Much ado about not much at all, really.

The past seven days have been very quiet ones, at least in terms of finding anything with which to delight and entertain my devoted readers – so I hope you will both forgive any shortcomings in this week’s entry.

The paucity of excitement is due, to a large degree, to Stephen’s absence for a significant part of the week. As anticipated at the close of the previous entry, he left on Monday morning with Manuel for a short jaunt to Portugal, He returned home in the middle of Thursday night, or extremely early on Friday morning depending on how you look at these things. It appears from what I’ve been told that the trip was worth it and that they got to see a number of potential customers (including a factory that Stephen did some work for in the past). I’m still not absolutely clear, though, on what Stephen’s function in all this was. It can’t have been to carry the bags, what with the way he complains about his bad back all the time, so I’m assuming it was to provide wit, glamour and charm with a soupçon of fashion insight thrown in for good measure. The pair must, though, have been very busy as he obviously didn’t have any time to buy a present for either me or the dogs.

Not that my week was without a surprise or two, the first being on Wednesday lunchtime when I heard a car driving down the road as I was finishing my lunch. This, as you know, is a rare occurrence, made even rarer by it turning out to be Sandro Stefoni on his maiden voyage down our spur of Contrada Forone. After telling him that Stephen wasn’t at home, we blundered through a conversation (Sandro holding to the common MSP view that why should one speak Italian when there is a perfectly decent local and incomprehensible dialect to use instead) where I managed to understand that he was calling on behalf of a woman who was enquiring about English lessons for her son. The simplest response to this was to give him one of my cards to pass on, which I did, thinking that by the usual Italian timeframe it would be another six months before I heard anything, if, indeed, I heard anything at all.

It didn’t take long for me to be proved wrong when little more than an hour later, as I was getting ready to set off for my afternoon lesson with the Montegranaro children, my mobile rang. On answering it a man’s voice introduced himself as Paolo Casenove and said he was calling about the English lessons. Yes, I said, they were possible but could he call back on Friday when Stephen was at home as he understood Italian better than I? Sig Casenove said he would do so, or at least that is what I thought. It seemed, though, that when Friday came round that either he or I or both of us had a crossing of wires.

In the interim, Stephen was very pleased when I told him about my new pupil, and for the same reason as myself. You are probably not aware, unless you have your finger firmly on the pulse of MSP politics, that Sig Casenove is the mayor of the town and therefore a man of some influence – which could be another avenue leading to something concrete being done about our road, especially if he has to ferry his son back and forth for his lessons. Not that Manuel seemed overly impressed when Stephen told him, and in fact expressed doubts that it was the mayor who had called and suggested I’d misheard the name. His reasons for this assertion were twofold. Firstly, as Manuel likes to think of himself as one of the movers and shakers of Monte San Pietrangeli, he couldn’t believe that the mayor, whom he regards as a good friend, would choose Sandro Stefoni as a go-between over himself. Secondly, Manuel’s son is best friends with the Sig Casenove’s son, so surely he would have known something about it through those channels.

Much to Manuel’s shock, however, I turned out be right; I had heard correctly and it was the mayor who had phoned. What I wasn’t correct about was the phone call. This became obvious when at three o’clock on Friday afternoon, while Stephen was firefighting another shoe crisis and I was working in the office downstairs, a blue saloon hove into sight outside the house from which emerged the mayor, his wife and his son – Nicola, as I was later to discover his name to be. Being a good host I invited them in and after a bit of a chat it was agreed that Nicola would come twice a week to improve his speaking and his grammar, though he seemed somewhat taken aback by this, being more concerned about how it would interfere with his football training than how it might improve his grades. His parents, though, for some odd reason, seemed to think the latter was more important.

Even though I had picked up pretty quickly that Sig and Sig.ra Casenove were rather anxious about their son’s low grades, I was still somewhat taken back when I asked if they wanted the lessons to start next Tuesday and they wondered if I was free to take a lesson there and then. Well, never one to disappoint a customer I said of course, so off they went, leaving Nicola and me to sort ourselves out as best we could. Fortunately, I managed to wing it pretty successfully, helped in no small amount by Nicola having brought his homework with him. Coaching him on this and having a bit of a chat helped me to find out something about him and to get a feel for his level of English, which means I can be better prepared for the next lesson, now I know when it is going to happen.

Which about wraps it up for this week, apart from Stephen turning up on Friday evening with a mighty fine Sachertorte from Totò and a jaunt up the autostrada to Ikea this morning. It’s some time since we’ve graced it with our custom and this trip was prompted by Stephen’s suggestion that we should buy a rug for Bella and Harry. He is concerned that now we are heading into winter they might find it a bit cold with only a dog bed, cushion and blanket between them and the granite floor. His solution was to buy a round rug to go under the old dining table, which is now in the dressing room where they sleep, and to put the dog beds under it. He seems to think that having the table over them will make a sort of shelter to keep the heat in for them, and who am I to disagree? Funny really, all these years we’ve been together and I never knew he was an expert in thermodynamics.