Burning brightly

27th December 2020

What with it being Christmas, more or less depending where you stand on the fine tweaking due to one thing and another, our routine was also tweaked to incorporate a shorter working week. That is why Monday morning saw us breakfasting for a second time in the VIP lounge at Pina.

This did seem to have undergone a bit of a tidy up since our previous visit, though there was still abundant evidence of it being the time of goodwill to all men. We were sitting there, minding our own business and enjoying a generous slice of homemade ciambellone when Daniela, erstwhile pillar of the Stefoni’s office when they actually had a business and sometime visiting celebrity chef in Pina’s kitchen, paused on her way past to the stairs leading down to said kitchen for a quick chat.

She was accompanied by her husband who was carrying a large, deep-sided white plastic tray containing pannocchie di mare, a crustacean with a bit of a scampi vibe and much cherished around these parts. Did we like them, she asked. Stephen, a lover of anything that crawls around on the seabed, replied in the affirmative but the fact that they were still alive and wriggling did little to change my negative view of such things. What their fate would be when Daniela got them down to the range was pretty obvious, but I concentrated on the ciambellone during whose production no animals were harmed.

After taking the shopping home Stephen made his usual Monday morning call at the factory and then stopped off to check the post box for any Christmas mail. There were a couple of cards as well as a small package, though this latter was not addressed to us, having neither our names (as displayed on the notice on the box) nor our number nor the strictly accurate road name. Rather, it was addressed to the Frenchman at number 29 via Forone (wherever that is), but as all foreigners, and indeed all numbers and street names, are the same to the postwoman she had left it for us. It did have a note attached, which Stephen verified with Luigi who was hanging around in the vicinity, saying that if it wasn’t our parcel (!?) then to leave it sticking out of our box and she would collect it next time she was passing. From our daily checking this didn’t appear to be until Christmas Eve, so we only hope that whatever it contained wasn’t essential for Monsieur Inconnu’s festive preparations.

Stephen returned to the factory in the afternoon and this time on his return it was baring our gift from the Carellis, which was a hamper full of goodies from Conad. When I say goodies that is of course a subject to your viewpoint. If, like Stephen, you have an aversion to hazelnuts the traditional Christmas torrone wouldn’t be to your liking while if the traditional Christmas cotechino, the extra-jumbo sized sausage that needs a good couple of days simmering, is not your thing, like me, neither will that. Still, in a Jack Sprattian way I’m sure we can come to some arrangement over the two delicacies that will suit both of our tastes.

Tuesday saw another slight change to arrangements as I was due to have a lesson with Alessio at 11.00. However, shortly after we had confirmed arrangements by text he messaged back to say that he was very sorry but he would have to cancel the lesson. He’d been contacted by a work colleague to say that there was another issue with a positive Covid contact and they would all need to take a test to check their status. Of course I replied saying that I completely understood and that I hoped all would turn out ok. This it did, but not in way either he or I expected as he sent a further message that evening to say that it had all been a practical joke my his colleagues. What will they think of next, those ragamuffins? I can’t tell you how I laughed, mainly because I didn’t. I don’t think Alessio was all that impressed either.

In the afternoon Stephen was out and about and managed to find time between his various business calls to rendezvous with Computer Luca somewhere off the autostrada in order to exchange Christmas wishes and presents. Not the most glamorous of locations, but as the saying goes, needs must when Covid drives.

We were back in downtown MSP on Wednesday morning to do our final food shopping for Christmas, which was lighter than normal given our order for Conad’s Christmas dinner. We could, I suppose, have left it till Christmas Eve, but we aren’t that stupid, and while supermarkets cannot match the Assault on Precinct 13 madness evident in the UK, discretion is the better part of sanity. Besides, do you really want to spend Christmas Eve morning queuing up behind a bevy of local matrons waiting for Pia’s attention while she slices up and batters enough escalopes of various meats for each of them to feed the army of a small nation?

