Fine tuning

23rd June 2024

With the hot weather from the end of last week making itself at home and settling in, gradually rising to the mid-30’s by Wednesday, it was time for a bit of a rethink. On Monday we dropped the midday walk, followed two days later by changing the morning one to directly after breakfast, shunting it an hour earlier meaning we were out before the sun rose too high.

Not that it was wall-to-wall (or should that be sky-to-sky) sunshine as from Tuesday to Thursday the increasing temperatures were accompanied by some haziness – due, one of my students said, to sand from the Sahara. Odd really, the number of times that seems to be the case it’s a wonder there is any left in the desert itself. This combination meant that it was really a bit oppressive, and that Stephen bringing up the umbrella to shade the front door was only partially needed until the sky cleared and sunshine returned on Friday, when it remained hot but somehow also fresher.

Having apparently developed a taste for midweek dining, and now that the B&B has entered its summer period, we had our third visit to CarloCarla on Thursday night and our first time eating outside. “It’s private dining tonight,” said Carla as she greeted us at the door before offering us a choice of tables both inside and out. We were the only people eating, which surprised us a little till we remembered that Italy was playing in some minor football tournament. It was indeed like having our own personal chef, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

Yesterday afternoon it was time for one of our periodic shopping expeditions, a well-travelled route with which you should be more than familiar by now. In fact you could probably fill in the finer details yourself, but as that would put me out of a job prepare to be enthralled, and maybe a little surprised.

As usual we stopped first at Click Café to store up on a couple of boxes of coffee bags for our machine but managed also to come away with a very fine bottle of grappa that we’d eyed on our last visit. When I say very fine bottle, that is what I mean; we have no idea what the grappa tastes like but the bottle itself is fabulous. From there it was Girasole so Stephen could source a pair of black shorts to augment his summer wardrobe. He didn’t quite manage that but he did get a pair of ecru ones and a new canvas tote bag, and I seemed somehow to end up with a new shirt.

After calling in at L’Erbolario to stock up on sun cream ready for the resurrection of our beach walk this morning and some other bits and pieces, it was on to Eurospin, a nearby supermarket. We use this occasionally, mainly since I discovered that their own version of the potassium and magnesium drink I take daily is less than €3 for twenty sachets. The named brand I used to take is over €20 for 36 sachets; the only difference between them is that the wildly more expensive ones taste nicer, but I can live with that – and as they say, you do the maths.

A quick stop – or at least as quick as we ever manage – at the Chinese (the one that is like a warehouse with shelves and appears to be without any system for controlling the temperature so it’s freezing in winter and stifling in summer) for a bin to store Stephen’s fertiliser, and then it was off, unsurprisingly, for aperitivo at Art Asylum in Fermo. This wasn’t quite as we expected it to be, at no fault of the nice lady who owns it, but because, unbeknownst to us, it was the second night of the festival of national beers in the main square. This wouldn’t have necessarily been a bad thing if the group providing that evening’s entertainment hadn’t have been on a small stage metres away from where we were sitting, but somehow distanced from the tables and benches provided for th festa.

At first, they were just tuning up, but then the more than middle-aged Deep Purple wannabes who didn’t seem to have changed their wardrobe since 1997 were joined by a young smartly turned-out chanteuse and they went into their set – though it was a bit difficult to distinguish when this. We did have some sympathy for the woman, as her singing was as drowned out as our conversation.

Before we set out for our beach walk this morning (see above), we were getting a few bits and pieces done around the house when Stephen, coming back from downstairs, saw a couple of tiny heads peeping out of the dovecote at the east side of the house. This has, for the past couple of years, been commandeered by hornets, requiring intervention my Mario to clear them out. (Go up a ladder? Us?) This year, however, they have been beaten to it by a sparrowhawk which we have seen for several weeks flying in and out, firstly to line its nest and more recently to feed the chicks that had hatched. These are presumably big enough to think about venturing out into the world as it is the first time we have caught sight of them, and that the mother hasn’t immediately flown away when one of us has appeared.

Harry, it almost goes without saying, is very excited about this development and has taken to standing on the grass below the dovecote and barking whenever they appear – which, based on this evidence seems to be quite often. The chicks, though, just ignore him, having better things to do than to pander to a self-important canine who thinks the world revolves around him. If only we could say the same.