Making a splash

15th December 2024

While Stephen tried his best decking LCDDB with Christmas glory last weekend, the robin that visited us on Monday morning clearly thought he had missed out an integral component, though flying into the lumber room and flapping around didn’t really add to the overall festive effect. The bird must have agreed; despite failing to cooperate with my attempts to shoo it outside, when I checked back a little later it had sacked it for a game of soldiers and headed off elsewhere, leaving our display still without a red breast in sight.

Pina was back to normal after last week’s chaos, but it still took longer than it should have for breakfast thanks to Stephen getting excited and spilling his cappuccino – though really it was all the fault of the double crostata.

When we take colazione in Pina, we eschew the bought-in pastries for something homemade. While I tend to prefer a slice of ciambellone, Stephen will probably opt for a slice of crostata, if there is one – as on Tuesday morning. In an elegant variation on the usual jam filling, this one was half jam, by far the more popular choice as there was only a small piece (by Pina standards) left, and half crema.

Stephen said that he would take the last of the jam, but Amalia, shocked at such a paltry offering, said she could give him that piece plus some of the crema. “No, no!” protested Stephen for half a second before switching to, “Oh, ok then,” just to make it seem like he was doing them a favour. It was when Amalia handed him the double whammy that he came over all unnecessary, clipped the saucer of his cappuccino and spilled enough to splash the counter and the floor. Amalia wouldn’t hear of him cleaning it up himself, so we sat down and set to while she got the mop, meaning the good and the elderly of MSP had to wait patiently in a more or less orderly queue where previously there hadn’t been one.

The next two or three days passed unremarkably, unless you count Stephen trying to insist that I had a parcel coming, via the Italian delivery service BRT, from Brussels. “Is this yours?” he asked when sending me a copy of the message he’d received notifying him of the parcel’s impending arrival. “No,” I replied, but that didn’t seem to satisfy him. I should explain here that other than items which will fit into the Amazon hub locker at Coal, packages have to be addressed to Stephen at the office in Montegranaro. As we know, delivery vans wouldn’t come to our house, even if they knew where it was, and using the office avoids frazzled, if not irate, drivers phoning us followed by a mad dash to rendezvous at the church.

Using Stephen’s name care of the company gives the DHL man, or whoever, a shrewd idea where to go; it was understandable, then, that he might think it was for me, if not for two things: (1) they contacted him not me, and (2) I hadn’t ordered anything, though he seemed somewhat dubious about this. I backed up my argument by finding the sender online and forwarding him a link to the chic lifestyle retailer in Brussels, but he was having none of it.

The parcel was delivered on Friday and when he came home in the evening, he handed it over dismissively, accompanied by a sneering, “Here’s your parcel.” It turned out to be a boxed set of three pairs of briefs (sorry for mentioning male undergarments), very nice ones which I would have been more than happy to claim had Stephen not suddenly decided they were his after all. “Oh, those,” he said, of this Black Friday purchase.

What had confused him, bless him, was that when he bought them, the site said “Made in Italy” and he couldn’t reconcile this with the parcel coming from Brussels -  an interesting, take when you consider the shoes he handles are also “Made in Italy” but not sold here.

Whilst today’s been another quiet day at home, we were out and about yesterday, with Stephen having his nails done for Christmas in the morning (adding a subtle touch of sparkle to the geometric design) and both of us on a special mission in the afternoon to find a pair of trousers for me to wear on New Year’s Eve. All the ones I have seem to be either jeans or of a more casual slant, and dinner at CarloCarla calls for something a bit smarter. 

Stephen’s suggestion was that we try Tuttitipi in Civitanova, a fashion brand store that opened in April. It will come as no surprise that I hadn’t heard of it, but it was on Stephen’s radar, though he hadn’t been inside, and seemed like a good place to start. We didn’t actually start there, but a scoot round Conad in Cuore Adriatico to stock up on coffee and gin (and one or two other things, of course) while in the area doesn’t really count.

As it happens, Tuttitipi was not just a good place to start but also a good place to finish, especially with the help of a very nice assistant who not only knew what she was doing but also had a good knowledge of the stock. We (by which I mean Stephen and the assistant) sorted the trousers in short order (midnight blue 40WEFT with a moleskin vibe, just right for dressing up or down so lots of mileage in them), but being faced with such a box of delights Stephen went into full personal shopper mode in search of a complete outfit.

In the end I came away with the trousers, an off-white polo neck (black was considered, but maybe a bit obvious and a bit severe, and besides, where was I going to find a box of Milk Tray), and a fawn knitted cardigan jacket. You will have to wait a couple of weeks to see the photos, but hopefully you’ll be as impressed as we were. Not, however, as impressed as the nice assistant was when I came out of the dressing room wearing an indigo woollen polo neck. “Wow,” she said, before saying, “wow,” again, and not, I’m sure, just because she was trying to make a sale.

I had to have that as well, and it was made doubly special as Stephen bought it for me as a Christmas present. He didn’t leave empty-handed, either. We both thought the Moscow Mule scarf in large squares of bright colours was fabulous but at €490 it was, unsurprisingly, way out of our budget. The nice assistant found this highly amusing, mainly because Stephen had missed the decimal point on the label and it was a much more reasonable €49 – so that went into my bag as an extra for him.

Being on a high, we had to find a way to round off a successful afternoon’s shopping so took a detour on the way home to Totò. An Aperol spritz, tasty stuzzichini and some pizza al taglio was no more than we deserved after all of our hard work. All that putting on and taking off and haring round the display racks really takes it out of you - and if you think it doesn’t, try shopping for clothes with Stephen sometime, if you have the stamina.