After shopping we passed by the factory to say thank you for our hamper, our visit coinciding with the delivery of a large padded envelope. Mirco signed for this and I was a little surprised at the frisson of excitement that some of those present (i.e. Stephen) were emitting. The reason was revealed when Mirco opened the envelope and withdrew a whole real live (well, recently alive) snakeskin, a special order for some high-end boots required by Stephen’s UK customer. I have to admit that when Mirco and Mr C carefully rolled it out to its full four metre length it was indeed a thing of beauty, though maybe more suited to a reptile – as long as it was kept a safe distance away.

That should have been enough excitement for one day, but we had not banked on the combustible log. Let me explain…

Last thing at night Stephen always puts a final log on the fire to keep the kitchen area and the bedrooms, whose doors we leave open, aired overnight. He then usually clears out the fireplace after breakfast, removing the ashes and cleaning everything ready to set that day’s fire. He wasn’t able to do this on Wednesday as, for some reason, the nightwatchman from the previous evening had not burned. It was, though, red hot and glowing. Consequently he left it till we returned from MSP, when he removed it (still hot but glowing slightly less), placed it in the metal ash bucket and left it at the top of the steps outside.

So far so good. However, when I passed on my way down to check on my lesson materials for the afternoon there were a smattering of flames beginning to lick around the bottom of the log. “Do you know the log’s on fire?” I asked him, popping back inside. “Yes,” he answered shortly, which I translated as “Of course I do, it’s all in hand so just mind your own business.” So when I passed him on my way back up, manfully struggling with a large board to try to smother the flames that were now dancing round the top of the bucket I thought it better not to interfere as he had it “all in hand” and I didn’t want to be snapped at again. It does seem unfair, therefore, that later when all was sorted and we were making a coffee he said that I was the only person he knew who would say that there was a fire and then carry on as if everything was normal. I mean, he only had to ask - but I guess that wouldn’t have allowed him to take the moral high ground. He, of course, may have a different slant on events but as they say, history is written by the person with the blog.

Of course, we didn’t allow this to spoil our day but before I was able to relax I had my last lessons before the holiday, with Marzia and Diego in Montegranaro in the afternoon and Fouzia in the evening. Christmas Eve was a quiet day at home, broken for me by a couple of chats with my conversation partners to wish each other Buon Natale and catch up with things. Christmas Day was equally as quiet (apart from collecting our dinner from Conad, of course, which was an abundance of freshly cooked goodies, mainly meat, with enough to freeze for another day) with opening presents, lots of relaxing and the odd bit of TV viewing.

Boxing Day yesterday was a little busier as for the first time in ages we saw Marco and Maddalena who came for lunch. In normal circumstances it would have been dinner, but seeing as the average Italian considers eating cena before 8pm at the very earliest as a heinous crime against nature that would not leave much time to shovel down the food and be home before the 10 o’clock curfew. We did have a slight hiccup as far as the menu was concerned when we again ran into the problem of finding the requisite ingredients for a British recipe in an Italian supermarket, not having realised till we looked for it to make the orange cake for dessert that ground almonds are conspicuous by their absence on the shelves. We therefore took the somewhat obvious (and surprisingly expensive) step of buying two packs of almonds and grinding them ourselves. We are nothing if not resourceful.

Which brings us to today and what should have been another quiet day, though with five lessons next week I did have to take some time out in the afternoon to do a spot of preparation. I don’t usually have any lessons between Christmas Eve and Epiphany, but I suppose it is just another indication that this year has been and continues to be an exception to the norm. Something that was not an exception, unfortunately, was that following heavy rain all yesterday and the ensuing heavy winds we had a brief power cut this morning. And when I say brief I do mean brief; it flashed off and then on and then settled itself, so fast was it that the clock on the oven was not affected. The same can’t be said for the Internet, which didn’t quite manage a full week before the signal went AWOL again. It was back, to an extent, well before midday; the only question now is how long it will take before it is strong enough to get its sorry ass through all the house – and as we know, that is a very moot point.