Face the music

After a hectic time last week, Harry and Bella were more than pleased to see more of us at home over the past seven days as things returned to normal for this time of year – i.e. sunny days and hot afternoons with some occasional threatening clouds, one substantial downpour (when the temperature dropped to a refreshing 24C for at least an hour) and the start of the holiday period here in Italy. I say the start, but you wouldn’t have noticed for the first few days as I still had my lessons with Michele in Porto San Giorgio and Stephen made three consecutive daily trips to the Carellis, who weren’t able to decamp to their apartment in Lido di Fermo without consulting with him on certain crucial matters.

Stephen was finally able to relax fully on Wednesday evening (I still had one more lesson before Michele and his family left for their holiday in Paris), something we marked by a trip to Totò for aperitivo. To our dismay, when we arrived we thought we had made a serious error as the building was in darkness and we feared they had shut up shop for the holidays. However, when we went to press our noses longingly against the window, we saw a sign that said they had had to close for a couple of hours that afternoon, and would be open again at 7pm. What can you do for fifteen minutes on the border between Sant’Elpido a Mare and Monte Urano I hear you say. The answer, if you are Stephen, is find a shop, which is what we did.

A few minutes down the road took us to Q Store, the clothes retailer where Raffa, Manuel’s partner, works. This is somewhere I have never been despite passing it on many occasions, on each of which Stephen tells me that’s where Raffa works. And indeed she does, for there she was folding gilets and quilted jackets and dealing with customer queries. We passed the time of day with her, and we thought that a padded gilet might be a thing for me to consider for the autumn. Try one on, she said, handing me the largest size she had, a 54. Raffa is not, as far as I am aware, a proficient speaker of English, but she did know enough to say ‘Oh my God,’ when I was unable to zip the jacket up. It isn’t that I am some obscene hulk, but dealing daily with Lilliputian Italians obviously failed to prepare her for a Brobdingnagian Brit.

Having decided to shelve the idea of a padded gilet for another time, we went downstairs to have a look at the shoes, it being all of four hours since Stephen had held any prototypes in his hand, and where, you will be pleased to know, I save €85 on a new pair for myself. I spotted a very fine soft canvas and leather Satorisan sneaker, just right for taking me from summer into autumn (with our without a gilet), which we debated about for all or 30 seconds before I tried them on. The good news is that of the two sizes they had in stock, one was mine; the disappointing news is that the style was too tight for my broad feet, meaning that the even better news was that I was €85 to the good – which paid for our aperitivo, two loaves of Totò’s finest artisan bread and some choice breakfast buns, with plenty left over for another day.

By Friday we were so full of the holiday spirit that we threw caution to the wind and went for a walk on PSG beach, breaking this summer’s established routine, but it was such a glorious morning it was easy to forgo shopping in Sigma for once. The gentle breeze by the sea went some way to offset the intensity of the sun, though we should have known that we would pay in one way or another for the heat and our morning playing hooky as we had just settled down for our post-lunch coffee and relaxation on the settee when the sky went dark, the branches started whipping and the shutters began banging. We (which, of course means, Stephen) ran round securing the house against the imminent downpour, which, as ever, was as dramatic as it was short-lived. Half an hour later, when it had stopped completely, the terrazzo was awash with rainwater that Stephen reported, when he brushed the excess away, to be warm enough to bath in – and after another ten minutes as the sun tentatively reappeared, it was as dry as if the deluge had never happened.

After this blip, the hot, dry weather set in fair for the weekend, which was just as well as yesterday evening we were out to dinner again – in both senses of the word. This came about when bff Manuel phoned Stephen on Wednesday to say he had booked tickets for dinner and a concert at a place in Altidona for us to go with him and Raffa. This may seem a bit last minute to some, but as you should have gathered by now three days notice passes for long term planning in Italy – and it’s not as if we were beating invitations away at the door, so we found that we were available and would love to go.

As ever, arrangements were fluid, and when I asked Stephen yesterday morning what time we were expected he was still waiting to hear from the bossman himself. This came late morning in the form of a WhatsApp stating a time (8.30pm) and grid reference link to Google Maps where he would meet us in PSG, as it being August he, like half of Italy, had decamped with the family to the seaside. As old British habits die hard, we had managed to find a parking spot and be at the allotted rendezvous point in good time, and I was on the lookout for Manuel’s sleek BMW station wagon coming to whisk us away to Altidona. I should really have known that it was not going to be so straightforward, which I quickly realised when, on hearing him hailing us, we turned to see him wobbling into view riding a pushbike. It transpired that he had been to the bank and was making a slight detour to meet up with us so we could jog along side him back to his apartment, somewhere neither of us had been before.

We made a brief stop there to say hello to his mother and his three children (suitably unimpressed in that world-weary teenage way), who were just about to head out for pizza. Did we want a drink, Manuel asked. I was a little surprised that we had time for an aperitivo but being an obliging guest said I would, though Stephen, knowing better, declined. I was right, we didn’t have time for an aperitivo, as I downed a plastic cup of Schweppes Orange while Manuel gave last minute instructions to the family before we all left: the family to the lungamare and we to Manuel’s car parked in the private road in front of the apartment.

You may be wondering, and quite rightly, where Raffa was hiding. Well, as she works in a clothes shop (see above) and doesn’t finish work till 8pm, we were actually on the way from the apartment block to our second rendezvous of the evening, by the roundabout near the autostrada slip road at Porto Sant’Elpidio. This is where the benefits of hands-free come in, as Manuel was able to keep up a running dialogue with her as we drove through PSG, dissuading her from walking along the dual carriageway in her heels and long dress but to wait at the said roundabout. Good sense prevailed, she awaited our arrival and then, round about 9, we hit the autostrada and headed south.

The journey was comparatively short, even given the winding road that snaked up from Altidona Mare (where Raffa pointed out a useful clothes shop for our future reference) to the town of Altidona, where Manuel manfully conquered the problem in all these small hilltop municipalities of finding somewhere to park: i.e. on a grass verge on the road out of the town. This allowed us to walk up into the old part, through a very well kept park and down the narrow central street to the restaurant. Although it was dark, we got the impression that Altidona would benefit from a revisit when the surrounding countryside could be seen and the old stone houses appreciated. Apparently, the reason this old centre looked so vibrant is that an enterprising mayor had sold off the dilapidated properties in the old centre for knock down prices on the understanding that whoever bought them would renovate them and live in them. It certainly worked.

The restaurant, L'Amaca Tasting & Art, was about halfway down the street and through one courtyard into another where all the tables bar two were filled with people well into their four-course dinner. Yes, we were late, but only by about 30 minutes which doesn’t really count in Italy. We were shown to our table, which would have had a fabulous panoramic view of the valley beyond had it not been dark. Still, the feeling of spaciousness it gave and the accompanying cooling breeze made up for the lack of a vista – and being a tad late made little difference in the scheme of things as the concert didn’t actually start till something past 11, giving us plenty of time to catch up.

I won’t bore you with a blow by blow account of the show, just to say that the singer was Ginevra di Marco, accompanied by a keyboard player and guitarist, and she gave her audience of obviously devoted fans (which included Raffa who was in raptures) the whole gamut of what I presume were her well-known songs as a vast majority of the audience spent a great deal of time clapping, stomping and cheering along with her. This may be one reason why Manuel, on the return journey, maybe teasingly, said that it was all a bit communistic. Not being in a position to understand what she was singing about I can’t offer an opinion one way or the other, but she certainly had a fine voice and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

This all meant that it was heading towards 3am before we got to bed. I can’t remember the last time we were up so late, probably the millennium - but if you can’t let your hair down every eighteen years or so, what can you do?