Hat trick

19th January 2025

The middle of January and time once again to sort out the tessera sanitaria, in the singular now, of course, thanks to the kindness of the British Government in seeing me right that side of life. That’s just as well for our bank balance since that nice Mr Salvini decided to radically up the annual charge. Stephen had been wondering whether to just take out private insurance, but the nice lady that is our (by which I mean bff Manuel’s) contact at the hospital said that without the card he wouldn’t be able to access our local doctor and any treatment, should a trip to A&E be needed, would be delayed.

It made sense, then, to go with the tessera again and so the nice lady sent the completed form to Manuel who sent it to Stephen who sent it to me and I printed it out. We took it the next morning to pay at the Post Office, where in a sign that we had made the right decision, there was no queue. The form was stamped, Stephen sent a photo of it back along the chain of command and some time later that day back came a copy of the paper copy as proof till the card itself arrives.

We were also in luck at the chemist where Stephen caught them just as they were opening up while I made a start in the Post Office. He has had a very bad cough and congested chest for well over a week and was after some relief. The chemist gave him a bottle of cough mixture that he said was very good, but then there was a moment of confusion when Stephen thought he had to take it with a spoonful of minestrone. He hadn’t caught that the chemist had said da, not di, a small but vital difference – un cucchiaio da minestrone being a spoon for soup, as opposed to di, meaning of. That of course made much more sense; whoever heard of taking medicine with minestrone, chicken soup, perhaps, but never minestrone.

Wednesday Stephen had a day out, rendezvousing with bff Manuel in the factory carpark near the top or the road at 6.30 for a trip to Petti Uomo in Florence. It had been arranged the previous day when Manuel had called him to ask if he wanted to go, and he naturally said yes – why miss on opportunity for a jaunt, especially one involving checking out next year’s trends for men (cream trousers and shirt jackets, if you’re interested). Stephen donned his current favourite, his big scarf, amongst other things. As for Manuel, I can’t say but as he phoned Stephen on Tuesday evening to ask what he was wearing presumably it was something that neither clashed not copied – very important for a couple of cool Marche dudes wanting to cut a dash amongst fashions glitterati.

As for me, I had a bit of a surprise when I received an email saying I had a new message on Conversation Exchange, a site I haven’t used for quite some time. A couple of messages back and forth before connecting on Skype mean I am all set for a chat next Wednesday morning with Nicola from Milan – a man my age who wants to improve his English and whose interests are cinema, music, art and football, so three-ish out of four’s not bad.

The next couple of days were much as usual, but to make sure we didn’t spend the whole of the weekend at home we did go on an abortive quest for a new iPad for me this morning, my current one being of some age now and not always being completely cooperative. We thought to go Med Store, in Piediripa just the other side of Corridonia because (a) it is a very nice store; (b) we had excellent service there the other year when we bought new MacBooks and the assistant pointed out that for what I needed the much cheaper model than the one I had in mind would meet my needs – as indeed it has; and (c) Stephen could to Action Store across the way, mainly because when he checked it out online it showed he could get a bag of Haribo unicorns.

We stopped on the way for breakfast at a very smart pasticceria near Corridomnia, where it was almost standing room only and where what passes for the metropolitan elite in the area obviously congregate on a Sunday morning – but don’t just take my word for it, when last did you see a man in a bowler hat at 10 a.m.?

Man with bowler hat lurking

Next stop was Action Store, which was very satisfactory if you want to buy pens. Stephen stocked up with a whole gamut of packs and colours at a very reasonable price, though the experience as a whole could be described as basic – think Lidle for the home – and, disappointingly, there were no unicorns. That was not the worst, however, as it was soon obvious when we pulled into the car park that Med Store, across the way, wasn’t open, nor would it be so in the imminent future as it is closed all day on Sundays. What sort of retrograde behaviour is that?

Ah well, we thought, we could try Media World, opposite Corridomnia, but that was not a happy experience. If Med Store is the tech equivalent of Waitrose, then Media Store is Asda (no offence) – which wouldn’t have been necessarily a bad thing as they did have an awful lot of stuff in the warehouse-sized shop, but as we stood looking at the iPads and reading the specs with little understanding the assistants roundabout were too busy fiddling with equipment to bother actually assisting. We exited with the intention of trying Med Store again next Saturday.

Taralli

All was not lost, though, as we popped into the very nice organic shop next door (yes, an interesting juxtaposition) where, to our delight, we sourced some molasses (and some remarkably fine taralli, but that is another matter). Since my supply of treacle finally ran out last year, or maybe the year before, you know how time concertinas, we haven’t been able to make our Boston Baked Beans winter stand-by (just the thing with baked potatoes cooked in the fire). What better that a comforting plate of something warming on a cold winter’s night – and that’s something a new iPad and cutting edge technology can’t deliver…yet.