Less is more

2nd March 2025

Whilst Stephen was lighting up MICAM and Linea Pelle, I was busy keeping the home fires burning – or not, as the case proved to be. The daily task of cleaning out the fireplace and resetting it with kindle, paper and logs of a suitable dimension usually falls to him, and adding it to my morning routine was a chore too far if I wanted to keep my equilibrium. Fortunately, the gas man was here a couple of weeks ago so I had no compunction in turning on the central heating as needed to keep Harry toasty.

His absence also coincided with the weather taking a downturn and the week has, for the most part been wet with the odd fillip of some sunshine just for encouragement. Harry finally got out onto the terrazzo on Wednesday afternoon and an unexpectedly blue-sky day on Thursday meant the washing I did that morning was dry by lunchtime, unlike Monday’s, which took two and a half days, including decamping it to the clotheshorse in the lumber room.

I appreciate that this less than fascinating account of my household management is probably only interesting to Isabella Beeton, but work with me on this one; I’m trying my best.

So what else can I enthral you with?

My reconstituted lessons with Giulia got off to a shaky start when she had to postpone Tuesday’s one to Wednesday as she’d forgotten about a work visit she had to make, and then on Wednesday having to take a bit of time to find a workable solution to conducting the lesson. WhatsApp is ok to chat, but there’s no chat box for me to type things; Skype, which I use for all my other lessons, was no good as Giulia doesn’t have it on her laptop; Google Meet seemed ok, but there was a problem with her earbuds and then with feedback from my audio. We ended up using a combination of Meet on the computer for written feedback and WhatsApp on the mobile phones for audio and visuals, a combination repeated yesterday morning when the lesson got off to a quicker start – once she had got her materials together.

Although it was miserable outside again this weekend, life inside was considerably brightened yesterday by Stephen once more entering the building (and, I like to think, the lasagne I made for a late supper). I picked him up at the station in the evening when the train he caught in Bologna, where he’d has his usual couple of days to “do the windows”, arrived on time. He would normally have started on his washing today but there seemed little point given the grey and damp weather. That can save for over the next few days and, if the forecast is correct, the return of sunshine.

As you know, a stopover in Bologna usually means him coming home with a plentiful stock of CBD goodies to replenish my hoard.  Not this time, just a couple of packs of biscuits (one chocolate, one cereal) and a lone pack of gummy bears. That’s ok though. He was anxious not to pre-empt our weekend break there at the end of the month when, amongst other metropolitan delights, I can make like a kid in a cannabis shop.