Days...

You won’t be too surprised that with Stephen away lighting up the shoe and leather world in Milan, life at LCDDB lacked a little lustre as I went about the usual daily round. Fortunately, the weather for the most part made up for his absence, being clear and sunny for most of the week apart from a break for some much-needed rain on Wednesday afternoon into Thursday morning.

There was, though, a new entry into the lists on Monday when I had a new student come for a chat to see what we could sort out. Her name is Neelam and she had been mentioned to me a couple of weeks back by Vanna. This is because Neelam has recently joined Prosilas overseeing foreign sales, and therefore English is of particular importance. At first it wasn’t clear whether or not Neelam wanted to gain certification at C1 level, and I had said that really I wasn’t geared up for (and not particularly interested in) teaching to pass exams but when Vanna brought the subject up again last week she said that Neelam wasn’t concerned about that, she just wanted some conversation to help polish and improve her language skills.

I told Vanna it was perfectly ok to give Neelam my contact details so we could arrange a suitable time and place between us, and there followed last Saturday a series of messages between us before she went quiet on Sunday (obviously having better things to do). Then, on Monday morning she got in touch again and we arranged for her to drop by in the evening on her way home from work as she lives in Mogliano, twenty minutes away on the road to Loro Piceno. This was very good news to me as I’d thought that I might have to drive to Prosilas and back to deliver the lessons, which is twenty-five minutes each way, but she is more than happy to come to me.

We agreed to Saturday morning at 10.30 – not too early as she works in a pub in the town on Friday, Saturday and Sunday – with the first lesson slated for yesterday. In the event, however, she messaged, whilst I was out with the dogs, to postpone the start till next week. She apologised but apparently she had forgotten that she’d made arrangements to do something with her mum, which presumable takes priority.

As for the rest of the week, that passed, as I said, more or less as could be expected. Thursday should have been a busy day with four lessons but Vanna had to cancel in the morning as she was not sure how long her afternoon meeting with a customer was going to last. On Friday I went for the usual breakfast at Pina, but da solo, though maybe I am not totally safe to be let out on my own. As I had a while to wait while Malia was on a customer’s mobile for some reason, before handing it back to him to continue the conversation so she could answer the landline, I passed the time by perusing the magazines on the revolving rack.

Unfortunately, when I put one back I missed the rack and it fell down into the centre of the carousel. I tried to surreptitiously tease it out at the base but there was not enough of a gap to do so, and I think having my bottom sticking up in the air might have given the game away slightly. I made my apologies, which Malia brushed away, then sat and worried not about the trapped magazine but whether I had used essere or avere for the passato prossimo when I told her it had fallen down. Such are the stresses of being semi-retired.

It was also on Friday that I fell foul to a pincer movement by Stephen and Irene (my former pupil who was at LineaPelle as she now works for Manuel). They had decided between them that what I really needed in my life were Italian lessons to get me talking more and with more confidence (see above). Irene knew just the person: her best friend Andrea, who teaches English in China but who is currently back in MSP due to the small matter of a rampant virus. Stephen forwarded me his contact details with the strict instructions to contact him, which I did on Saturday morning. Well, I had to show some independence by not jumping to attention immediately.

After an exchange of messages (I seem to be getting adept at this), it was arranged that Andrea would come to the house for a chat about how we should proceed. I provided my usual taxi service yesterday afternoon, dropping off Roberto and picking up Andrea at the workers’ car park by Nero Giardini, and brought him to LCDDB. The upshot is that Andrea is going to give two lessons a week while he is home (however long that is) and we will focus on conversation, dealing with grammar as it arises. He is molto simpatico, as the natives would say, and didn’t seem too daunted when, on wondering why I don’t talk with people when I am out and about, I said that chatting was not something that came naturally to me in English, never mind Italian. There will, however, be a slight delay before the first session as he is away in Rome next week, but said he would be in contact to firm up some dates – unless, that is, I have scared him off.

Andrea may have been heading for the big city but someone who was returning was, of course, Stephen, whom I collected from Civitanova station at the relatively early time of 18.50 yesterday evening. He was, obviously, glad to be home and I was glad to see him. To celebrate, we had an exciting shopping trip this afternoon to the Chinese store in Monte Urano, ostensibly to get two new light bulbs for the outside fittings as one gave up the ghost just before Stephen went away and the other during his absence.

That, however, was not all we purchased – and I’m sure you would have been disappointed in us if it had been. Besides the bulbs, we also bought two new brushes for the terrazzo (the others having been blown into the drive in the storm, which would not have been a problem if Stephen had not driven over them and crushed the handles), a microfibre cover for the inside brush for polishing over the floor once it has been swept (which got Stephen very excited when he discovered it also fits on your foot, prompting him to say we should have got a pair, one for each leg) and half a dozen dog wiping cloths (making one for each day of the week when added to the one we bought on our last visit). What we weren’t able to get, however, was any hand sanitizer, as for some reason the shelf containing it was completely bare. I can’t think why…