The road to somewhere

After my exciting weekend of pizza, Netflix and window shopping it should have been back to normal on Monday but three things, of varying significance, marked it out as being different to normal.

The first, and most obvious, was the continued absence of Stephen. He was in the UK until Thursday when he flew back to Ancona and I again scooted up the autostrada to collect him and return him to the bosom of his family. He seems to have had a reasonable trip, managing some quality time with his sister, a visit to my parents and a couple of business appointments. He is as happy to be home, though, as we are to have him back.

The second event was the first lesson with my new pupil, Andrea. It was, as such things usually are, very much a getting to know each other exercise for me to judge the level of his English. He has, it turns out, been taking lessons previously in a group-based environment, and has quite a reasonable knowledge of basic English. When I asked him what he did, he said that he was a wall painter, and I suggested it might be better if he told people that he was a painter and decorator. After all, we wouldn’t want people to think that he was some sort of Italian Banksy.

The third, and most momentous, was the arrival mid-afternoon of a digger that not only got Bella and Harry exercised but also started excavating the gulley by the side of the road. Well, I thought, that’s something; at least should it rain heavily there is somewhere for the water to go other than down the middle of the road. What I didn’t know was that this was just a precursor, as the following morning, shortly after breakfast, a tractor made its way to the bottom of the hill followed by a wagon, which reversed all the way down.

The reason for this interesting manoeuvre is that it then slowly climbed back up again, scattering ochre coloured gravel in its wake. After the wagon had finished, the tractor then made several measured journeys up and down, flattening the surfacing and pressing it into the existing holes and depressions. The result was that by mid-morning we were left with something that, according to Computer Luca commenting on the picture on Facebook, looked like a country road.

It is hard to put into words our joy at being, at last, able to drive up and down our section of Contrada Forone without treating it like a chicane. We can only give heartfelt thanks to the Comune for coming to our rescue. When I remarked to the mayor on Tuesday afternoon when he collected his son from his lesson how fabulous the road was, he looked suitably modest. “If one can do something, one does it,” I think he said, but who knows, given my tenuous grasp on conversational Italian.

Actually, now I come to think of it, there was something else that happened on Monday, which had important consequences at the end of the week, after Stephen’s return. Shortly after lunch, the phone rang and it was Sabina from Folusci (the doors and windows place) to say that our new front door was ready and to ask if it would it be possible to install it that afternoon. The answer to the latter was no, as I had a lesson in Montegranaro and with Stephen away there was no one at home. She obviously had doubts about my reliability on fixing a date for, when I told her in Italian, that available afternoons this week were Tuesday and Friday she repeated the days twice in English to check we were on the same wavelength. She then reverted to Italian to say that she would call back.

And that was the last we heard until Friday morning, when Stephen appeared in the downstairs workroom to say that Folusci had called and they would be here in the afternoon to install the door. Indeed they were and they did it in little more than thirty minutes. Yes, for once in our time here at LCDDB something was done quickly, smoothly and without recourse to a Plan B, or indeed a Plan C as has been the case in the past.

While this new door may be something of a puzzle to our Italian neighbours, with the large top panel being in clear strengthened glass, we are extremely pleased with the result. The general rule here, whether in summer for the heat or winter for the cold, is to shut out as much of the outside as possible. Contrariwise, this door adds an extra window, which opens up the front of the kitchen area, bringing light to a previously dark corner and taking our view out, up and over the fields, with no fear of neighbours being able to sneak a look in, what with there not being any.

After the exhilaration of the improved road and the new door, not to mention Stephen’s return to the loving bosom of his family, a quite weekend at home was in order. Not that it was without a break in the normal routine when Stephen whisked me away yesterday afternoon to visit Centro Giardinaggio Pellegrini, the garden centre recently opened near Porto Sant’Elpidio. From the outside it looked most impressive, being a large building inspired by the airplane hangar school of architecture, and indeed it did have a very fine looking array of plants, both indoors and out. They seemed, though, to think that this gave them licence to charge a premium for their products so our money stayed firmly in our pockets even when we visited its extensive Fiera di Babbo Natale.

This had a range of Christmas decorations to rival anything we have ever seen in the U.K., a meandering, colour-coordinated cornucopia of festive magic – or Christmas kitsch depending on your point of view. We might have been tempted by one of the several life-size animal automatons, but were not sure how Bella and Harry would take to a frighteningly realistic polar bear nestling its baby in the corner of our snug. Besides, when we counted up our coppers, we were well short of the €700 asking price.