the lotto is looking under threat. Something is ambushing our baby lettuces in the middle of the night. I know the rooks are enjoying rent-free living at our expense, but we don’t want to start supporting the entire wildlife of La Provincia di Fermo. After all, if it’s domestic products they want then they need only to stop off at their local supermarket.