Seven at one blow*

I never thought I’d say this but maybe being without a telephone line and Internet connection was not such a bad thing. At least the daily rollercoaster of raised and dashed hopes created a bit of a frisson; without TIM our lives seem to have become just a little dull and if it hadn’t been for input from a surprise visitor there would have been precious little to report this week.

We were first alerted to the fact that we had a houseguest last Saturday morning when, as I was rousing Bella and Harry from their beds for their morning walk, I saw something small, dark and furry scurrying around the edge of the floor in the dressing room before disappearing behind one of the wardrobes. Our two terriers were oblivious to its presence; so much for Harry’s heritage as a ratter. A further sighting of it on Monday morning hanging round the sink area as well as downy cast offs in the pan drawer under the oven meant that something had to be done.

Now you may remember that a couple of weeks ago I had a face-to-face encounter with a field mouse in the downstairs back room, and in my soft-hearted way let it go about its daily business. Well, a mouse in the woodpile is one thing, a mouse scampering through our cupboards is quite another. A visit to Giordano at the ferramenta, therefore, was in order, where he furnished us with two varieties of mouse trap – the details of which we don’t really need to go into here. He assured us that they were very effective and would sort out our problem in double quick time.

He was, indeed, right about that. Stephen set two of the traps in the kitchen and another in the guest room in the early afternoon and by 7 o’clock he was disposing of our dear departed in the outside umido bin. I must say that all things being equal, I’d have preferred a different ending, one where we released the misguided mite back into the wild but we had to do what we had to do ‘pour encourager les autres’. And in case any of you were wondering: no, it wasn’t my friend from the other day as Stephen assured me that this one was not only a darker colour but also had both its eyes.

Fortunately, our upstairs visitor appears to have been on a singles holiday as the traps remained empty for the rest of the week, which is more than can be said for the ones Stephen put downstairs in our future summer loft living area. The next day he caught five more mice with another couple at the weekend, all of which joined their comrade in the umido. You would think that having proved his mettle as a mouser then other rodents would be living in fear of him. Not so, for when he went down to sort out some things in the garden on Friday morning he passed a field mouse nonchalantly eating away at one of the persimmon that had fallen from our tree. It took one look at him and carried on with its breakfast, totally oblivious to the danger it was in.

Not that it was the only brush with nature Stephen had that morning, as when he was hanging out the washing he saw something dark running past the back of the garden at the other side of the fence. We’re not sure what it was, maybe a minx or a ferret, but it certainly wasn’t the same creature that my sister-in-law Susan saw when she and my brother were staying with us. On a nocturnal trip to the bathroom she looked out of the window and saw a large, dark shape near to our house and wandering across the field. She thought that it might have been a cow, which seems highly unlikely as there are no herds in this area. Still, if she is right, I hope it doesn’t decide to follow the mice’s example, as it’ll find it a pretty tight fit in our pan drawer. Besides, I don’t think Giordano has a trap that big.

As I said, however, apart from Stephen’s one man war of attrition, it’s been an ordinary week. Massimo, my new student, started his lessons on Monday, which was also the day we popped to see Martina, who unfortunately failed her English test for one of the local universities. They obvious require a high standard because not only when I did my bit of work with her was she perfectly able to converse in English and understand what I was saying but also a mere eleven candidates from a cohort of thirty-four passed. What makes it difficult to know how to help her is that the exams are cloaked in secrecy: there are no such things as past or specimen papers, so any preparation is done very much in the dark. I have a cynical suspicion, however, that you may find it easier to pass the exam if you pay to follow a certain well-known English course.

As for today, after a walk with Bella and Harry in the afternoon sunshine it was back to LCDDB where Stephen started Operation Green Tomatoes. We may be coming to the end of the red ones (though there are still more than enough of those to supply our weekly needs) but we now have the challenge of not wasting the wealth of green tomatoes festooning the vines. His first salvo was to experiment with making fried green tomatoes, and a very fine job he made of them too. No doubt they’ll be making a reappearance on our dinner table before too long, for whilst today’s meal used up a couple of pounds, there’s still a good few hundred left to go. I wonder if Monte San Pietrangeli is ready for a Whistle Stop Café?

* 'The Brave Little Tailor' by the Grimm Brothers