Blown away

21st July 2024

Monday continued the recent trend by being hot and, well, hot - and that pretty much sums up most of the week, for with temperatures hovering around 35° during the day and just below 30° overnight, there really was not much incentive to do anything other than wilt.

There were one or two minor points of interest, I guess – such as Bertrando being most amused about us dining at Verde Pistacchio, not so much because of where we went but my comment afterwards, to Stephen, that before we go back we needed to get a tattoo. We also, and maybe as an effect of the hot weather, have a marked preponderance of white butterflies this year. They have been fluttering around the lavender in the herb section of the orto in a morning then around the banking by the copse in the afternoon when Harry and I are out on our walk (Bella, bless her, is no longer up to accompanying us). They are a very joyous sight.

Stephen did have a bit of fun on Thursday when he went to post a couple of birthday cards at the main Post Office in Montegranaro as out local one is closed for three weeks while they carry out some work. Gone, it seems, are the days when you could simply say “Two stamps for Britain, please” and hand over the money. Now, at least in the big city, you have to use a computer screen to identify the nature of your business, take a numbered ticket and wait to be called to the relevant desk. This happened reasonably quickly for Stephen, once a nearby woman had guided him through the process, but unfortunately he ended up being seen to by a nowty man who wasn’t entirely at ease with the system himself.

The whole process has to go through the computer, and the first blip was him not being able to locate Inghilterra, which we had written on the envelopes as part of the address, but then he discovered that was because it doesn’t exist on the drop-down menu and you have to select Regno Unito. He then hit the problem what to write on the envelope, as you have to declare the nature of the contents. Greetings Card was an alien concept to him, and indeed to most Italians, so he settled for officiously telling Stephen to write Documento on each of them. Eventually after both cards were weighed, logged and the postage printed, Stephen was able to pay and send them on their way, but it did seem an awful lot of fuss for something that used to be much simpler – and quicker.

Our peace and quiet came to a shattering end yesterday when there was a bit of a shift in the weather, marked as is often the case by a wind that blew up while we were having breakfast. We were just thinking how pleasant it was to feel the almost refreshing air wafting through the house when there was an almighty crash.  Usually, it’s the room screen that gets caught up, due to its situation, shape and comparative lightness. This, we could see instantly, was still in place, and besides, the noise was of something heavier and with an ominous sound of breaking glass.

A check of the bedroom showed it to be the two pictures that were positioned on top of the cabinet, just leaning against the wall and fronted by our collection of teddy bears. Most of these, oddly, were still in place but the two pictures, a print and a photo, both of a decent size, were on the floor so what happened is a bit of a mystery. We have, as you know, had strong winds before and the pictures have not moved an inch, but with it being hot, we fully opened both the windows, diagonally opposite each other, in the north-west corner. My theory, from the many years I’ve studied aerodynamics, is that the double entry to the room must have set up some sort of vortex that got behind the pictures and lifted them up before flinging them to the floor.

As for the pictures, the frame of one of them was intact, but the glass was completely shattered, while the glass of the other was intact but the frame had separated at one corner, so both will probably need replacing when we find a framer. Ten minutes had the glass swept up and the room more or less in order – the teddies back in their family grouping but with the pictures now on the floor, leaning against the wall.

 It's fair to say that things improved considerably after that, not least because the change in the weather brought some cloud (but no rain) and a little bit of relief with temperatures down to the 30 mark, but also because we had a visitor not long afterwards. It was a man (the same one who carried out the previous investigation all those years ago) sent by the geologist to check out the road as he thought that it might cause a challenge. It does. The man usually brings the equipment on a flatbed truck, but the deterioration since he last came means he will have to think of an alternative method. He was very jolly about it all, so hopefully we might hear something more before everything stops for August.

What made the slightly cooler temperatures even more welcome, apart from reinstating our beach walk this morning, was that yesterday evening was the dinner with accompanying wines from Sicily and Sardinia at CarloCarlo’s B&B. They had mentioned this the last time we were there, and I wasted little time in replying in the affirmative when I received a follow up email asking if I wanted to book a couple of places. What an exceedingly good evening we had, as well. The food and wines were excellent (especially the spumante and the red, though we bought a bottle of each to take home just to make sure), as was the company.

The flyer (if you can still call it that when it is online) said to arrive at 8pm for an 8.30 start and we were duly on time. We stood about admiring the view for a little while then agreed we should sit down. By now it was around 8.15, a sensible time we thought, but as there was a distinct paucity of Italians and the long table, set for about 34 people, was somewhat empty, we decided it best to sit at the end next to two couples, one Dutch and the other Belgian as we discovered, who were staying there. We were then joined by Robin, a young Dutch man who was also staying for a couple of nights. This was good news for us, because they could all speak English and so we were able to eat, drink and chatter the night away.

As for the Italians, they arrived with very little sense of urgency, and Carla had just decided that we had waited long enough when the final three people floated in smiling beatifically as they took their seats, half an hour late. I had asked Stephen as we were driving there what time he thought we would actually start eating. “Nine,” he replied. As you can see, he hasn’t been coming to Italy for all these years for nothing.