In with the old

Let me say at the outset that I in no way believe that everyone in Italy has the same problems that we do with services. I am sure there are countless numbers of people who drift from one week to another without any undue interruptions. We have to accept that it’s purely down to our waywardness in choosing to live in the middle of the country, an unreasonable two miles from the centre of Monte San Pietrangeli, which is at the root of the misadventures catalogued elsewhere in these pages. So, having got that disclaimer out of the way, let’s turn our attention to the unresolved problem of the non-functioning oven.

It was still refusing to shift from its FAIL message on Monday morning, so Stephen phoned the service centre and spoke to a remarkably helpful and competent lady who was very impressed that he had all the many reference numbers to hand. Apparently the code, F7, refers to interruption of or surges in power. This makes sense, as the electricity supply to LCDDB (see previous paragraph) is a little fragile; we learnt very early on in our residency that running anything more than two major appliances at the same time is like living on a bit of a wing and very little of a prayer. When Stephen told her, after she suggested it, that he had already tried turning the oven off and then back on, she said that maybe he should turn off the whole electricity supply for a minute and see if this helped. In the meantime, she said she would log the problem with the engineers, who would contact us within forty-eight hours.

After the call, Stephen did as she suggested with me waiting poised, as soon as the power came back on, to set the clock on the oven. I’m not sure why he thought this to be important; maybe because if we reconfigured the display instantly then it would fool the appliance into forgetting it was supposed not to be functioning. Whatever the reason, it worked… and continued working for the rest of the day. Working so well, in fact, that I was able (in the 30 degree heat of the afternoon) finally to make my lemon cakes. These, I’m pleased to say, turned out looking fabulous and Stephen duly took one for the family at the factory. “Bel-lis-si-ma,” said Mrs Carelli, very slowly so I would be sure to understand, when I saw her later in the week. England may be rubbish at football, but we do make exceedingly good cakes – which, after all, is more important.

The beginning of the week also witnessed the return of Marco, the builder, who has been sadly missing from our lives since he finished working on the downstairs classroom-cum-office earlier in the year. His reappearance was most welcome, signalling, as it does, that our new railings must be approaching completion. His visit, on Monday evening, was to check about removing the current railings in readiness for erecting the new ones. Whilst he was here, Stephen took the opportunity of asking him about the possibility of laying a new surface over the tiles on the terrazzo – not that we particularly want to get rid of the tiles, but as a way of dealing with the two or three large puddles of water that result after heavy rain due to the remarkable unevenness of the floor. This, in turn, leads to water leaking into the garage, not something we want to encourage.

Marco returned the next night with his oppo Manuel, who had done such a wonderful job tiling our bathroom, to size up the job. Stephen has in mind covering the whole surface with a special paint that water can’t penetrate. One of the problems with this is that it only comes in grey or red, unless you pay an inordinate amount of money for a specialised company to do it in a colour of your choice. Stephen’s preference is for the grey, which, to me, makes it sound like the terrazzo will end up looking like a school playground. Stephen, on the other hand, showing how differently we view life, is of the opinion that it’ll look like the floor of the Hacienda. That’s ok then, if ever we want to host a concert by New Order.

With that decision in abeyance until Marco turfs up with an example of the colour, Stephen spent a happy morning on Wednesday clearing out another of the downstairs rooms. This time it was in the one at the back of the house, directly behind the workroom, which we plan in due course to make into an en suite bedroom. Over the winter we stored our logs there but it is also where we keep the various rubbish bags before transporting them up the road in line with the refuse collection rota. This, however, has recently led to a bit of a small problem. Since harvesting the other week, when presumably the heavy machinery disturbed the wealth of animal life who had, till then, been living quite happily in the fields, thank you, something has been nibbling away at our bags in the hope of finding a tasty morsel or two. A thorough cleaning of the room failed to turn up any sign of a culprit, so presumably he, she or they are sneaking in and making off before the break of day. However, to pre-empt any further forays, Stephen has taken to storing the bags on top of the battered sink in the corner of the room, a remnant, along with the vague, lingering aroma of hot fat, of the room’s former incarnation as the previous residents’ kitchen.

Although the harvest, as I said, happened a couple of weeks ago, that doesn’t mean that our neighbours, Mario and Luigi, have finished with their fields for the year, as we learnt on Friday morning when we were woken at 6am by the sound of them ploughing. Well, by that and the sound of Harry barking furiously, as he associates the sound of the plough with Billy, M&L’s Labrador, with whom he is desperate to play. Unfortunately for Harry, Billy persists in treating him with placid indifference. On this occasion, though, Billy was nowhere to be seen, but what we did see later that morning was Mario in his plough traversing the field by our house, one hand on the steering wheel and the other holding his mobile, under the shade of a bright yellow parasol that he’d attached to the back of his seat to protect him from the sun. Such enterprise.

A week on from our flickering Internet, we woke up yesterday morning to find that once again our communications with the virtual world were severed – and this time there was not even the promise of a reconnection as both the DSL and the Internet lights on the modem were extinguished. Just to confirm what we already knew, there was no dialling tone when we checked the phone. This was more than a waterlogged central box. The last time this happened, earlier in the year, it was when the phone line came down during a particularly wet and windy night, but the current balmy weather couldn’t have wrecked such damage, surely?

A wander up the hill showed that the line was still intact where it had snapped previously, so with this knowledge in hand, Stephen phoned TIM. Francesco, the helpful operative, checked the line and confirmed it wasn’t working – well, I suppose he has to go through the process because we could, of course, be not only English but also stupid – before logging the problem and telling us that an engineer would look into the matter on Monday.

With nothing better to do, and with it being a lovely afternoon, we took a trip to Porto Recanati, some 35 minutes away up the autostrada, between Civitanova and Ancona. This was a good decision, and not only because the town itself is very pleasing. A pedestrian zoned lungo mare, with a hotchpotch of pastel-coloured and brick houses fronting the esplanade on one side and the beach and a host of chalets on the other, runs parallel with a wide and airy main street with more than its fair share of ice cream shops. It was also a good idea because, by happenstance, the promenade was hosting a craft and antique market, whose stalls were just opening for the evening as we strolled along. By another stroke of luck, Stephen spotted some brass handles, which were just right for the wardrobe he is currently working on. The existing ones, being of an inferior metal, had failed to respond adequately to a dunking in tomato ketchup which Stephen had hoped might bring them up to something akin to their former glory. We also purchased a couple of slightly battered metal tubs, a large and a small one, which Stephen intends to plant up and use as set decoration for the downstairs seating area.

We did a spot more shopping today, but of a somewhat more mundane type, when we headed to Corrodomnia and Maisons du Monde. Our mission: to find a lightweight cover to use on our bed settee, in anticipation of our first visitors in early September. We were starting to think that we had become personae non gratae exiles, but Douglas and Susan, my brother and sister-in-law, are being trailblazers and coming to stay for a few days. I’m pleased to report that we were successful, and managed to buy not only a very fine devoré cover but also two matching cushions as well as several other items that, as is the nature of such things, we didn’t realise we needed till we saw them in the sale.

It was as we neared the end of our journey home that we discovered, too late for telling young Francesco, why we had no phone line to the house. It had, indeed, broken again, but just to keep us on our toes, this time in a different place near the top of the road. Stephen duly phoned TIM when we got back to the house, to try to pre-empt the engineer this time only checking the main box and saying that all was in order. However, being Sunday, no one seemed to be playing so we will have to wait till tomorrow to report the latest developments. What will we do if our lack of Internet continues for much longer? Heaven forbid, we might actually have to start talking to each other – what sort of regressive behaviour is that?