All day long

1st August 2021

What can I tell you about the start of the week? Not a lot really, or nothing of great import at any rate.

Stephen was inveigled into the affair of the present for Nazareno’s birthday, which began the previous Friday afternoon when he had been summoned to the factory by Mrs C and Meri who wanted his advice about what to buy. With typical Italian forethought, they had allowed themselves plenty of time as the actual day wasn’t until today, meaning they had a good week to get it sorted.

Having taken the weekend to hum and haw and for Meri to carry out a recce at Girasole, it was then my turn to get involved, being the man with Amazon Prime. Following instructions passed to me by Agent Firth, I ordered a bottle of Hugo Boss aftershave on Monday, which duly arrived on Wednesday in plenty of time for Meri to take it to the flower shop to be parcelled up. If he only knew, I’m sure Nazareno would fully appreciate the group effort that had gone into his gift.

The start of the week was also the start of Mario and Luigi turning the soil of the recently cropped field, and those of you who have been with us on this journey will know what that means. In order to avoid the midday heat they again started their engines at 6 am for a couple of hours work, returning in the evening and switching them off around 11pm. It only took them four days, so no problem there.

Stephen was back at the dentist on Tuesday afternoon for the confab over his tooth, a bit of a tag-team effort between Claudia and the sixth former. I again accompanied him just in case, though neither my solicitous administrations nor my emergency driving skills were called upon. Whatever they did to the tooth (which I have some idea about from what Stephen said, but really do you want me to go into details here? I think not…), the results were more than satisfactory. All that is left now is for him to return next Thursday for just a regular clean and polish, which will be child’s play for someone with Stephen’s experience.

After a day in and around LCDDB on Wednesday, Thursday was a day to be out and about, beginning with a trip to the bank in Montegranaro first thing to clear up a few questions we had regarding our account. Given the limited hours the branch is now open, Stephen checked the opening times online and we are happy to verify their reliability as it was indeed open when we arrived around 8.30, when a very helpful young man attended to our enquiries.

The main one concerned our new debit card, which we were concerned had gone missing. Stephen had received a text at the beginning of the month, telling him to stand by as the replacement for our soon to expire current card would be winging its way to us. It being some three weeks with no sign of it, we thought we’d better check what was happening, and also confirm that the bank had our current address as an email I’d received confirming a bank transfer showed the account name rubric bore our old Stefoni address.

We needn’t have worried. As regards the debit card, counterintuitively to all our other experiences of life in Italy, the message is sent out three months in advance to fool you into thinking that you have much less time than you actually do have, and, said the young man, we should receive the card sometime in the near future, but not to worry until October. He also very helpfully explained what we had to do once it arrived. He also checked on the matter of the address, which left him somewhat puzzled; Contrada Forone is the one listed in our details so why the old one appears in the account rubric and why he was unable to alter it he couldn’t say – but as it didn’t seem to be having any detrimental effect to the operation of the account we could file it under “One of Those Things”.

The afternoon expedition was much more exciting, but also somewhat more expensive. After a quick stop at Acqua & Sapone for a couple of new kitchen cloths it was on to the paint place where we bought two 13 litre containers of Thermopaint together with a new paint roller and telescopic handle for Stephen to final defeat the incipient mould that is again making a reappearance in the east wing of the house. From here it was but a hop and a skip to Girasole and OVS for some more new shorts for me because, with my increasingly svelte silhouette, most of my old pairs are now running the risk of ending up around my ankles, and pulling them tight with a belt is not so much stylishly baggy as distressingly voluminous. Thanks to the end of season sales, four pairs of shorts, two t-shirts and a summer shirt left enough change from €100 to warrant apericena at Totò on the way home with a little tart each (ricotta, chocolate and orange) to polish off while relaxing in front of the TV.

If not relaxing, then at least it was a farily quiet weekend for me in splendid isolation at LCDDB as Stephen went off late Friday morning for a little jolly with his beach buddies, Computer Luca and Shoe Marco, to Lido di Dante, a small seaside spot just over ten kilometres from Ravenna. And when I say small, I do mean small; not only is there no Wikipedia page for it, but the list of Things to Do in Lido di Dante on TripAdvisor can only stretch to five, and then seems to run out of steam after number 4, the nudist beach.

Their plans hit a bit of a bump as Marco, who they were due to pick up on the way, was sent home from work mid-morning with instructions to get tested for you know what. Fortunately, he was all clear on that front though when he finally made it to Lido di Dante yesterday evening, he was looking like he needed a generous beaker of Sanatogen. This delay was a little hard on him as the trip was all his original suggestion and he had organised it - and he missed out on Stephen’s great dietary discovery yesterday morning.

Being used to rising early he was hanging around the rented chalet when Luca emerged, to Stephen’s great surprise, around 7.30 for his first breakfast. This is part of his latest eating regime of little and often, as opposed to his sleeping regime of lots and more often, for after his first breakfast he returned to bed for another couple of hours before rising for his second breakfast. By this time, however, Stephen was already established on the beach with the tent, but nowhere, you will be relieved to hear, near the spiaggia nudista.

You may be wondering why I was not invited to join them, and the reasons are really very simple. The first is that someone has to look after LCDDB, lock the hen-houses for the night and remember to shut the pop-holes to guard against animal insurrection. The second is that, not being part of the select inner circle, I wasn’t asked. This is ok, as being left behind gave me an excuse to lounge all day long on the chaise longue and eat Turkish delight, or rather I could have if we had a chaise longue, or if there were any Turkish delight to be had in the vicinity.

These two prerequisites failing me, it was a normal weekend of general bits and bobs, minus of course our walk on the beach, which would have been unlikely anyway had Stephen been at home. After an uncomfortably sultry day yesterday, with temperatures hitting the mid 30s, this morning started fine before grey clouds advanced from over San Rustico resulting in several minutes of fairly heavy rain, starting, typically enough, just when Bella, Harry and I were within striking distance of the top of the road on our morning walk and finishing when we got back to the corner of the drive.

Whilst the skies subsequently cleared somewhat, the wind decided it would audition for the part of cyclone in The Wizard of Oz and proceeded to bluster around the house for the rest of the day and into the night. The only discernible damage, though, was to one of the trees that have seen much better days, by the side of Mario and Luigi’s field, whose amputated top half I had to shift from blocking the road. With all this turbulence, and Harry and Bella’s reluctance to leave my side to venture out of the door, it was, for us at least, a case of there being no place like home – or it would have been if only we’d had that chaise longue.