Boy oh boy

15th June 2025

After last week’s downsizing of the midday walk to sprawling for ten minutes in the shade at the back of house, this week we shifted to our own version of summer time, moving the morning walk back an hour, ahead of my after breakfast bits and pieces, to take advantage of the relatively cooler temperatures. Peggy and Harry seemed to appreciate the change, and not just because they didn’t have to drop hints that I should hurry up with the dishes.

Walks were made less challenging on Monday when, following heavy hints from Stephen when Mario took him to see the house for sale the other Saturday, the Mogliani brothers hitched the cutter to their tractor and Luigi mowed the part of the lane below the house. After two or three weeks of avoiding that section, Harry being understandably reluctant to venture where he couldn’t see where he was going with his head surrounded by grass, we were once again able to stroll down to the quince tree.

It was the story of two ragazzi over the next couple of days, the first being the new face at Conad on Tuesday morning. The chatty woman appears to have decided that optional English conversation sessions was a perk she could live without and the checkout was manned by a youth. Despite our qualms that he might need training up, he knew his way around a till and that we had a bit of time to wait was due to a nice lady who Stephen knows from his days in RemRom. She wanted to credit money to two different mobiles phones, but knowing the numbers or at least where to find them quickly might have helped expedite the matter. Still, who am I do speak, not having committed mine to memory – but at least I avoid embarrassment (not that she was) by doing it online.

The second came following a message from Fabrizio the geologist saying that “il ragazzo” would be coming on Wednesday morning to take the first readings from the monitor down the tube – and this is where the word ragazzo might need a little expanding. If you check Google, it gives ‘lad’ as the lead translation, followed by others such as ‘boy’, ‘youth’, ‘kid’, whereas the man, the same oppo as before, left his salad days a long time ago. That’s because in practice there’s no age limit to its use. Come with us any Tuesday morning for breakfast at Pina where the average age of the clientele runs to, well let’s just say double figures, and you’re more than likely to hear “Ciao ragazzi!” more than once.

Anyway, when the “lad” arrived on Wednesday morning, he set to work taking off the cover and opening up a box of tricks with dials and scales and flashing lights reminiscent of The Man from U.N.C.L.E. Stephen had been hanging around in case of emergencies, but after twenty minutes of admiring the scenery he reckoned his time could be better spent at work, leaving me to supervise, to all intents and purposes incognito, from upstairs. It was some forty minutes until I heard the car heading up the hill so it was just as well Stephen made a strategic exit, and as for what the “youth” found out, that is yet to be revealed.

With the weather set fair and the temperatures set even fairer, it was high time we renewed our association with Verde Pistacchio. It had been some time, having decided after our last visit in early autumn that it was a place to eat al fresco rather than inside. There were some changes – mostly to the menu which was smaller both in format and content as pizza seemed to have disappeared and no one offered desserts – both of which were fine by us as the main thing, the quality, was the same and we’d already decided to go antipasti and secondi.

We sat on the terrazzo in a select group of diners as the garden was set with two long rows of tables, seating maybe 40 in total, for a surprise birthday party. A surprise, that is, for the birthday ragazzo (maybe forty) and not the guests who arrived a good time ahead of him and who huddled out of view behind us and shouted “Surprise!” (or was it “Sorpresa!”, I was too excited at actually witnessing such a thing in real life to notice) when he was shown out onto the terrazzo by the waiter.

After that the rest of the weekend was naturally an anticlimax, but we did our best. In homage to the sunshine, Stephen brought up the umbrellas yesterday, the one for the front door and the older one to cast a bit of extra shade where the dogs like to lounge before it becomes too hot. Also in deference to the heat, I had a freezer session in the kitchen this morning, getting the oven out of the way in one fell swoop by making two polpettoni and cooking a dozen chicken escalopes to have cold with salad over the coming weeks.

Stephen has also been adequately busy. He’d stopped at the ferramenta on his way home earlier in the week to buy wire and a strimmer cord. The former he used yesterday to secure the fence properly after its dismantling when they excavated the shaft in the garden (three months after the event is not bad going really), then this morning he made with the strimmer. It went well for a while. He cut down the grass around the trees on the lane fine, but when he tackled the banking opposite the house the engine cut out and refused to restart.

Maybe, he thought, it had overheated, and so he left it to see if it would cooperate when it had cooled down. That seemed a reasonable decision; hewing the banking with a pair of shears and a sickle in the midmorning sun when the temperature was already nearing 30° was not. Mercifully he realised this before serious damage was done and he came inside to take in some fluids and catch his breath. A bit of rest time saw him back to full working order; the same can’t be said for the strimmer, which continued to splutter and not engage. What with no miscella, no wire and now an uncooperative strimmer, sometimes you have to accept that it’s God’s way of telling you to get in a ragazzo for the heavy lifting.