Catching a break

10th December 2023

Though we waited in breathless anticipation after the promises made last Saturday, we were destined to disappointment as the contractors slated to fix the road were a no show. Maybe we can forgive them; despite a clear day on Monday, Tuesday was wet and miserable and so that ruled out the next day as well, as the ground wasn’t dry enough. There is always next week.

As for Stephen, come Wednesday he had other things on his mind, namely a big meeting at the parent company in Milan with some important global clients, requiring a day trip there and back with Bertrando. It could have been worse as when first mooted they were told they would have to fly to London, but Stephen being without a passport meant that they had to switch venues. (The passport was on its way and it did arrive before the day of the meeting, but too late to change arrangements; oh dear.)  As it turned out, planes did play an important part in the day, but not really in the way that was planned.

After some weighing up of options, Bertrando decided in favour of flying Ancona-Milan with Italia Air, but you know what they say about the best laid schemes – and when you can’t check in online during the two days leading up to the flight, then you should be expecting the worst.

The day itself started well enough, if early, with Stephen up at 4.30 to rendezvous with the boss at the top of the road and be driven to the airport. It was once they got there that things went agley when they joined the eight other people gathered at the check in, all who had been unable to do so online, and being told by a somewhat officious woman behind the desk that they had to pay. Bertrando, however, had an email printed from the site saying he wouldn’t be charged, and whilst the woman reluctantly accepted this, she was not inclined to apply it to anyone else.

This all became somewhat moot for our two intrepid heroes, for while this was going on Stephen happened to look at the departure board which showed the Milan flight delayed till 10.20, about the time the meeting was due to start. Given that there was no guarantee it would not be delayed further, or even cancelled, they hopped back in the car and Bertrando did what he had hoped to avoid: drive to Milan.

Fortunately, it was reasonably plain sailing, and they made it in time for a somewhat protracted meeting which didn’t finish till well after 5 pm. Given that they had had a long day, and he had had to make the mad dash in the morning, Bertrando decided that the wisest thing would be to stop overnight and return the next morning. Even so, Stephen didn’t make it home till gone five the next evening as it was straight back to work when they hit Civitanova, never mind making it as far as the office in Montegranaro.

It was, then, some thirty-six hours after I had bid him a sleepy farewell that he again walked through the door, and delighted as I was to see him, I hope you won’t think me shallow if I was equally delighted to see the Marchesi bag (check pasticcerie in Milan if you don’t know) clutched in his hand containing one of their very finest panettone. He was also in time to set the fire (far too technical for me, my talents stretch only to cleaning), thereby solving the mystery of his missing tessera sanitaria, which he had not been able to find since it was returned along with the other documents sent to support his passport application. There it was, lurking at the bottom of the well by the fire, the place where he keeps his firelighters and cleaning materials and the bag for lugging up the logs. It never ceases to be a surprise when the things that he has lost turn up – remember his wedding ring in a shoe in a suitcase in the lumber room, not to mention the table knife AWOL for a full year in a box of Christmas ornaments.

Don’t think I was twiddling my thumbs as it was left to me to deal with the boiler man, Samuele, arriving to give it its service. He was due at 5.30 but unsurprisingly that didn’t happen and it was forty minutes later that I received a call to say he was at the top of the road. I was starting to get a little anxious as my taxi services were needed at 7 to collect Sami for his lesson, nor was it helped when both I and the young trainee, who stood outside of the car in the cold holding the equipment, had to wait a further 10 minutes while Samuele walked up and down the road, deep in a telephone conversation. Problems at home with the shower, he told me when he eventually sat in the passenger seat. We set off and I asked him how long it would take. “About forty-five minutes,” he replied, though when I told him that I had an appointment at seven he said they would try to be quicker.

Indeed they were, and everything was completed just in time. We might, though, have had more of a breathing space if someone had remembered to leave out the document that had to be stamped to prove the work had been carried out, and I hadn’t had to trawl through the three box files of documents in random order that comprise a certain someone’s filing system.

That should have been it, except that when I came to wash up after my dinner, the boiler failed to kick in as it had lost all its pressure. I remembered that when this had happened a few times in the past, Stephen had ferreted about at the pipes underneath and opened a valve to refill it. I had a go, but neither of the two I found, a turny one and a flippy one, had any effect. Loathe as I was to disturb him after his busy day, I had to call Stephen and together, aided by the power of WhatsApp video and the light from a torch we looked at the problem together. The only thing we could see was the blue knob that I had tried to turn before but this had no effect when I tried again.

To cut a long, and mind-numbingly dull, story short, Stephen messaged Samuele who sent a link to a YouTube video (what else) showing use of the blue knob to rectify the problem. I tried again, and for some strange reason this time the boiler filled and the pressure rapidly returned to what it should be. The moral of this should be obvious, I think: if at first you don’t succeed, give up and get someone else to sort it out.

