Advent(ures)

We are pleased to say that out newly improved road continues to give satisfaction. Ingress and egress, allowing for justifiable hyperbole, are both a thousand times better, and whatever the ochre coloured surfacing is has compacted into a hard surface – mostly. In some places in the centre of the road where care tyres fear to tread it’s still somewhat loose, and my stamping on these areas when out dog walking seems to have very little effect. There is also a spot under the oak tree where an abundance of tiny acorns seems to be hampering the surface from hardening. Still, these are minor quibbles, and our gratitude to the Comune and the mayor continues unbounded.

The start of the week followed its usual pattern for me, though Stephen found himself dealing with a couple of much needed chores. The first of these was on Tuesday lunchtime, when he registered Bella and Harry at the hospital in Montegiorgio. It is a requirement for all dog owners to log their pets with the authorities, though what for is a bit of a mystery to me, what with the proliferation of collarless dogs allowed to wander the streets at will. And yes, we have dawdled ourselves about completing this bureaucratic nicety, despite much nagging by our friend Sauro, who kept checking on the website to see if we were listed and phoning to berate us. Eventually, though, he managed to wear us down and, to give him his due, he did agree to accompany Stephen to make sure it was done and done properly.

Part of the reason for our delay is that, as we have found so often, the actual window of opportunity for registration (12.30 – 15.00, Tuesday and Thursday) is as limited as the places where it can be done. This is why Stephen had to forego a home-cooked lunch to keep his appointment with Sauro. As expected, it was not as easy as one would have hoped, the first hiccough being that the time the office for registration opened was the same as the time the one for paying closed (regular readers will be familiar with the quaint Italian custom of not paying for a service in the place where you actually receive the said service). This meant that the daring duo had to hightail to the nearest Post Office (ah, where would we be without them) to pay the fee before it closed at 1.30. The lady behind the counter’s face fell, I believe, as they burst through the doors with a minute to spare, realising that she was not going to make as speedy a getaway to lunch as she’d hoped.

She did, however, do the necessary, and Stephen and Sauro returned with the required paperwork to complete the registration. Not that that turned out quite as straightforward as it should have been, as Sauro, in his attempt to be helpful, told the registrar that we had arrived in Italy a year later than we actually did. This caused the gentleman some consternation, as it made it seem that we’d entered the country illegally as this timescale failed to match the date of the rabies vaccination on Bella’s and Harry’s passports. Eventually, though, everything was sorted and at long last we can say that our dogs are no longer illegal immigrants to this fine land.

Not that this was the end of Stephen’s fun for the day as after he had called in briefly at home he was off again, this time with Mirko who was taking him to Ponzielli Gomme in Porto Sant’Elpidio to have the car’s tyres looked at. This is because the day before when Stephen was at the factory, Mirko had asked him if he’d seen the state of the tyres. Closer examination showed that they were well nigh wrecked, so Mirko suggested they go to the place where they take all their cars to have them looked at. When they got there, the main man himself came out to inspect our car and discuss the best replacements. If I can distil accurately what Stephen reported back it is basically this: the loose surface and the angle of our road mean that the stones have cut into the tread on the tyres, paring it back drastically to such an extent that in some places it was virtually non-existent, revealing the inner core. Various makes and models of tyres were discussed and in the end it was decided to fit Pirelli because the boss man thought they would be better for the road, having slightly more rounded corners. No, I don’t know why either, but hopefully he does. Anyway, Stephen is booked in for next Tuesday morning, so till then we will have to make sure we don’t execute any racing turns, and hopefully the improved road will mean it is less of a problem in the future.

The rest of the week passed relatively uneventfully, though not without one or two signifiers that the start of Advent on Friday marked the beginning of the build-up to Christmas.

The first of these happened at Pina when we called in for breakfast, before doing the shopping for the weekend at Sigma, where they had broken out the seasonal packets of sugar (though, as yet, not the Christmas cups and saucers). For some reason, however, while these packets featured a very jolly Santa Claus figure the wording only wished one a Happy New Year. I suppose one has to take the rest of the greeting as understood, like so much of life in the unfathomable world of MSP.

The second marker was when Stephen harvested the first parsnip from the lotto, which I’m pleased to say was a very fine looking (and tasting) specimen. Before you think that one lone parsnip is a bit of a feeble crop, this was just by way of a control test to see if the rest of them (grown from seeds I brought back from the UK when I visited in March) are in a fit enough state to form part of our festive dinner. We have had to grow our own as parsnips are an even rarer sight than Brussels sprouts in this neck of the woods, by which I mean

that they just don’t exist. Any mention of them in the past has drawn a blank look and a puzzled shake of the head, with not even the slightest recognition of the Italian word for them (pastinaca in case you were wondering).

The final indicator was our first Christmas market this afternoon, when we went for a ride out to Montecosaro, some twenty kilometres northeast of here. This is the first time I’ve been to Montecosaro, and maybe it wasn’t the best of days with the scudding grey clouds, but it does seem a place worth further investigation in the spring given the panoramic views of the surrounding plains stretching to the Adriatic coast. Today, however, we were more concerned with shopping opportunities at the bijou wooden huts fanning out from the fountain at the centre of the town’s gardens, and we were not disappointed. Besides some local honey (for my breakfast) and a jar of mostarda di frutta (for Christmas cold cuts), I treated Stephen to a new decoration. This was a small bell jar on a stand enclosing a scene of a vintage car bearing a Christmas tree past a snow dusted pine; a mixture of nostalgia and charm, just what is in order at this time of the year.