Homeward Bound

A full two weeks have passed since my last blog and not surprisingly for the time of year we find ourselves with another of the intermittent bumper double-issues. There is a comforting symbiosis, though, that while Christmas leaves you with little spare time to do things like write blogs, there is really not a lot you can write about as the time passes in a very pleasant haze of family, feasting and frivolities.

Before we got to all that there was the matter of finishing off the year with my students, handing out Christmas cards and little thank you gifts. I also ended the week with a few goodies of my own, including an artisanal panettone, two serpenti (the MSP speciality, remember, and so local that Marzia and Diego in Montegranaro, 10 kilometres away, looked completely blank when I talked about them), a bottle of wine and some homemade frustingo (a speciality of Le Marche) as well as a lovely wooden Christmas ornament.

We also had a surprise Christmas present on the Wednesday afternoon when our old friends who work on the road appeared to fix the two sections that had sunk over the period since their last remedial efforts. Having been given prior notice by one of the men just before lunch that it would be happening, Stephen took the car to the top road after we had eaten, which meant that we were still able to go to the flower shop in Monte San Giusto, as planned, for a poinsettia for us and a small gift or two. The slight inconvenience of having to walk to the car was more than made up for by the vast improvement to the road, especially as they filled in the two sections with the reddish hardcore as used the first time and not the rubbly imposter that failed to bed in after the previous patching up. Driving back with our plants was a veritable pleasure, and so far things are looking good for continued smooth driving - snow, frost and deluges permitting.

We were then on a countdown for my departure for the UK, starting with pasta at the pub with Marco and Maddalena on Wednesday night, taking in food shopping for Stephen’s provisions and Christmas haircuts on Friday morning and finishing with Stephen doing my packing for me on Friday evening after my last lesson of the year. You may be thinking that I’m incapable of doing my own packing, which is not the case. It’s just that Stephen thinks I am, and why should I disillusion him and spoil all his fun? Besides, it is one way to make sure that I really do push off and leave him in peace.

I’m pleased to say that my journey to Manchester airport was uneventful, though getting through passport control could have been quicker if the ePassport gates were working more efficiently and I hadn’t had, like so many others, to join a rejects queue. This in turn would have moved much more quickly if the agent checking passports had realised that no matter how many times she asked the man at her desk for his birthdate, he was not going to answer. I had thought that the days had gone that the British way of speaking a foreign language was to keep repeating the same thing in English, only louder.

My time in Sheffield was very pleasant indeed, seeing family and friends and spending time with Mum and Dad, including making sure they had a decent Christmas dinner (thank you, Marks and Spencer). Then it was time to make the return journey. This, again, passed off uneventfully – at least once I got to Manchester airport. For some reason best known to the esoteric world of the sat nav, it decided to send me on a magical mystery tour of the villages and country lanes of Derbyshire and Cheshire. Under other circumstances it might have been a pleasant diversion, but in the dark at 7a.m., drifting in and out of fog over the hills, it demanded not a little concentration.

Since returning to LCDDB, things have been very quiet as we hit the lull between Christmas and New Year, and as we try to firm up plans for what to do for the latter. It is more than likely we will be going to Pina again, though not to a do on the grand scale of last year. Maddalena had heard a rumour that something was afoot there, though it hadn’t been advertised. As she was still in Rome with Marco at his parents, Stephen was delegated to find out what was happening. This was less than successful, as when he in went in, Amara, to whom he talked, seemed to have very little idea and even less enthusiasm about it. She wasn’t sure, they might be a dinner but it hadn’t been decided, and if he called back on Saturday or Sunday they might know more. As Chiara, Maddalena’s sister, was wanting to go and is vegetarian, he asked if there would be anything for her to eat. The equally helpful response was that there is always something…

Having heard this information via Maddalena, Chiara decided to take action and phoned Pina yesterday afternoon, with much greater success. This time she talked to Paola, who knew much more about what was going on – but as we later found out that the upstairs dining area falls under her responsibility while Amara’s is the bar, then maybe we shouldn’t be too hard on her sister. The upshot of this is that yes, there is a dinner and yes there will be vegetarian options and yes she would book a table for six.

The only other things left for us to do this weekend were to have a belated opening of Christmas presents and to collect the coming year’s supply of refuse bags from the pop-up depot in the old church in the main square. Here a particularly jolly man handed them over after I signed for them, shook our hands and wished us a Happy New Year, though disappointingly he was in the standard Comune yellow with not a hit of red in sight…