Out in the open

The middle of June, the temperatures are rising and gradually things are drawing, if not quite to a halt, at least to a steady trotting pace. I’m much less busy with lessons – which is fine by me, for whilst the actual delivering is just as much fun as always, preparing them in the enervating heat of the afternoon is less so.

The up side to the heat is that the produce in the lotto is starting to come to maturity. As well as the lettuce and rocket that we’ve been enjoying for a few weeks now, we are, like last year, getting to the stage where we have more courgettes than we know what to do with and Stephen has gathered the first green beans. We should, by the end of next week, have our first tomatoes and peppers, and the chillies are also looking good to go. What we haven’t branched out into, though, is livestock, which I think may be a responsibility a bit too far – never mind how Bella and Harry would react. We were not even tempted the other week when, returning from our shopping trip to Porto San Giorgio, we stopped off at a garden centre that was advertising a ‘Turkey Day’ on 27th June – five turkey chicks and 25kg of food for the bargain price of €43.50. Now that’s something you don’t see at B&Q.

In order to ensure our continuing supply of salad, I went with Stephen on Monday afternoon to the ferramenta in Francavilla, just over the valley, whose plants he rates. We were very adventurous and came away with not only lettuce, rocket, and basil to replace the one where the toad made its home, but also two types of melon. We (which you, of course, know by now means Stephen) have not tried to grow them before but it seemed worth a shot, especially as my own little Percy Thrower said that as they grow along the ground they should be fairly easy to look after.

I have to admit, however, that my confidence in him took a bit of a knock after he left the tender young salad seedlings to the mercy of the elements. He planted these on Tuesday morning and by evening they were looking decidedly limp from being exposed to the unremitting afternoon sun. As if this wasn’t enough jeopardy for them, their survival was then put into my incapable hands as Stephen left on Wednesday for a two-day jaunt with his bff, Manuel, leaving me with precise instructions as to the watering of our critical patients.

It is with some pride, and not a little relief, that I can report that, following my sensitive ministrations, the plants looked somewhat perkier on Stephen’s return than when he left and continued to pick up over the rest of the week. And whilst this may seem much ado about nothing to you, my dear reader, for us it is drama of Shakespearean proportions, and while for a time it looked like love’s labours lost, but rather than being a comedy of errors it appears that all’s well that ends well.

As I said, Stephen was absent without leave for two days in the middle of the week with Manuel on another of their periodic recces, but on this occasion, with the schools having finished for the summer, they were joined by Manuel’s son, Enrico. From reading between the lines on his return, this gave Stephen the excuse to go into all those trendy young people’s shops where, without being accompanied by a responsible adolescent, he might have been barred from entering.

Having left MSP bright and early on Wednesday morning they made it to Florence and Pitti Uomo to scan the stands and enjoy a late lunch in the city at All' Antico Vinaio. This was Enrico’s choice, as apparently it is all the rage on the Internet and various social media – at least with young folk and American tourists and is so popular it now has two open counters, one either side of the street - and is fine if you like eating a piece of focaccia bursting with filling sitting on the side of the pavement because there is no room anywhere else. It all sounds very hip, but I can’t help thinking I’d rather have a pot of Earl Grey and a comfy seat at Betty’s. From Florence they went to Bologna in the evening, doing the shops the next morning before travelling down the coast and stopping off at Milano Marittima. Milano Marittima is a small but ultra chic town just up the Adriatic coast from Rimini, and, I am reliably told, is the place to see and be seen and to shop.

As for shopping, my beloved was obviously very restrained during his travels, returning with a rather modest haul by his standards. Apart from a new whimsical hat to wear when doing the gardening, a new lanyard for the car keys and two his and his key chains to wear linked to a belt loop on our trousers. These, apparently, are all the rage, though I’m not sure where. They may go down a storm in Spitalfields but I can’t say I’ve noticed any of the regulars sporting one when we’ve been in Pina for our morning cappuccino.

We ended the week with Computer Luca gracing us with his presence for dinner on Friday night. Following the tenet that there is no such thing as a free meal, before he could eat he had to help Stephen get the pictures from Mrs Carelli’s party the other week into some sort of order. Stephen had tried his best with these, but whatever form he managed to get them into on the Mirko’s memory stick, they refused to play ball when the family tried to view them. Luca once again came to our rescue. He not only showed Stephen how to organise them into a folder on his Macbook but also how to titivate other aspects of his display, which for some reason or other had passed us by.

Having metaphorically sung for his supper, we fed and watered Luca then retired to the terrazzo for a little something to aid digestion. It was whilst we were chewing the postprandial fat that, inspired presumably by the balmy night, he asked if we ever slept on the terrazzo as it would be cooler than inside the house. After we had had enough time to compute this, to us, somewhat bizarre question, we answered in the negative, pointing out that at this time of the year you would be awakened at some ungodly early hour by the sky lightening and the dawn chorus chorusing. And seeing as we were actually woken in the middle of the night by a tumultuous thunderclap directly overhead followed by a prolonged, heavy downpour it would seem that dawn breaking might be the least of your worries should you want a night under the stars. We are always very willing to follow Computer Luca’s advice regarding modern technology but will continue to keep a weather eye on some of his other suggestions.