Do it, do it again

After an exciting few days of touring the outdoor ice-skating rinks of this corner of Le Marche, things have been a bit quieter this week, if you overlook the fabulous boxed bargain at Sigma where you could buy a bottle of spumante and a panettone for €4.99. I won’t, then, be taking up too much of your time as I realise you’ll have much to do with last minute shopping, delivering presents and putting the sprouts on to boil – though really, this latter should have been done before now.

I have to say, though, that after a very pleasant weekend Monday started with a bit of a shocker when I saw on Facebook that Raffaella Carrà has said that she is retiring from TV. This may not be a name that means very much to some British ears, but those who lived through the heady days of the 70s may remember her from her top ten hit, ‘Do It Do It Again’, a Eurodisco song with all the understatement of a sledgehammer. While she may be no great shakes in the UK, she is revered here in Italy, and elsewhere in the Latin world, where music stars have a shelf life longer than a tin of WW1 bully beef. I’m not sure what has prompted this decision, though I think it may have something to do with her disillusionment with Italian TV; why it’s taken her 50 years to come to this realization goodness knows, it only took me one evening.

Monday was also the day that Harry rekindled his interest in the stacks of tiles over in the corner of the garden. Since Stephen’s remodelling of them the other week he’s shown little interest, but something must have been hanging around there overnight as he suddenly became fixated on that spot when Stephen had Bella and him out for morning playtime. Being unable to leap on top of them, he thought the next best thing was to start digging furiously to tunnel under them, oblivious to any attempt on Stephen’s part to entice him away. It was when he heard some unidentified creature run up the ivy clinging to Mario and Luigi’s barn, which caused Harry to redouble his efforts, that Stephen had to improvise by fastening his scarf through Harry’s collar and dragging him away. We will have to keep a watch on this, especially if he takes to practising vaulting over a wooden horse.

After an uneventful middle of the week we again found ourselves in Fermo, this time on Friday evening with Computer Luca for a mini-Christmas get together. After a quick wander round the market (it was pretty cold, after all) where Luca bought a couple of bars of natural soap, having, he told us, decided to stop putting anything manufactured on his skin, we had a glass of Prosecco at Artasylum before dinner at one of our favourite places, Enoteca Bar a Vino. Fortunately it was as fabulous as ever, this being Luca’s first visit, and we came away not only with full stomachs but also with an artesan panettone. Unlike the offer at Sigma, it did not come accompanied by a bottle of something sparkling, nor did it have a bargain price tag. Still, Christmas comes but once a year so what is the harm in spoiling ourselves?

And we spoiled ourselves yesterday, as well as Marco and Maddalena, when we took out a small mortgage to buy a piece of exquisitely fine beef fillet from Pia. We’d given her the heads up earlier in the week and she had it all ready for Stephen to collect in the morning. It was then a simple matter of me making sure that when I cooked it I avoided those words that are an anathema to ersatz gastronomes worldwide: well done. We wanted something a bit special, this being our second Christmas get together of the weekend, and serving it with a kumquat and pomegranate sauce certainly did that. Starting with prawn cocktail and finishing with Maddalena’s tiramisu ensured a spirit of Anglo-Italian camaraderie for the evening, even if Marco’s spirit was deflated somewhat by his beloved Roma losing to Juventus.

We had hoped to complete a festive weekend by joining in Monte San Pietrangeli’s Christmas celebrations taking place yesterday and today, though the scant advertising via Facebook and a less than informative poster in Pina’s window gave little away as to what was happening. We managed to track the ‘mercatino’ down in the campeggio car park near the campo di tennis, which is currently serving as a church following the structural damage to the real one in the recent earthquakes. After Porto Recanati and Fermo, the few stalls selling homemade Christmas decorations looked a little sad, though we did show our support by buying the odd item – by which I mean a bit of log with a night light in the top. Hopefully next year, when things are back to normal and the church is up and running again, the market will be in the town square where it belongs. And who knows, they may even find space to shoehorn in the obligatory ice rink: Monte San Pietrangeli on ice, now there’s an idea.