Well seasoned

After a slow start things picked up a little this week, though with a somewhat unenthusiastic acceleration thanks to the weather. This continued to be decidedly hibernal, which in a perverse way was quite pleasing. One of the things I told people I was looking forward to on moving to Le Marche was that, unlike Britain where we sometimes think the default climate is a drizzly greyness punctuated by fleeting heat waves, the yearly rhythm here is still marked by distinctive seasons. January and February last year, however, were unusually temperate, and while it was very pleasant to sit on the terrazzo of an afternoon enjoying a mug of coffee (Nescafé, but don’t tell the natives), it seemed somehow wrong and I think we paid for it as the summer wasn’t as gloriously sunny as the year before.

There were no such fears this week though, when after a kick-start to lessons on Monday with Rocco (recovering to an injury to his arm, the result, apparently, of having a difference of opinion with the family dog: Rocco thought it shouldn’t be in the kitchen while dinner was being cooked while the dog did) things turned a bit hairy on Tuesday on the way back, with Stephen, from my afternoon lessons.

We’d already been up in the town that morning for our Tuesday shop and to call in at the Post Office. Those of you with long memories may recall the week-long performance we had in obtaining a post box. Well, believe it or not, a whole year has passed since then and the time has come to renew our tenancy. We braced ourselves for another bureaucratic scuffle and after a surprisingly short wait of only twenty minutes we presented ourselves at the counter. We needn’t have worried, for the nice lady was unable to help us. The allocation of post boxes is obviously such a delicate business that only Paolo, whom she referred to as ‘Il Direttore’, can sort it, and he was on holiday till the end of the week. Mind you, if he had been present our wait would probably have been shorter. The customer being attended to when we first arrived had a deal of trouble paying for her transaction as the card she was trying to use refused to accept any of her attempts to enter a pin. “It’s always been a problem,” she said to the assistant, as if the card itself was wilfully refusing to cooperate. If Paolo had been present he could have had a quick shufti at the list of PINs he keeps for just such an occasion, when the more bewildered of the community find modern technology too much to handle.

It was while we were in the supermarket after this that it started to snow. People immediately began panicking about getting home for lunch but it didn’t seem that bad to us for, whilst it was coming down in large feathery flakes, it didn’t seem to be settling. However, by the time we got back to LCDDB, things were turning white, which pleased Harry not a little during playtime in the garden. We were humming and hawing about whether to chance the snow in the afternoon, but it was at that inconsiderate state where there was not enough to stop you from going out but enough to make you think it might not be a good idea.

This latter proved to be the case for when we drove up our road in the afternoon (Stephen having some business to attend to in MSP) there were one or two unsettling swerves to the right as the car battled to find traction. It was, though, on the way back a couple of hours later that things got a bit more risky when the car thought it would be jolly wheeze to try to slide from side to side rather than take a more direct route down the hill. Stephen did a manful job, however, inching slowly forwards and avoiding running off the road. How relieved were we to come to a safe stop outside the house after taking ten minutes (which seemed more like an hour) to cover a distance that we usually do in thirty seconds? Very, so much in fact that we decided to hole up for the day on Wednesday and not risk the road again, which meant that I had to cancel my lessons. Still, at least it gave us an excuse to stop in and finish the Christmas cake.

After a day marooned at home, Stephen made a bid for freedom on Thursday when he went to Florence, which coincided with the sun once more showing its face and chasing away the lingering snow. His little jaunt came a bit out of the blue when we were having breakfast in Pina on Tuesday morning and he was asked to go by a business associate. Ever one to oblige, Stephen agreed, and so the pair of them took a day trip to see what was going down at Pitti Uomo 91, the menswear trade show. They seemed to have a good day, and to find time for a light bite in a room with a view, while I had to make do with bread and cheese.

And that was about it. Friday we did the usual weekend shop, having to wait in line for Pia’s attention in Sigma while she parcelled up slabs of meat for one of the locals. He was going to use the twenty-odd kilos to make salami; “Well,” he said in an aside to Stephen (who, unsurprisingly, knew him), “the kids like it.” An interesting excuse since his youngest, to the best of our knowledge, is pushing 30. The pinnacle of the weekend’s excitement, apart from a brief return of blue skies and sunshine yesterday morning, was making cornbread for the first time, which is not nearly as difficult as it sounds. It was, though, a way of using up some of the polenta leftover from when Stephen made fried green tomatoes in those heady days just a couple of months ago when things were still growing in the garden. Not that there is much chance of fecundity at the moment; in fact today has been so miserable that we shut the door on January and stayed at home all day. Now what was that nonsense I was saying earlier about looking forward to a proper winter…?