Due notice

Heading for the middle of January and it looks like my lessons are going to hit that busy period as people find something to occupy them until the weather starts warming up in the spring. Not only did Mr Mancini squeeze in three lessons before he heads on a tour of Italy next week to visit his various reps, but on Tuesday afternoon I received a phone call from Sauro.

He, if you recall (and kudos if you do) is the driving instructor/demonstrator for BMW, and work commitments have kept him otherwise occupied since July. Now, hitting a quiet time over the winter, he is back for intensive lessons (sporadic business needs permitting) and wanted to know if I was available the next morning. You won’t be surprised that at 11am Wednesday I welcomed Sauro over the threshold of the workroom for the first of two lessons this week, with another three slated for next week.

Monday also saw the restart of the Montegranaro two and the Mayor’s nieces after the Christmas break. It is a mark of the difference in attitude towards the festival that when I asked Ariana and Elisa what presents they had received, rather than listing off the latest must-have techno wizardry, their modest (but no less – and maybe more - appreciated) trawl amounted to a bit of money, a mug each, a scarf (one black, one pink), and a shared Game of Thrones Cluedo game.

To get to the important business, though, before all that we had a quick visit to the garage to see what the latest was on the bereft Freeclimber, which we found hoisted into the air on the inspection platform. Ivano was not there, but his son, Alessandro, said that they had ordered the new clutch, and that it should be there by Wednesday and fitted by Friday. This was good news to us, as was the quite reasonable price estimated, but it did make us wonder why they were able to source and order a replacement part in such short order when Pompeii took more than a month the last time the car needed work and only after Stephen had supplied the cable. As I said last time, it pays to shop local.

On Tuesday morning just after 9, having completed the morning chores and walked the dogs, we were just about to set off for breakfast at Pina and shopping at Sigma when a white van pulled up outside of LCDDB so Stephen went down to see who it was while I put the finishing touches to my scarf arrangement. It turned out to be the man contracted by the gas company on his annual check of the fire safety provisions for our tank in the back garden, though when I say annual we have been in the house since December 2015 and this is the first time anyone has shown up. He was somewhat taken aback when he discovered that we only had the one fire extinguisher, which had seen better days, and no hazard sign in the immediate vicinity. Stephen didn’t like to tell him that it had fallen off during a high wind and had so far not been replaced.

Shaking his head sadly at the foolhardiness of it all, he asked if we had not had a letter stating what the safety requirements were. Stephen did his best puzzled Englishman act, thinking it wisest not to mention that yes we had, over a year ago, and when he asked the man who delivers the gas about it was told to ignore it till someone turned up. Well, Tuesday was the day, and after handing over two new fire extinguishers (for which the bill will be coming in the post, so that will be another six months) and supervising the positioning of these (in the downstairs room at the back) and the positioning of a new sign (on the back wall) he asked Stephen to sign to say that the inspection had been completed and that we would not be so cavalier in the future. Wrists slapped we went for a reviving cappuccino at Pina, and hoped no one would be talking about us.

Whilst on the topic of Italian bureaucracy, you may also recall that last Friday we collected the payment forms from the Post Office as the first stage in the arcane procedure to obtain a tessera sanitaria each. As an elegant variation, seeing as the charge has been exactly the same for the last three years, we decided to be brave and complete the forms without driving to Fermo, waiting in line at the hospital to ask what the amount was and then driving all the way home again when there were lots of other, more important things, we could be doing. Consequently, we paid as per on Tuesday morning then took the forms with fingers crossed on Wednesday to the hospital where it was all processed in less than five minutes and without the man throwing his hands in the air in horror at our mistake. Of course, this is assuming that he knew himself what the correct charge was.

In what was turning out to be an expensive week, after paying for two health cards on Tuesday, on Thursday we had to settle the bill for the car. This was a day ahead of the promised deadline (take note Pompei), and when Stephen got in to drive it away it was almost like being in a new car – so much so that he stalled it three times before he got out onto the road. His said it was because whereas before it had felt like driving a bus, now the gears just slid into place so it threw him off balance – and who are we to doubt him?

Apart from the rejoicing of having our Freeclimber returned (again) and working better than ever (fingers crossed), there were two other causes for celebration. The first was that we had our maiden delivery to our new post box on Thursday, a letter to me encouraging me to make use of Amazon Prime and the other a flyer to Stephen advertising L’Occitane’s Christmas gift range. One feels that we may have missed the boat on the last one, but it was nice that they thought about us. The other good news came via WhatsApp when Roberto messaged to say that he had got the job in London, which of course was entirely due to my last minute coaching and nothing at all to do with the many years he spent at University or as an intern in Sweden and America, and as a consequence no doubt my stock will rise even further in MSP as that Englishman that can get you a job in London.

Or maybe not, for following a couple of days when I tried my best to answer his various questions regarding how to ask the company about different aspects of his contract and to help decipher their replies, though instantly converting his annual salary into an estimated monthly take-home pay proved beyond my skill set, he messaged yesterday to say that he had decided not to accept the position after all. I’m not entirely sure why, but I think he realised that the glamour of living in London and the status of having worked there for an international company when looking to transfer back to Italy was not worth the trade-off of having to spend most of your money on living expenses and having little left over with which to live. Still, London’s loss is my gain, as he is keen to continue weekly English lessons and is coming next Saturday to discuss it, when I can also find out more about his decision.

And that is about that. We have spent another very dull weekend at home seeing to various chores, but the good news is that after weeks of sunshine and dry weather we actually had rain yesterday and overnight, with tentative showers and grey skies this morning. This is not usually something to be welcomed, and certainly Bella and Harry were less than enamoured by it when they were relegated to staying indoors, but without rain and some decent snowfalls in the mountains, whose lower slopes are looking far too verdant for the time of year, things might be a little tricky on the water front come August. Besides I’m sure Mr Mancini and the local farmers were more than pleased to see it for without the snow in winter, how can the warmth swell the grain?