Friday was a holiday for the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, and whilst my haircut was postponed, we could still do the shopping as Conad was open in the morning, meaning breakfast at Pina twice in one week, (it is an unwritten family law, one I was not aware of till Stephen told me, that Conad = Pina, Coal = Bar del Borgo, at least where colazione is concerned). We stopped at the corner by the church on our way back to buy a poinsettia from the Avis volunteers (the emergency medical service, if you recall). They sell them every year as a way to raise funds, and this year’s were of a particularly impressive height. Stephen’s dreams of a resplendent bushy specimen were dashed however when he realised the reason why three of the stalks were uncooperatively refusing to stand up straight was that they were broken. It would have been churlish to return and demand a refund, so we had to settle for a waspishly thin Duchess of Windsor vibe rather than a voluptuous Mae West one, at least where the plant is concerned.

Stephen was inspired, however, whether by it or the holiday or a combination of both, to set to with the Christmas decorations. No tree this year, but he did festoon the outside railings with lights and then over the rest of the weekend adorn the house with garlands and well-placed festive objets. There was a slight adjustment to be made this morning when he decided that the lights on top of the tall kitchen cupboards weren’t pulling their weight and called on my services to hold the ladder while he draped them around the roof beams instead.

In between all this, he found time yesterday morning to make an early visit to the Post Office as we had two or three things to mail. We had intended to do it last Tuesday morning, but the length of the queue meant if we had waited the rest of our day would have been thrown off kilter. As it was, arriving shortly after it opened at 8.20, there were already eight people ahead of him. Fortunately, he was back home in about forty minutes (including a trip into Pina for a spot of Christmas shopping), mainly because of those eight, some didn’t have the right forms and one old gentleman didn’t have his documentation with him. His daughter stepped aside while he went home to get it, though as hadn’t made it back by the time Stephen left, she might have been wishing she’d put up a flask.

As if all this wasn’t enough excitement for one week, yesterday evening we made our annual pilgrimage to Fermo and the presepi display. We were a tad disappointed, not by the quality but because there seemed to be fewer than previously, and maybe fewer quirky ones (always excepting the facsimile of Cingoli town hall, made from popcorn, as a backdrop to their nativity scene), but as I left our donation as we were leaving, the man on the door thanked us and said that there were more in the church over the road and down the steps. It wasn’t so much that there was a lack this year, but that an abundance meant they needed two venues.

The really good news of the evening, though, was twofold. Firstly, we were pleasantly surprised to see that Art Asylum was back in business, with a slight rebranding in look (even more like someone’s sitting room from the 1950s). We popped inside where the nice lady was delighted to see us, and told us that she had decided not to relocate but to reopen as a Concept Store. While that could mean anything, she assured us that the food would be as before, so that’s ok.

As for the other good news, although there was not a lot of choice in the cabins that make up the Christmas market in the main square, I allowed myself to be seduced by one displaying a range of cashmere scarves. After much indecision, (i.e. I knew I was going to buy one, but I had to make it seem like I needed persuading – they were very light but very warm, said the man, who kept emphasising that they were genuine cashmere, made in India and not China) I bit the bullet and purchased. Given the price, it is not so much a matter of keeping it for best, as wearing it at every conceivable opportunity to make it value for money – not including the pub, where we stopped on the way home for burger and chips as a tomato ketchup stain wouldn’t exactly enhance the scarf’s indigo blue glory.

And if that still wasn’t enough excitement for one week, the house decided to conspire against us this morning when, firstly, the top section of the swan-necked kitchen tap came off when I turned it on to fill the dogs’ water bowl. I turned it off sharpish, so only mild puddling resulted, and Stephen after quite a bit of persuading managed to get the screw back in to secure it, telling me to (a) be gentle when moving it from side to side and (b) to stop going around breaking things.

He should have listened to his own advice for it was not long afterwards that responding to a clatter and a yell from the “dressing room”, I found him holding up a door of one of the wardrobes that had fallen off when he knocked into it. A supposedly simple operation turned into a half-hour job for, being a piece of furniture made in simpler times, the door is not hinged but is held in place by two small pins that fit into two small holes, top and bottom of the frame. The problem was manoeuvring them into place, as it was a tight fit, and just when we thought it was about to happen there was another clatter and the other door fell off. Luckily, it landed against the table that is in there, and no damage was caused, but now there was a pair of renegade doors to sort out.

The second culprit went in relatively easily, and Stephen banged down on top of the wardrobe to secure it (IKEA eat your heart out), and with some cajoling, the first eventually followed suit – except that it wouldn’t close fully as it was rubbing against the side of the frame. A bit of judicious shoggling about of the wardrobe and eventually it too fell into line and the wardrobe was once again fit for action. And as I said to Stephen, he really needs to stop going around breaking things…

But we did have a pleasant surprise today when Stephen received a message from Maddalena. Usually she and Marco are in Rome at his family’s for Christmas Day, but this year for various reasons they are not going till the 26th. This means they are at home, or more precisely her parents’ home, and we have been invited to join them for Christmas lunch. We were delighted to accept, with one small caveat. We did say the longest we could leave Bella and Harry for was five hours,  which, knowing how festive lunches in Italy exist in their own particular time vortex, should be enough to see us through the antipasti.