Fake news

28th April 2024

After the turbulence of last week’s events, I’m relieved to say that this past one has been much calmer – which is good news for us but maybe not such good news for the world of letters.

There was a bit of a busy start, though, and not just the plumber. Monday morning we took Bella to the vet for a check-up as he had said to bring her back in six months to see how things were after her last set of visits. He suggested a blood test, and eventually managed to get enough as Bella didn’t seem overly keen on having a needle stuck in her leg, and also examined her back legs. She has been having a few problems with them – she doesn’t appear to be in any pain or discomfort but they can give way on occasions and when she is standing on all fours they sag a little.

After listening to her heart and saying it was still strong, he tested the legs by turning the paws back so the upper part was against the table, almost like a ballerina on points, and she straightaway moved them back so she was standing on her pads. He did this twice more and both times she sorted herself which showed, he said, that the problem was muscular rather than to do with the nervous system. He gave us two prescriptions, Altadol for pain relief and Precovix, an anti-inflammatory, and said he would be in contact when he got the results of the blood test if there was anything wrong.

That was the morning, and to our joy the afternoon saw the return of the plumber, this time with his brother and partner, Simone (again while I was in the middle of a lesson, but as Andrea knew what he was about I just had to give him the downstairs keys and leave him to it; besides, Stephen came back to supervise after not too long). The edited version for the afternoon is: digging in the areas of the three known pipes showed that two were broken, both in the same place, but the third, the one furthest away from the bathroom, was not. They also found the location of the pipe that Mario said didn’t exist, but that was left for the interim while they worked on the two broken ones (I say they but for the latter part of the afternoon into evening it was just Simone as Andrea was called away to a nearby emergency).

These were replaced and Simone not only stepped them slightly but also set them in concrete, both measures designed to protect them from similar damage if the ground should shift again. He did the same the next morning to the remaining pipe when he turned up just after 8. That, too, had broken in line with the other two, which was both good and bad news. The bad news was that it was broken; the good news is that being in the same place there was no need to dig up the concrete path at the back of the house to find the problem. As it was the third one, Simone had obviously worked up a routine as when we returned after doing the shopping all was done and dusted and apart from a couple of areas where you could tell the grass had been disturbed, it was almost as if nothing had happened at all.

Stephen headed off to work with a slight detour on the way. He had a parcel to pick up from the post office in Montegranaro as no one had been in the office to receive it, so to make the queuing worthwhile he also took a card that was due for posting. It should have been an easy matter, especially as when he went in there were only three people before him, but he had not factored in that the post office where the parcel was left was not the main one but a sub one a brief walk from their office. Nor had he factored in that the man behind the counter would act with unfeigned puzzlement when faced with post for England. (Inghilterra? What’s that?). Nor had he factored in that when he came to pay and handed over a €20 note, it would come up as fake when put through the checking machine.

Fortunately he had just enough change to cover the cost, and the machine didn’t start flashing lights and ringing alarm bells so he didn’t have to pull his hat down over his eyes and turn up his coat collar to hide his embarrassment. Nor did he have to do that at the other office either, which was empty, when he came to pay the charge on the parcel and tried his luck with the €20 again, in case the first machine had been malfunctioning. It hadn’t. It was the note that wasn’t working, and this time being all out of small change he had to pay by card, which fortuitously was genuine. 

After the recent subtropical temperatures, it was a bit of a surprise to wake, on Wednesday, to a chilly 5°. Nor was 7° on Thursday that much of an improvement, and it was back to three layers instead of one when walking the dogs and judicious boosts from the central heating. That, together with rainy afternoons, made it seem oddly like the weather you would expect in April.

Which was a shame for all those people who were taking advantage of Thursday and Friday being holiday, Thursday for the Festa della Liberazione and Friday for the bridge, the only one this year given the way the public holidays fall. Stephen celebrated by bottoming the downstairs bathroom, where the notorious washing machine lives, now the work on the drains has been completed, but his bridge was interrupted by having to donate an hour to a mystified modellista who discovered that not bothering to make notes or pay full attention when having things explained doesn’t help when you eventually get round to doing the work at the last minute.

After a rainy few days the weekend has been dry again meaning Stephen was able to give the grass a cut yesterday. He had hoped to take the mower to its lowest setting for this one but with the delay over the bank holiday the grass was too long so he has had to postpone that till, hopefully, the next time. I know that little gobbet is hard to match for excitement, but we tried hard today with a big shop at Conad in Cuore Adriatico (Gordon’s gin, including the flavoured ones, for less than €9, it’s more than human flesh can resist; we bought three), followed by the all-you-can eat lunch at Sushi Koi.

This was our second visit, and since our first, when we had to read a menu and fill in a sheet with a pen, they have taken a leaf out of DiverXo’s book and moved to the tablet method. This meant we were able to stagger our orders and take time over choosing what was next. In fact, we were able to take lots of time because they have factored a delay into the system so that if you order say three items then try to order something else, a countdown appears to show how long it will be before you can send it into the system.

I suppose this is so they can make sure the kitchen is not overwhelmed with orders, but it did seem to be taken to extremes as a couple of the things I sent, on separate occasions, took half an hour to arrive. From the goodness of our hearts, we will put this down to teething problems. Mind you, it’s just as well they weren’t overly busy or else it could have taken longer and then what would have become of our frozen food, prudently packed in a thermal bag – probably an all-you-can eat dinner at La Casa dei Due Baffi.