Jokers to the right

4th July 2021

Let me, firstly, clear up an issue hanging over from last week – even if you may not have been aware that such was the case – which is that the sunbeds on Porto San Giorgio beach, and no doubt all the others in the area if not throughout Italy, have spread further out towards the sea. I have Vanna, my student, to thank for this information, as when I mentioned it to her when we were chatting at the start of the lesson, she said that last year as part of the support package for the chalet owners, the government (I’m not sure whether national or regional) allowed them to claim more square metreage. So now we know and on to other things.

Following the move to white the previous Monday, this last Monday saw the removal of the requirement to wear a mask when outside, but if I understood the morning news correctly you are supposed to be able to show that you have one with you if stopped, whether on foot or in the car, to use should the need arise. Old habits die hard, though, and when we went shopping on Tuesday, I found it somewhat disconcerting to be walking the street with my mouth exposed. Such considerations obviously don’t affect Luigi, for when he turned up at the house on his scooter shortly before lunch, he was exercising this newfound freedom.

There was sufficient variation in the rest of the week that marked, if evidence were indeed needed, that things are gradually expanding. After a relatively busy Wednesday for me, due to a lesson change to again facilitate Marzia’s and Diego’s summer social calendar, we had dinner at the pub with Alessandra and Ben, the first time we had really been able to meet up with them since their relocation (a homecoming for Alessandra) to MSP.

On Thursday, after having been deprived of his company for too long, Stephen had a day trip to Florence with his bff, Manuel. Ostensibly the reason was a fact-finding visit to Pitti Uomo, but they somehow also managed to work in a little shopping expedition for Manuel to buy a new jacket, and to lunch in one of the newest places to be seen, the Sophia Loren restaurant, celebrating ‘original Italian food’ and where you can eat in stylish surroundings with place mats feature an artistic representation of the Bel Paese’s favourite daughter.

Yesterday I spent two hours and twenty minutes (not that I was counting) of quality time in the company of Microsoft, a result of being unable to access my subscription to Office in the morning with a message telling me that I was not connected to the Internet, something that was patently not true. This was more than a slight problem as all the materials I have created for my lessons are in Word or on PowerPoint, so having them blocked to me would be something of a nuisance. In an attempt to find an answer I went onto the Microsoft site and opened up a chat screen with one of its assistants, Femi. I explained my problem and, at a bit of a drip drip speed, was given a path to follow. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to find the locations advised, and feeling stupid asked for further clarification, and still not being able to discover where Femi wanted me to go, I hailed Stephen – who couldn’t help either.

It was at this point that a light went on; did it make a difference, I asked, that I was on a MacBook. Well yes, and Femi would have to pass me on to the section that was able to deal with it as he/she wasn’t. There followed a space of time in which Samuel and I had a little exchange, the upshot being that neither was he able to help as Femi had transferred me to the wrong section. Third time lucky, Nusiratu was actually able to sort out my problem, but only at the expense of some time. At least he (she?) was able to tell me that the reason was due to me using Microsoft Office 2011, which was now out of date. What he would have to do was install the latest version, to accomplish which he had to take over remote control of my laptop, requiring these steps:

· Download a program to facilitate this.

· Install the program.

· Authorise Nusiratu to take control of my laptop.

· Sit and watch while he searched around.

· Download the new Office program.

· Install the new program.

· Find and delete the old program.

· Check that the new program was working correctly.

· Bid each other a tearful farewell after exchanging addresses so we can send each other a Christmas card, having spent so much quality time with each other.

The good news is that I can now access Microsoft word. The bad news is that all my old files have to be uploaded onto the new system and saved into new folders as they cannot be opened in their old format. Call me a dinosaur, but I do wish that those of us happy in our time warp could be left there to plod along happily in the way we know and love. Progress, who needs it?

Which brings us to today, and what we thought was going to be a satisfyingly uneventful day. We had failed, however, to take into consideration the workings of the universe at large, though the first thing it hit us with was more of an observation than a happening. We arrived at Porto San Giorgio about 8.50, as we usually try to, and managed to park in more or less the same spot as last week – Stephen having figured that parking at the other end would make leaving late morning with all the extra traffic too mithering. What we did wonder, however, as we made our way back to the car and passed the opened gates to the large area of formerly waste land that had been transformed into a grassy parking area was why it didn’t open till after 9 o’clock? The logic would be that if it opened at say something like 8, or even 7.30, all those early arrivals at the beach, of which there are a reasonable number, including us, would have a convenient place to slip in and leave their car.

The second thing happened just after lunch when Stephen started to clear away and I was about to take the dogs down for a spell in the garden (it being too hot this time of year for a post-lunch walk). Bella trotted off happily, but Harry, after taking a drink, stopped near the fireplace and cocked his head. He could hear something inside, as indeed could Stephen once he had turned off the radio. It was a bird, trapped in the flue – something that hasn’t happened, oddly enough, since last summer. I carried on with my garden duties, figuring if there was a bird on the go, two dogs haring around the kitchen would not be of assistance.

When I returned some fifteen minutes later it was to find all the logs and branches of rosemary that Stephen had so artfully set in the grate on the floor and a freshly washed out tuna tin placed at the aperture to the flue. Stephen’s thinking in this was that the reflected light would attract the bird and encourage it to follow the path to freedom. He was not having a great deal of luck in this, but by the time I shut Bella and Harry safely in the back room (where by their puzzled looks they weren’t sure whether to be pleased at being allowed unchaperoned on the settee or to be resentful at being isolated) and almost finished the washing up (someone, I suppose, had to do it) there was a flutter of wings, a clatter of a tuna tin and a powdery fall of soot and the bird headed straight out the door, from which the fly screen had been thoughtfully pulled aside.

All that was left to do was for me to finish the washing up and to make the coffee while Stephen hoovered up the soot, wiped down the fireplace and rearranged his summer effort in the grate. All that is left to do is for Stephen once more to titivate the brickwork with white paint, something, if you recall, that he only did the other week.

You would have thought that that was enough excitement for one afternoon, but that would be without bringing the harvesting of Mario and Luigi’s field into play, the field that stretches in front, behind and to the east of the house. It wasn’t the actual harvesting that caused a bit of a problem, rather it was Mario’s, with the aid of an unknown assistant at the steering wheel, decision to bring the tractor with the grain tank attached down to meet the combine at the bottom of the field, rather than for the combine to go up to the grain tank – this latter being used as a shuttle between the harvester and the large wagon that takes the whole of the grain away to the mill and which waits on the top road.

The problem with doing it this way round is that when the tractor and tank tried to make it up the steepest part of the road, that is just what it couldn’t do: make it. After churning the road (thank you) without moving for a couple of minutes, they took the decision to reverse down to the corner of the field by the start of our driveway, which was accomplished, I have to say, most efficiently, and then go through the already shorn section facing our house. We assumed that once on the field they would head across it at an angle and thereby lessen the incline involved, which would have been a longer but maybe less challenging route. We were wrong. Instead, they headed straight up the field, some ten metres parallel with the road, where once again the tractor refused to go any further around the same point.

What to do now? The answer, we found from our vantage point on the terrazzo where we were enjoying a little merenda, was for Mario to go and get the little bullet-nosed Lamborghini tractor they use for tilling over the ground and attach it to the front of the tractor. He then set off in a regal procession, the Lamborghini pulling the tractor pulling the grain tank, and made it in stately fashion to the top. Oddly enough, the next time the combine needed emptying I could swear it went up the field to discharge its load; I can’t think why.