Making demands

After all the excitement of new post boxes, smoking cars and functioning fire extinguishers, this past week has seen a return to comforting normality – well, almost. While this is good news for us it does not make for the most riveting reading, so my apologies in advance.

Up until Friday, with the weather returning to clear skies and sunshine after last weekend’s rain, the most notable events were the resuming of lessons with the Mancini Three on Tuesday and me treating Stephen to a date night on Thursday at Pomo d’Oro. Unfortunately, neither of our dates showed up but we made the best of it, with Stephen polishing off a distinctly bloody fillet and me wearing my new jeans and jumper for the first time. Even if I say so myself, I looked much to advantage so Signor X doesn’t know what he was missing.

It was Friday morning, when I was returning from doing the shopping, that things took a turn for the dramatic – relatively speaking. I stopped to check the post box and found what looked like a copy of a demand for payment for an outstanding amount on our water bill. As Stephen was otherwise engaged with a customer at the Carellis’ (hence my lone trip to Sigma), it wasn’t till lunchtime that we were able to decipher it properly.

There were a couple of things about the notice that seemed puzzling. Firstly, it was addressed to number 7 and not 20, though addressed is a loose term as it was not in an envelope. Moreover, there was a staple in the corner with a tiny scrap of paper wedged under it, as if a covering letter of some sort had been removed. This, together with the lack of an envelope suggested to us that it had been delivered to the wrong house and someone had opened the letter, realised it was not for them and shoved the demand notice in our post box. Why they had not replaced it and the covering note back in the envelope is anyone’s guess, but remember that locally MSP is known as the Town of the Mad.

The other thing that surprised us was the date of the unpaid bill, which was February 2018, almost two years ago. We are aware that there does not seem to be any notion of sending a reminder here in Italy, which is why we are always (or thought we were) punctilious about paying bills when they are received, but waiting two years and then saying that unless we pay within fifteen days our water will be cut off seems to be on the draconian side of customer service. It is a matter that will need some investigation, both going through our past bills to see if we actually received the original and if it was paid, and checking that there are no other ones outstanding: the vagaries of the Italian postal system mean that the chances of one or more bills going astray are not by any means remote.

This will have to wait, however, as Stephen, the custodian of such matters, left yesterday morning (after a quick trip to the Post Office to pay the above, as we had no way of telling when our fifteen days were up, there being no covering letter) for an eight-day trip back to the UK. It will be a mixture of business and pleasure, with the first few days in Hereford dealing with matters arising with Joshua, then the end of the trip in Doncaster with his sister, allowing for a detour to see my parents. It was, therefore, for me act as taxi service to the airport for a change. I would like to say that I executed my duties with efficiency, but having deposited Stephen at the departures terminal, I managed to take the wrong lane on the dual carriageway and miss the turning for the autostrada. Still, it wasn’t too serious, for with a bit of luck and after a ten-minute tour round the major roads of Falconara I eventually spotted a sign saying A14 Bologna-Taranto and duly headed that way.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for one week, on Saturday afternoon I had a pre-arranged visit from Roberto to discuss him continuing his lessons now that he is no longer going to London. It was as I suspected, that despite them offering a bit more money, once living costs were deducted he wouldn’t be left with an awful lot to be able to save a bit and spend a bit. Like he said, what was the point of going to live in London if he wasn’t going to be able to enjoy living in London? As for the lessons, he is going to come once a week on a Saturday after lunch – that dead time when nothing else happens – starting on 8thFebruary. He can’t come next Saturday as he is flying off to Athens for a week for his current job, which is not a bad gig, so no wonder he wasn’t too upset at missing out on The Big Smoke.

And as for today, you’d think that I had earned the right to relax after all that, but I ended up, in fact, filling my time with various chores and finishing off my lesson preparation. When the cat’s away the mice are supposed to play, they say, but it seems that this particular mouse is destined to work that treadmill chasing that bit cheese – but at least it is a piece of nicely aged Parmigiano.