Fast and loose

With the hot weather continuing and a dearth of lessons, it has been a generally quiet week, mostly concerned with bits and pieces of general maintenance. Unfortunately, not much of this has been on the new old car, which is proving to be as unpredictable as most of the other things that we seem to surround ourselves with. One day we will do something that goes smoothly.

Things were definitely on the smooth side on Monday, which was lesson-free, as was Tuesday, though there was still plenty to occupy me. This included a morning trip to the dentist to have my stitches out (I forgot to say that on last week’s visit, the surgeon again sliced open my gum, now it had healed, to fix the post for the implant; I will again spare you the gory details) and an evening visit to the optician to collect my new sunglasses – fast service, indeed.

The topic of speed was also very much on Stephen’s mind when at some point on Tuesday afternoon the speedometer in the Freeclimber stopped working, which, together with the fuel and the temperature gauges, made for a triple whammy. He does not suspect sabotage by the two policemen who stopped him for not having his headlights on, though it was shortly after this that he noticed the malfunction, as they were too busy at the time unravelling the convoluted story of the lights not being automatic, Stephen not being used to turning them on and the confusion over which documents exactly they wanted him to present (they were particularly unimpressed by his 25 yard breaststroke certificate).

He did mention it when he went, in the evening, to see the modellista at the factory up the road, just past Nero Giardini, where Angelo, the modelist’s father, said that he could see what the problem was and hunkered down under the car in a surprisingly sprightly fashion for someone well into his ninetieth decade. He had seen that the cable running under the car from the axel to the instrument panel had come loose and offered to reattach it. I hope you don’t think any the less of Stephen for standing by and letting an octogenarian see to the problem, though it won’t surprise you to know that Angelo wasn’t able to fix it. This was because the cable inside the cord was missing, lost in action somewhere in the provinces of Fermo and Macerata, and never to be found again.

We had a first on Wednesday when we discovered, with a bit of help, a new place to eat pizza. Not that that was the plan when we set out with Marco and Maddalena as we were intending to take aperitivo at Totò, it being some time since we had been out with M&M and also since we had been to Totò. We were thwarted in the second part of this as when we got out of the car at the forneria, the nice girl who usually serves us appeared in the doorway to say that they were closing in ten minutes. We thought they were open much later, obviously, but midweek must be different to the weekend so we were left having to think of alternative arrangements – meaning we all looked at Marco. His suggestion was to drive into Civitanova and eat at I Due Re, a pizzeria on the lungamare where we had never been but where we will go again as the pizze were crispily thin with a good topping and the starter of chips wasn’t bad either.

A walk along the prom afterwards and a caffè and digestivo would just about have made up for missing out on Totò if Stephen and I hadn’t snuck in a visit there the next night, when we christened my new reusable straws, part of our small attempt to cut down on the mountain of plastic threatening to take over the world. Eating out twice in a row was something of a present to ourselves after taking the car to Autopompei to see what they could do about the defunct speedometer cable. The answer appeared to be very little, despite the lady on reception being suitably sympathetic and the main engineer coming out to take a look. Stephen was not to be put off, however, and insisted that he leave the car with them so that they could make a thorough investigation and see what they could do to rectify the problem(s), which means that our return to being a two-car family has been all too brief.

And then it was the weekend and time for me, after whipping up some muffins yesterday afternoon (ham, olive and parmesan, in case you were wondering) to head north to Bologna this afternoon for another week of lessons at Madre Lingua. There will, hopefully, be lots to say about it next week, but for the time being what I can say is that the weather is set for continued clear skies and sunshine, and a promised (or threatened, depending on your viewpoint) 40C next Thursday.

As for today, the train journey was reassuringly uneventful and I was at the flat I am renting for the week around 3.30pm. I was met at the door of the building by the owner, Laura, who, it turned out, lived next door to the very modern, bijou apartment on the second floor in a larger duplex affair. The building, Laura explained, used to be a cinema, which explained the large open areas on the ground floor that you had to pass through to get to the stairs and lift. It also explained why there were six picture frames in the wide hallway, each showing stills from a different film. Laura seemed most impressed when I named each one, especially Giant, and told her husband about it later when she introduced me to him.

It didn’t take long for Laura to show me the flat, but then she sat down with me for a chat and to offer some suggestions about places to visit and places to eat, which was very kind of her. She also, following on from my sterling performance in the movie quiz, gave me a guide to the open-air film festival in Piazza Maggiore, which is something I missed last year being a couple of weeks too early. Before she left, she told me that there was to be a get together in garden of the block on Tuesday and invited me to join them, to which my reaction was firstly, to think how nice that was and then secondly to worry about making small talk in Italian with strangers, and then thirdly to tell myself that is exactly the reason why I am in Bologna and to get over myself.

After unpacking I freshened up and went out for a wander. When I stopped for a pre-dinner gargle, who should pass by and greet me but Laura and her husband, Giovanni. They spent a few minutes chatting until my aperitivo arrived then continued on their way, leaving me to enjoy the warmth and bustle of early evening in the centre of Bologna and my Aperol spritz – with a reusable straw, of course.