Instinctive behaviour

You’ll be relieved to know that no harm came to man, beast or concrete following Stephen’s little accident with the Montepulciano wine. His quick action prevented permanent staining of the path by the bottom of the steps so we are unlikely to be besieged by hordes coming to see the miraculous appearance of the face of Rupaul on our garden path. As for the tomato plants we bought on the same day and of which we had higher hopes, Mr C, our gardening guru, put a bit of a damper on them when he told Stephen that they wouldn’t produce any fruit. On this matter, we hear what he is saying but remain firm believers that something must come of the flowers that are continuing to form on the plants. Time will tell.

With my week being pretty quiet, including having a whole day free as Friday’s are currently lessonless, it was up to Stephen to provide some action, which only partly came in the shape of crystallised heels. He returned the ones he had completed last Sunday, which passed muster, but was unable to continue straight away as there was no more glue. This situation was rectified later in the week when he returned with a glue gun, which looked to me more like something you would do a spot of grouting with rather than carry out a precision task for a high-end fashion label. Despite its impressive appearance, it caused Stephen not a little frustration as not only was the amount of glue difficult to control but it also set in the gun in double-quick time.

At this point he decided that enough was enough and admitted defeat. His contact at the factory was most disconcerted when Stephen said that he didn’t want to continue, stopping just short of pleading on his knees. He did offer, as an alternative, working on the black suede heels instead, as if somehow this was a more enticing prospect. Stephen still declined. Cleaning off a spot of renegade glue from pink leather is one thing, removing it from black suede quite another.

Even without his cha-cha heels, Stephen still found himself busy travelling here and there. This would have been all right if his and my commitments hadn’t clashed on Wednesday afternoon, a day that decided it was, at last, going to share a decent downpour with us, meaning I found myself doing a driving Mr Stephen scenario in torrential rain. Both before and after my evening lesson at Montegranaro I had to drive to and from Corridonia – twenty plus minutes each way – first to take and then to collect him. As a reward for my good service, I was treated to a bowl of pasta at the pub, preceded by a Campari soda, so I can’t complain - too much.

As I mentioned earlier, Friday was a free day for me as far as lessons were concerned, one of the reasons being, as I mentioned last week, that the project with Prosilas had finished – or so I thought. Following a message I sent to the Helen Doron school about it I had a phone call on Thursday from Melissa, the manager who is still away on maternity leave but who is obviously keeping her finger on the pulse.

Melissa explained what no one else had explained, that the project, which is funded by some outside agency, is for a total of 40 hours. These should be completed over, say, a ten-week period. Prosilas, as I suspect would be the case with most small to mid-sized companies, is not able to release its staff for a whole afternoon so they have to deliver the hours over an extended period. When Samia said last week that it was the end of the current period she was not letting me down lightly, and I should be returning to the company at some time in the near future at a mutually agreeable day and time to continue the lessons. This will have to happen pretty sharpish as, if I understood correctly and I did repeat this to Melissa who confirmed it, the time has to be completed by the end of the year. This means that there are thirty-two hours left and about thirty-seven weeks to do them in. Looks like someone needs to get a move on.

With no crystals to affix at the weekend, Stephen had to occupy himself with other work that on this occasion meant preparing various design materials (some of which required laminating, using my laminator and my pouches – I will be issuing a bill) for a meeting tomorrow. I was not totally idle, either, with my usual Saturday morning lesson with Alessio and taking the opportunity to do a spot of baking for the first time in ages (plumcake yogurt caffè e cacao or coffee yogurt and chocolate cake to the less international of us). But we weren’t the only ones to be busy round LCDDB.

It was whilst I was sitting at the dining table this morning doing a couple of tasks on the MacBook that I noticed, through the front door window, something fluttering backwards and forwards. This set a minor alarm bell off somewhere at the back of my head. I went onto the terrazzo to call Stephen to say that there may be a bird building a nest in the electricity meter box, as had happened last year. As the doings of nature fall under his jurisdiction, Stephen duly came up and looked in the box, and there indeed was a newly built nest – fortunately without any sign of eggs. Whilst we have every sympathy for the needs of nature, a nest full of chicks was not something that we really wanted in our lives over the next few weeks.

Working on the basis that the bird would have plenty of time to relocate, Stephen removed the nest to a bijou spot in the garden. He then made the box bird proof using pieces of cardboard, with extra reinforcement round the small hole where at some point previous to our occupancy there had been a handle and lock and which our aspiring lodger had used as a means of access. Far be it for me to stand back and be critical of anyone’s creative efforts, but I have to say that in terms of aesthetics and manual dexterity the bird’s construction whipped Stephen’s into a cocked hat (or electricity box, if you prefer), but in terms of fire prevention, I’m quite happy to settle for the homespun look.