Chop chop

With Monday being the last day of the holiday weekend you would have thought we’d take the opportunity of a relaxing day before the hectic demands of the working week took over. OK, that might be a slight exaggeration given the current circumstances, and whilst I tried my best to take things easy Stephen was out and about just after breakfast ‘seeing to things’.

Firstly he released a couple of bushes that had grown decidedly tired of hanging around in pots from captivity to freedom. One he put at the edge of the herb plot and the other in the banking opposite; whether they will thrive or not in their new homes is to be seen. Secondly he followed Bank Holiday tradition and washed the car, which gave him the opportunity to exchange greetings with Luigi, who hailed him from the bottom of the field on his way past to the barn for some reason or other. This may not have been the best of ideas as Tuesday turned decidedly wet, which we put down to the car washing, with drizzly rain all day. Fortunately, it returned to being dry and sunny the next day, so we won’t hold it against him for too long.

Other than that, we took time out for an afternoon matinee courtesy of Netflix and welcomed the news that bookshops, stationery shops, and shops selling clothes for toddlers and young children were to be allowed to reopen, even though it is not of great use to us (a) not having a book shop in MSP and (b) not having any babies or toddlers in the immediate vicinity.

On Wednesday morning we discovered why Luigi had been wandering the estate on Monday when he engaged in a spot of tree surgery. Starting at the top, he made his way systematically down the road and, leaving the couple of blossoming fruit trees alone, he denuded the trunks of the others of their lower limbs. This caused me a bit of a double-take after lunch when out with Bella and Harry for their short midday walk; I went past the tree that marks our return point as I missed its leafy branches and was fooled by its shorn trunk into thinking it was another tree altogether. There must be a very good reason why he has done this but I do miss the greenness.

Which brings us, of course, to Thursday and a very exciting time Stephen had too, for various reasons. The first was that although he was eighth in line outside Sigma, they were allowing five people in on the rotation as opposed to three in previous weeks so he didn’t have to wait as long as expected. Mind you, there was a little hiccup when his group was called forward, due to number 24 being missing. He was 25, the lady in front of him was 23 and the man behind 26 but as to the phantom 24 there was and had been neither sight nor sound. Strano.

What was also strano, and caused both him and the efficient till lady to reel in shock was that the woman behind him when it came to paying had only come out for a jar of gherkins, which hardly seems worth donning – and hopefully sterilising – a mask. She could have at least bought some flour, which was again well stocked on the shelves and of which Stephen brought back two, one with and one without lievito added, but as he didn’t slip any eggs into the trolley I was excused baking duties this weekend while we finish off what we have in the freezer.

After a second supermarket sweep at Simply C to stock up on wine and gin (so just the essentials) it was time for the weekly stop at the Carellis to pick up some parcels. These he brought back with him, as well as two bags of goodies from Mrs C courtesy of Mr C’s lotto, one containing fresh broad beans and the other an effusion of chard, far more than two men could eat at one sitting. We had some of the beans shelled with pecorino at lunchtime, and the remainder lasting over the next few days. As for the chard, that gave Stephen something to do in the afternoon as he split the stalks from the leaves, blanching the former and cooking down the latter to portion up for the freezer, leaving one lot of stalks to roast for dinner.

Things vegetable were also the cause of much excitement as Mr C had told Stephen that Alice (of Alice’s Cortile in Monte San Giusto, the plant and pet shop that has featured on these pages before) was taking orders for garden plants. When he got back, Stephen was straight on the phone (well, straight on after Pop Master) to Alice and put in an order for tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, lettuces and parsley, all of which she would leave at the Carellis’ with Mr C’s plants for Stephen to collect.

This he did yesterday morning, but before that there was the little matter of celebrating his birthday on Friday. Fortunately, thanks to Internet shopping (see above) he did have a selection of presents to open, and he made it a justifiable excuse to have a lazy afternoon with the weather making it warm enough to sit on the terrazzo. As we couldn’t go out, I had offered, when we were writing the shopping list on Wednesday, to cook him his choice of dinner, but he said he was happy with our usual pizza and TV. The only drawback to this was that as he is the house pizzaiolo he had to make his own birthday meal, but as he spent a little extra on a bottle of red to go with it there were compensations.

After time off it was back to work in the lotto yesterday afternoon for Stephen, having, as I said, collected the plants from the Carellis after Mr C phoned in the morning to say they had arrived. Mr C also advised that the plants should be given a few days to acclimatize themselves before going into the ground, so Stephen contented himself with making furrows, planting the lettuces (they obviously don’t count) and erecting the canes for the tomatoes before throwing caution to the wind and putting the aubergines and courgettes in their beds today.

This planting was sandwiched between a spot of trimming. In the afternoon Stephen attacked the grass – or part of it at least – with the strimmer and manage to make some headway in the area to the right of the house. Luckily for me, he was somewhat more circumspect this morning when he trimmed the sides and back of my head to try to neaten up the hairline. He said originally that it would only take a few minutes to snip off the straggly bits, but of course once he got the scissors in his hand he went all Mr Teasy-Weasy, trying to shape the nape and sides to his satisfaction and standing back to admire his handiwork - but at least he stopped short of a full bouffant.