All Hail

3rd August 2025

As we feared, last Sunday’s sunny interlude was just to lull us into a false sense of security before the rollercoaster of the last seven days. They all ended in a headlong plummet and mighty splash, but more of that later.

Another onslaught overnight gave way to a merely rainy day on Monday when, appropriately enough, I picked up the latest water bill from our post box. It was pretty modest, maybe because this year Stephen hasn’t been pumping litres into an orto of ungrateful tomato plants, but in something of a first it said that the amount wasn’t worth paying and would be added to the next bill. That was a bit of shame as settling it, in addition to the two tranches of the council charge which came at the same time, would have made the thirty-minute wait in the post office the next day a bit more worthwhile.

Congratulating ourselves that there were only two people ahead of us, and both of those, a man and his grandson, were already being seen to by Paolo, came back to bite us. They were doing something with a mobile phone, and we all know how protracted that can be. If only we’d realised, we could have cut our losses after ten minutes, but there comes a point where, to quote a well-known regicide, returning were as tedious as go o’er and so we stuck it out – fortunately with less dire consequences than Macbeth. At least we got both payments to the Comune out of the way, though with impeccable timing the wait put us just late enough to be caught in a deluge as we left Conad, and as it was sunny when we left home, we weren’t dressed for such an event.

There was a bright spot to the day, though, as, after a prolonged wait for the gas man to fill an almost empty tank, Stephen got the call while he was filling up the Panda on his way to work. It wasn’t our regular man as he is now retired, as our new regular man told him. Given the rain and the condition of the road, and that he didn’t know where we were, Stephen said he would meet him and bring him down in the Panda to recce the lay of the land and assess if he would be able to get back up the hill. He thought it was worth a try, and did joke while he was filling the tank, that if he didn’t, he could have his holidays here. There was no need to air the spare bedding, though, as he had very little trouble exiting, but there was an unexpected hiccup as he reckoned we had a leak.

It was a return to sun on Wednesday, coinciding with the unexpected arrival of a man to look at the suspected leak. Unexpected, as when Stephen got to the office and called the helpline, the snooty woman, who was absent the day they did the customer service bit of the training, said we had to allow 110 hours as it wasn’t an emergency, Why, then, did Stephen appear just before I was due to start my 10.30 chat with Nicola  (usually to be found in Milan but currently at his house in Bari for the summer)? Because the engineer had called to say he’d be with us within the hour as, it later turned out, he was in the area and using something remarkably approaching initiative, thought it made sense to come to us.

Stephen provided the taxi service, including a trip part way through to see if the man had a necessary part in his van (he did, showing the gods were really smiling on us) and it was all done and dusted in less than an hour – which is not bad going as there were three leaks that needed fixing, and it wasn’t the easiest of operations, given the gentleman’s configuration, for him to get down to the tank or, indeed, get back up again.

The first couple of days of the new month were notable only for bits of ongoing business. On Friday Stephen took the details of my ‘new’ plastic identity card, which, admittedly, I’ve only had for six years, to the insurance office. The man was a bit harassed; it was the fierce lady’s birthday and she’d taken the day off, and he was having to juggle with phone calls and clients inconveniently turning up in person all on his own. He took the details and told Stephen that if we were going to change the insurance from Unicredit he would need to go in and tell them as they might require 60 days’ notice - which was pushing it for October 1^st – because house insurance in Italy for some esoteric reason can only be stopped at the end of the full period.

Yesterday morning we took Peggy to the vet’s. It was the lady who removed the stitches, not our pal Francesco; she said it all looked fine but to keep the body suit on for another three days and to put some cream on the wound. And that should have been it as we planned a quiet day at home today. The weather, however, had other ideas, wanting to end the week as it had begun with precipitation, and also with a vengeance.

Picture the scene: we were sitting enjoying our after lunch caffè, as the sky darkened and the wind got up, when there were intermittent odd noises on the roof, like something walking across it. Stephen went into the kitchen and shouted, “It’s hail!” quickly followed by “The cars!” just as the heavens really opened and unleashed a barrage.  He opened the front door to run down to put something over the roofs and I followed, but we were both distracted – him by Harry, for some bizarre reason, rushing down into the garden and me because as soon as I stepped out I was clunked on the head by a hailstone the size of a gobstopper (and yes, there is a bump, and yes, it’s sore).

Once I regained consciousness… OK, once I’d stepped rubbing my head, I went down to get Harry but Stephen was carrying him across the garden at the back of the house, holding his hand over the dog’s head so he didn’t suffer the same fate as I and, unsurprisingly, Stephen had. We ushered him upstairs and Stephen began putting cardboard and old towels over the cars, though by the time he’d finished it was starting to ease off. It took several minutes before eventually turning into the rain that persisted more or less heavily for the rest of the afternoon before then turning into drizzle in the evening.

It was all very dramatic, but drama we could well do without. We don’t know what this onslaught has done to the road, only venturing out when I took Harry and Peggy for their walk during a brief period when it caught its breath and almost stopped, but we have a pretty shrewd idea. The delight of inspecting the damage will have to wait till tomorrow, but I foresee a trip to the Comune in our future.