Just this and that and a bit of the other

Bella and Harry started the week in a better frame of mind when the rain that set in last Sunday stopped by Monday lunchtime, giving way to clearer, if still somewhat autumnal, weather. This was just as well for Stephen’s burgeoning airport taxi enterprise, which was called once more into service. However, whereas the previous week it had been to ferry family members, now it was purely business.

His first shuttle service to collect his associate, Chris, involved an elegant variation when after meeting him at arrivals the pair had to make a detour to the bijou seaside destination of Sirolo. This was because Chris’s go-to photographer, Pete, had decided to combine his one-day’s assignment at the Carellis’ factory with a family holiday at the cliff side town overlooking a sandy bay on Le Marche’s Adriatic coast (see, I could do A Place in the Sun). They were waiting to be guided from there to Monte San Pietrangeli in the nearest Stephen has ever come to playing Rubber Duck with his very own convoy.

With him being otherwise occupied, it wasn’t till late in the evening that I saw Stephen again after he and Chris had inspected the Carellis’ production of Chris’s order and Pete – assisted by his wife while his two children played with Bingo, the Jack Russell, – flashed his equipment and snapped copious pictures. Chris was staying overnight with us, and taking the easy option we had decided that dining at Pomo d’Oro would be a good idea rather than having to juggle preparing dinner at home when we didn’t know what time they would finish and I was teaching till gone 7pm.

Stephen had his fifth trip in ten days to Ancona on Tuesday morning to take Chris for his flight home before turning attention to more domestic matters. He took advantage of a fine morning to strip the vines of the last tomatoes of the season, which he had turned into soup ready for freezing before lunchtime. After lunch we were due for our promised return visit to the bank in Montegranaro to investigate house insurance with Simona’s English speaking colleague. There was a slight hitch to this, however, as when we arrived at 2.40 it was to find that he was off, poorly. Simona said that she had called to tell us that morning but there had been no reply. This is hardly surprising as she was using the number for the old Vodaphone mobile that Stephen uses for work, and which he had left in his jacket pocket, thus muffling the sound. Not that that small detail mattered anyway, seeing as he had left the jacket at the factory the previous day, a fact he was unaware of until he tried to find both the phone and the jacket when he got back to LCDDB, only for there to be no trace of either.

We were quite happy to return another day but Simona would not hear of it. Instead she dealt with it herself, despite the fact that the couple, who had an appointment with her at 3 o’clock, had to wait for nearly an hour till she completed our business. As the house is in my name it was my turn this time to sign away my life, my signature becoming increasingly illegible in direct proportion to the number of pages churning out of the printer as her automatic signing tablet wasn’t working. When we eventually left the bank it was with a promise to call back to tell her how we found the app we assured her we would download (yeah, right) and to make a mad (but safe) dash back for my 4pm lesson with Irene – who was waiting patiently despite our being 10 minutes late.

Despite the rain last Sunday, the week gradually became clearer and warmer. When we went into MSP on Wednesday morning the air was so pristine we had a wonderful view of the Sibillini Mountains as we drove, appropriately enough, along the Via Porta da Sole. The peaks stood in sharp outline against the azure of the sky, giving us a glimpse of the first snow of the season. This reminder that notwithstanding daytime temperatures in the low 20s, summer was well and truly over prompted us to put away the terrazzo furniture on Thursday, followed by the fly screen from the front door on Friday.

This might have been a tad previous, as by lunchtime yesterday a nigh on tropically balmy breeze was blowing around LCDDB, which was slightly at odds with Stephen’s latest foray into the culinary world. As you may recall, we were left last weekend with a trugful of quince, which he set about turning into jam. This was not a particularly difficult process, other than quince seeming to be one of those things, like artichokes, where you end up with more waste than the fruit you started with – and that was without actually peeling them. I think the problem was twofold: (1) discarding the bits that weren’t fit for using and (2) the way the seeds were in serried, comb-like rows through the fruit as opposed to a discrete core like an apple. Still, we are most impressed with the result, being a gloriously pale golden colour with pieces of fruit suspended in the set jam.

He took a jar (there being plenty to go round) for Mrs Carelli when we went to dinner there last night, together with the modellista and his wife. She seemed most pleased with the gift, and maybe not a little stunned at Stephen’s range of talents; I just hope she is still as pleased when she opens it, as we didn’t run the mixture through a mouli, simmer the sealed jars in a water bath for 30 minutes nor stand them upside down while they cooled, all of which seem to be de rigueur in the Italian preserving process. We are pleased to say that we successfully managed to thwart Mrs C’s attempts to make us overeat, taking sensible amounts of the six courses (three of which were meat) meaning we left feeling only slightly bloated.

As for the weather, we finished this week in much the same way as the last one. We were somewhat apprehensive that yesterday’s unseasonably warm wind was not a good sign, and we were proved right when this morning it brought an increasing accumulation of grey clouds. These held onto their contents for a while, but shortly after lunch felt enough was enough and decided to share them with an unsuspecting public, making for a second exceedingly wet Sunday afternoon in a row. What with this and the clocks going back, by early evening we had shut the shutters and lighted the lights against the gloominess outside – matched once again by the gloominess of Bella and Harry, who, after a positive start to the week, must have been wondering what had to happen before Stephen decided to set the first fire of the season.