No news, just vibes

6th March 2022

Whilst March may not have come in exactly like a lion, it has heralded a distinct change in the weather. The sunny days of February have given way to colder, wetter and duller times, which hopefully means that by the end of the month it will be all vernal and lamb like. Fingers crossed.

As for life at LCDDB, that has been a bit of a non-starter (especially the Freeclimber, but more of that later), with little happening of note. Stephen had yet another summit meeting at the factory in Sant’Elpidio on Monday morning, arriving home late for lunch meaning, I had to eat alone in order to walk the dogs and be ready for my 2pm lesson. He was also late on Tuesday, this time after a late morning meeting at the Carellis’ factory, but in an elegant variation I took the dogs before lunch, after preparing everything, which meant that Stephen could cook the pasta and heat the sauce to have it ready for when we returned from our midday constitutional.

It was also on Tuesday that the weather paid little heed to the forecast and in opposition to the predicted dullish with sunny intervals decided instead to treat us to what I would describe as soggy hail. Not the best of conditions for Carnevale, so it was just as well there were no outside activities arranged as they would have had to be hastily cancelled. As for our celebrations, we defied the dottoressa to splash out on some festive pastries from Conad when doing our shopping, only for them to be augmented by freshly made offerings that Mrs C sent home with Stephen after the meeting. Just as well we are set for forty days of abstinence, allegedly.

After a couple of months of worry-free driving, as far as the Freeclimber was concerned, a moment’s inattention on Stephen’s part led to a blip in its recent unsullied record. Diego and Andrea were too busy studying for tests (Italian schools love tests, hardly a week seems to go by without any) so I didn’t need the Panda on Thursday afternoon leaving Stephen to bagsy it for his commute to Porto Sant’Elpidio. The journey home in all that traffic is less precarious when you can see clearly and you aren’t driving with the frisson of something cutting out at any moment.

This would have all been very well, but when I came upstairs after my evening lesson and was on the terrazzo closing the shutters, I happened to notice a light glowing in the Freeclimber. A second look suggested that the back lights might be glowing in the dusk, and when I went down to check I found that Stephen, on returning from the Carellis in the morning, had neither locked the car (but he never does for, as he says, who’s going to steal it…) nor turned off the lights – despite his large hand-written notice HEADLIGHTS attached to the top of the dashboard. And yes, when I tried it, the battery was flat.

I broke the bad news when he came home. It was too late – and dark – by then to do anything, but a day on charge on Friday seemed to sort out the problem. Also on Friday, with no lesson in Montegranaro as Marzia was away in Trentino, presumably for a skiing trip, we took the opportunity to whip across to the optician to say yes to lenses. We were going to take the Freeclimber to give it a run and check all was ok, but thought that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea in the rain. A couple of quick jaunts over the weekend suggest that all is in working order, which given the car’s history is actually a positive thing.

As for our Lenten abstinence, that took a bit of an early jolt as after the Carnevale cakes earlier in the week, Mrs C sent Stephen home on Thursday with seven freshly laid eggs. I secretly suspect of her waging an undeclared war on our doctor and these new-fangled ideas about healthy diets and cholesterol, and breaking the one egg a week diktat is her latest salvo. What were we to do?

The last time I had a clutch of eggs I made a cake in an attempt to dissipate the damage, but this time we threw caution to the wind and treated ourselves to a Saturday tea of Moroccan eggs – being, for those interested in such things, a lightly spiced ragout mixture of tomatoes, peppers and chickpeas, into which you break and poach four eggs. Sinfully fine it was too, but it did leave us with the quandary of what to do with the remaining three. Not for long. There being a handy pack of pancetta in the fridge, the natural thing to do was to earmark spaghetti carbonara for a lunch next week, because if you are going to send your cholesterol sky high, you might as well do it with a multicultural vibe.