Clouds, but not in the coffee

I am not going to make many demands on your time with this week’s blog, there being very little of import to communicate. This, though, should be good news for you, gentle reader, as it gives you so much more time to open up all those feverish bargains from Black Friday… or Cyber Monday… or Gullible Tuesday…

The week did start off a little frantic when Sauro, the bit well between his teeth, phoned shortly after breakfast on Monday morning to say that he had been in touch with EOLO and he wanted us to join our computer to the router with the cable. What cable, asked Stephen, not unreasonably. The one that joins your computer to the router, replied Sauro, used from past experience having to deal with stupid British people. His barely disguised exasperation wasn’t helped when Stephen said we didn’t have one and had never needed one. Our MacBooks (another sigh – why can’t we have proper computers) have also been wire free, because we are just those sorts of guys. Sauro obviously isn’t, which is why he arrived some twenty minutes later with his own computer and, that’s right, a cable.

What transpired next is a little hazy as far as I’m concerned as I thought it was a much better use of my time to get on with cleaning the kitchen, leaving Stephen to play Igor to Sauro’s Dr Frankenstein. My only contribution was to keep unlocking my phone when whichever operative Sauro was talking to at the time sent yet another message with some code or other for him to input. After about an hour, I’m pleased to say, these combined forces were successful. We were back on the Internet, thanks mainly, I think, to Sauro hacking into our router and getting it to reset, an action it had failed to do after Sunday’s brief interruption of the electricity supply. Flushed with victory, he then wanted to change our tortuous password to a simpler, more memorable one, but having just got the system working again we managed to persuade him that it wasn’t a good idea to fiddle with such a finely balanced ecosystem. He settled, instead, for sending EOLO a message correcting their incorrect spelling of my middle name on their database (I suppose slotting a vowel into MicKenzie would make sense to an Italian ear) and went home a relatively happy man.

That wasn’t the only thing that was resolved on Monday for our bedding from Amazon.it arrived on the promised day, only two days after re-ordering, and by mid-afternoon we were the proud owners of two new cosy-looking winter duvet sets. Why they should have arrived so speedily rather than taking the scenic route via France might possibly be explained by rather than risking the vagaries of Poste Italiane, second time round they were placed into the sturdy hands of UPS.

So what else of note can I share with you?

Laura, one of my students, following my comment last week that the main reason roast chestnuts are so popular in Le Marche is as an excuse to drink vino cotto, it being a classic pairing in the region, appeared this week with one of her grandmother’s own homemade bottles. This inspired me to turn my thoughts to some homespun brew of my own, but not wanting to spend hours slowing reducing wine and must, I opted instead for a couple of recipes taken a few years ago from a Good Housekeeping magazine feature on edible Christmas presents – though in this case the recipients will be ourselves. The first batch, steeped and bottled over two-days, was a coffee liqueur made with 100g of smokily aromatic beans from Bar del Borgo. The second is a spiced orange vodka, which is gently maturing at the back of a wardrobe, it being cool and dark and an infinitely better find than a gateway to Narnia.

Thursday evening we had a long-overdue meet-up with Computer Luca, who had at last emerged from what he calls his ‘miasma’, meaning the start of term confusion when he has to get himself organised for his various teaching commitments and back into the groove of University political life. Where better to mark this than at Mandì in Civitanova, where the food and the welcome were as fabulous as we have come to expect. This despite the nice ladies who run it insisting on shortening Stephen’s name to Ste, but which he is prepared to overlook because they are foreign after all, and everything else is so wonderful.

This was our great treat for the week as, with somewhat dismal weather setting in, we decided to spend the weekend quietly at home, which gave Stephen the opportunity yesterday afternoon to set about the muffa which has begun its annual invasion of the bathroom. Before you get too excited that at last you know where to find a fantastic beast, muffa is just Italian for mould and a minor irritation of country living. And I don’t want you to think that Stephen had to face the challenge alone, for he wouldn’t have been able to wipe the enemy from the ceiling without my support. In this life there are not only those that grab the limelight but also those of us who hold the ladders.