Dressed for the occasion

20th July 2025

TThe sun returned on Monday as did Edoardo over in Monte Urano. I thought that was it for the summer after our last lesson in June, just before his final English exam: a 13-year-old boy having much better things to do in July. Well yes and no. He’d said that he was busy for the next three weeks but his mum would contact me when he was free again, so the message that came through sometime after 10 on Sunday evening was not a complete surprise - just as well I had something in reserve. It’s still a bit of a moveable feast, though, as next week he’s away for his basketball camp but a lesson at the end of the month has been pencilled in.

There was a change to routine on Wednesday, and we don’t mean Luigi starting up the tractor at 6 am to avoid the midday heat. Peggy had been licking and worrying at one of her hind legs the previous evening and closer examination showed that her dew claw had curled almost 360° and was starting to press into the skin. The one on the other hind leg wasn’t far behind so Stephen made an appointment for us to take her to the vet’s in the evening.

The good news is that our friend Francesco was on duty, and while we felt a little inadequate when we showed him the offending talon and he took the clippers and went snip, snip, snip, snip around all four legs, it did give us the chance to bring up the question of sterilisation again. There was a moment’s muddle over coming into heat and not knowing when and him saying it was best to wait, but then we reminded him that she had already had puppies. “No problem, then,” he said, “it can be done whenever.” Stephen’s suggestion of the next day was a bit previous, but Friday was ok and an appointment was made for 9 a.m.

There was some puzzlement two days later when Peggy and Harry came bounding in after their early walk expecting to be fed only to find no dog bowl forthcoming. This general air of confusion continued as they tried to work out what it was about until we hustled Peggy out of the house whereupon Harry started whining pitifully at being parted from his new bff. He had stopped by the time we returned without her (after stopping off for shopping and hair cut – Stephen’s turn, in case you have lost track - on our way back) but he did look around for her and spent quite a bit of the morning lying by the gate.

As for the operation, that went as well – and as speedily – as could be hoped. Stephen had excused himself from work as we had been told that Peggy would be ok to collect at midday, just when I had a lesson. He set out well before that, though, in search of a body suit for her. The lady vet, who’d made it in for 9 a.m. unlike Francesco who tripped in some minutes later, suggested that we should use one in preference to a buster collar. Well, we’ve done buster collars and they are irritating, and not just to the dog, so we were all for trying something new and avoiding all the problems of eating and drinking and trying to manoeuvre round furniture with a big piece of plastic jutting out around the neck.

The question was which pet store would stock one, so Stephen set out on a planned route to the coast, starting with the nearest in Piano di Montegiorgio. This, I’m happy to say, was a case of a best laid plan not going awry as he struck gold straight off and a very nice lady advised him on the size and said that if it wasn’t right (it was) she would exchange it. While he was sorting that out the vet phoned to say all was fine and he could collect Peggy.

He arrived there in double-quick time, the pet shop being more or less on the way. He had to wait ten minutes or so to allow her to come to herself a little more, and then there was another delay while he tried to work out the logistics of how the body suit went on – until Francesco, seeing his pickle came to his aid, and their combined brain power eventually solved the puzzle. Peggy came home, much to Harry’s delight, and spent the afternoon recuperating on the floor or the settee, depending how hot she was feeling, and has gradually become more lively and more like herself over the weekend. She is, I would say, at about 80% energy level, and the wound from the operation and the body suit are both doing well.

So well in fact that we were able to leave her in Harry’s capable paws on Friday evening when we went for dinner at CarloCarla with Marco and Maddalena (booked earlier in the week, don’t judge), where, in testament to how good the food is, Maddalena, who hardly ever eats sweet things, polished off the pre-dessert and most of her desert (both included in the table d'hôte menu) though the meringue proved a sugar too far.

Keeping up what seems to have become a recent trend, we had another Sunday morning shopping trip. This one was prompted when Stephen asked me what I was thinking of wearing when we go to the opera in Macerata next month. That I said I wasn’t sure was the right answer; he had obviously been mulling the topic over (he has three in mind, he said when I asked) as he said I could do with a new pair of more formal, lightweight summer trousers. Who was I to disagree, and so it was stand-by Civitanova.

First stop was Cuore Adriatico, it being somewhere to have breakfast, with a quick bob into Conad to buy some red bush tea (an impulse buy on our last trip when I thought that maybe I should revisit old UK habits, the only problem being that, unsurprisingly, it’s conspicuous by its absence in MSP) followed by a look at the shops. We struck out until we tried Pull and Bear, where I struck lucky with a pair of trousers and a cotton jumper (for general wear, it turned out), both at half price.

That’s it, I foolishly thought, but no, they were just optional extras, bargains too good to pass over, and so Stephen ushered us across the road to Tuttitipi, the place where I got my New Year’s outfit. The same assistant greeted us as we entered, remembering both us and, impressively, my waist size, and then she and Stephen went into tag-team personal shopper mode. That’s why, when I left an hour or so later with three pairs of trousers, two singlets, a shirt and a pair of shoes (all, apart from the Hey Dude! shoes discounted) I had very little to do with it. Stephen had a pair of trousers.

It was a good morning’s work, though I did have a moment of shock when the assistant (who I think someone address as Roxy) appeared with the shirt, blue “to match your eyes,” she said. That may be, but I was worried it wouldn’t be my eyes people were looking at when she held it out to display the plunging neckline, split wide with the only button at the bottom of the V. “Very good for the pool,” she said, “or evening wear; very Italian.”

In for a penny, so I slipped it on in the changing room and was not entirely repulsed by what I saw. “Very sexy,” she said when I came out modelling it, which you better believe; the heat I generated in the store was enough to push the temperature outside past 35°. But with great power comes great responsibility – that’s why we invested in the two under singlets to protect the innocent.