A-one a-more a-time

The running repairs Stephen effected on the bucket seemed to do the trick, which is just as well seeing as an old friend of these pages made a reappearance this past week meaning that we had need of water from the well, and not just for the tomatoes.

As a clue to what or who it might be, let me say that while Stephen was off on Monday for another day at the beach with Luca and Marco, this time at Pedaso (where he at last had a seafood lunch, but he opted for the lighter spiedini con frutti di mare rather than the carbohydrate packing pasta alternative, what with him not training for a marathon), Mario was working the field with a super new attachment to the tractor that appeared to be a set of large claws that dragged through the earth (hold on to that thought) as opposed to the usual rotavator one that churns the soil over.

That brings us to Tuesday and an afternoon trip to Civitanova, firstly to check where the bilingual school is and to confirm that parking is going to be a nightmare, and then to find a birthday present to outshine Luca’s moka. This didn’t take us long as we made a beeline for Vittoria Profumi, a very chic shop where Stephen knew they stocked Jo Malone. Our purchases (perfume and candle) made with the help of a very nice lady, we had a little wander before aperitivo at Caffè Galleria (as good as always) and heading home to find that we had no water.

Getting back into the car we headed up to the Super Mogliani brothers’ house, where our meter is, nestled next to theirs, to check that it was our problem and not a village wide one. When Stephen took off the concrete slab that is the cover it was to see the dial on our meter spinning round, indicating that once again we were irrigating M&L’s field as none of the water was reaching our taps. It was, though, reaching Luigi’s as he was hovering around and shouted to his wife to check. Stephen turned our supply off, Luigi said he would tell Mario and we headed back down the hill.

It wasn’t long afterwards that Mario came down on the tractor and we accompanied him straight to the source (if that is the right word) of the problem, which was right next to our fence just below the barn. Why Mario was able to hone in so quickly was because, as he told us later, when he was cutting out a drainage channel along the side of the field he felt a sudden judder at that point, which turned out to be the pipe (and a thick tree root, as we discovered the next day). As it was getting on towards 8pm, there was not much that could be done then other than for Mario to phone Loris (our go to man with a digger), who said he would be first thing the next morning, and for Stephen to get some water from the well. Thank goodness for a mended bucket.

True to his word, Loris was on his mini digger excavating the area before eight, and removing the soil did indeed reveal a neatly severed pipe and an adjacent truncated tree root. While he was hefting away at the two feuding ends, Stephen hailed me to come over to join him and Mario watching over Loris working in the hole. This was, as he explained afterwards, so that we could work a little good cop/bad cop scenario as, unknown to me, while he had been all jovial with Mario, Stephen had told the grim reaper that I was really angry. If I had known this in advance then I might have over-played my part but as it was my habitual look of bewilderment whenever Mario speaks could easily be taken for a scowl as I try to decipher his incomprehensible mixture of dialect and Mogliani-speak. As Loris observed to him at one point, how can he expect me to understand what he says, I’m an English professor.

With everything back in place, sort of, and the water back on tap by 9am, things were looking a little better. The repair was left exposed (fortunately – more of that later) and we were left with a question – do we replace the entire tubing from the centre of the field and into our garden, sinking it deeper as we did to the line running down from the meter to the centre? We didn’t have long to wait before we made a decision on that, but in the meantime something that was changed – and maybe not to Harry and Bella’s liking – was the dog bed in the kitchen. The old one had seen sterling service but had become somewhat concave after seeing the pair through several winters. The new one is memory foam, so the extra support means they don’t sink in like before, and with it having a fleecy top as opposed to nylon, there is no need for a blanket. This is maybe a drawback for them, as not only can’t they scrunch it up into a nest, neither can Harry dart in when he is feeling particularly happy with himself, drag the blanket off and run around with it in his mouth.

The next couple of days passed in relative peacefulness. Thursday morning we went to the market in Porto San Giorgio where I bought two new belts and Stephen bought a shot green silk bed cover from a second-hand fabric stall (he knows how to impulse buy) but our favoured plant man must have been on holiday so we left without any pots of basil. On our way back we stopped to check the post box at the top of the road, where there was an envelope bearing an Australian post mark and addressed, in Stephen’s sister’s handwriting, to the both of us. We couldn’t think what occasion could have caused Liz to write to us, it not being Christmas or our wedding anniversary, but following Stephen’s belated birthday greetings of a couple of weeks ago were not very surprised to find, on opening the envelope, a card wishing us a Happy Easter. Once again, the combined Australian and Italian postal services have contrived to set a new world record. And I think I’ll leave it there, as mail taking months to arrive is now just old news.

Friday saw Stephen taking another beach day, this time at Pedaso and this time just with Shoe Marco as Computer Luca had gone to Pisa for the weekend. His relaxing day al mare was given a bit of a jolt when he stopped at the pizzeria on his way home to get Friday night tea (or dinner, if you’re not Northern) and saw a WhatsApp photo from me of the hole in the field (see above) filling up with water. Yes, the tube had burst apart, something I became aware of when I tried have a glass of water before I took Bella and Harry out for their evening walk at 6pm and nothing came out, unlike an hour previously.

Deciding that another twenty minutes or so wasn’t going to make that much difference, I thought it best to get the walk out of the way as B&H were becoming a bit anxious (they are fed after their walk, so that, no doubt, had something to do with their eagerness) but as luck would have it, on our way back we passed Mario and Luigi, who were doing something with a tractor and a pile of metal poles that they had, for some reason best known to themselves, stored over the summer in the little copse in the lane. I managed to communicate the problem to the brothers (saying, in Italian, something like, “The tube’s broken again” because what more is there to say), and a short while later, after the poles had found a winter home up in the farm buildings, Mario reappeared on the scene.

He looked at the water, fished in to find the two ends and hoisted them out, then did what anyone else would do in the situation and phoned Loris. While he was on his way, Mario headed back up his house and Luigi, who had also joined us, held out one end of a tape measure to me whilst he, with the other end, aimed for the pole marking the dog leg where the tube coming down the field hangs a sharp right (or left, depending on your point of view) towards LCDDB. I’m not convinced our measuring would hold up in the Guinness Book of Records as we marked four stages across the field, but the total that Luigi came to of 100m is probably near enough for jazz, if not for precision engineering.

This accomplished, we returned to the hole where Mario was now busy with an adze, hacking away a channel to encourage at least some of the water to flow out before getting to work with a bucket. He had, of course, had the good sense to turn the water off at the meter so at least it wasn’t filling up as quickly as it was emptying. While this was happening, first Stephen and then Loris appeared, the latter on his scooter with his work overalls under his arm as he was, in fact, on his way out for aperitivo when Mario called. With that, it was more or less all over bar the shouting – and the squelching – as Loris rolled up his trousers, dropped into the hole and rejoined the two ends. We once more had a water supply and we also had to decide about replacing the pipe. You won’t be surprised to learn that first thing Monday morning Mario is taking Stephen to buy 100m of tubing.

After such an action packed week, this weekend has been given over to relaxing, which included dinner at Pomo d’Oro last night, our first proper dinner date (and a belated birthday treat for Stephen - well, it was on the cards) since pre-lockdown days. The agriturismo was incredibly busy, even allowing for social distancing, and we had a very fine meal indeed. Today has been reassuringly incident free, the only task required was to do with the Freeclimber. It has been somewhat reluctant of late to start up when the ignition key is turned so Stephen recharged the battery for a good part of the afternoon. And on that more than apt metaphor for our current state, given the week we have had and the one to come, I will take my leave. Alla prossima.