One more for the road

15th August 2021

As befitted the first day of his holidays, Monday was another beach day for Stephen when he met up with Computer Luca at Corridonia before heading south this time to near San Benedetto del Tronto, where Shoe Marco joined them sometime in the afternoon. If this were not enough of an indication that they are becoming even more of a clique, that they are now referring to each other as ‘the boys’ – or, in the case of Marco when captioning a picture on Facebook, ‘my boys’ - should underline the fact. If this goes on, before I know where I am I’ll be having to pack up a picnic hamper with various cold cuts, sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer.

Before he headed off, Stephen had time to get back in touch with the wood man regarding this year’s supply of winter fuel. He’d phoned the previous week, when we’d said that due to lopping the tops from all our trees earlier in the year we would only need two quintali and not the usual three, and he told us that due to the incident last year when he got stuck trying to get up the road and had to be helped by Mario, Luigi and their tractor, he was not prepared to deliver to the house. The fact that the two previous times he’d managed fine didn’t seem to matter.

His offered solution was that he would leave the two hundredweight of wood at Mario and Luigi’s, we could load it onto their trailer for them to bring down to the house, unload it and then store it in the garage. This seemed to us to mean we would have at least twice as much work to do while the wood man sailed away with our used notes clasped in his sweaty hands. Stephen’s suggestion, which he cleared with the super Mogliani brothers over the weekend before getting back to the wood man, was for him to bring the logs to the house as usual after which Mario and/or Luigi would be on stand-by with tractor to hook to the truck to give it a bit of a lift up the hill. Mr WM was somewhat dubious about this but agreed to have a word with the Mogliani two to see what could be agreed, and that was very much where it was left until the following day.

It would appear that our friendly man of the wood has a strange notion of negotiation, for when he contacted Stephen the next day his demands had escalated. He was not happy for the tractor merely to add a bit of extra traction as he drove up the hill, what he wanted was to be towed. We learned later that Mario had tried to point out that his truck being bigger and heavier than their tractor meant that was a bit of a non-starter. In that case, the obvious answer, in the world of Mr WM, was to have two tractors pulling him. The obvious answer to us was that there was little point in pursuing this further – especially when he said we could load it all in the back of our car. We’d offered what we thought was a viable solution (always remembering, as I said, on two occasions he had had no problem and last year he didn’t help himself by driving his truck into the field) and Mario and Luigi were being more than helpful in lending a hand in something that really was not of any importance to them. It was, therefore, a matter of ciao and thanks for the fish. After all, it isn’t as if he is the only dolphin in the ocean… or chopper in the woodpile for that matter.

Tuesday, otherwise, was a very happy day, starting with dropping off the Freeclimber to have the replacement latch fitted for the driver’s seat belt (done well before lunch) and hitting the big city in the evening for dinner with Marco and Maddalena. OK, Porto San Giorgio is maybe not in the same league as Milan but for quiet country folk like us it was still very exciting. We ate at Trattoria Excelsior, a fish restaurant in the town where in the summer you eat outside in the blocked off street. It was a lovely setting: the evening was warm and clear, the fish for the main course, selected from the stall in the corner and weighed on an old scale, was succulent and the pasta and wine comfortingly local, being Mancini and Bastianelli, each just over the way from LCDDB.

What was a little less satisfactory was the service, which was on the slow side, culminating in giving up waiting for our coffee and then Marco and I hanging around inside till they found someone who could tell us what our bill was and take our money. The young man who was overseeing the restaurant was trying his best, but I don’t think he really had the experience to control what was happening, and he certainly didn’t have the experience in dealing with fish as he took an age to attack our two largish pieces, producing plates of flaked flesh rather than fillets.

This was not enough to spoil our evening, though, especially as Stephen guided us to the very new and very chic Lampara cocktail bar where we not only got our coffee but also where Stephen offered us our choice of cocktail. I plumped for a Godspeed, comprised of visciolata (see previous entry regarding Le Marche sherry) and berry liqueur, topped up with grapefruit soda, which was as delicious as it was refreshing. Stephen, of course, went for something much more camp, and his Rosalìa (gin, lemon juice and hibiscus cordial) arrived in a coupe, though admittedly one that owed more to metropolitan styling than Marie Antoinette’s left breast.

Another arrival, pulling up outside on his bike, was Stephen’s bff Manuel, who had a vested interest in our enjoyment as it was he who introduced Stephen to the bar on one of their various ‘business’ outings. He’d seen Stephen’s post on Facebook and as he was at his apartment in PSG, took a quick spin along to see how we were getting on. Stephen shared a few moments with him before Manuel waved to us, wished us a good evening, then headed off, his mission completed.

That wasn’t the end of our holiday jaunts as on Thursday we combined a shopping trip to RisparmioCasa (lots of cleaning items, unglamorous but necessary) with lunch at DiverXO, the fusion dining experience on the upper level with its all-you-can-eat menu, which in our case given the spectre of the doctor hovering always over our shoulders it was more all-you-can-eat-in moderation. That didn’t stop us, though, taking a slight detour afterwards into Lindt (ah, the coolness of air conditioning in a chocolate shop) for coffee, where I had a simple caffè and he had one topped with a Mr Whippy swirl of cream before he treated me, contrariwise given we were in an internationally renowned chocolatier, to a big bag of fruit jellies.

It was then all very quiet, at least for us. True, it has been the main holiday weekend of the year for Italians with today being Ferragosto, a traditional time of families and five-hour lunches either a casa or al ristorante. We followed our own particular tradition by spending it at home, that is at home after our morning beach walk. This was more or less as ever, but with Funari on its annual settimana di ferie we had to find alternative breakfast arrangements and make our annual stop at Kokonuts in Campiglione instead. As was to be expected, the beach was also busier, especially with tractors pulling trailers with boats attached into the water for their apparently annual excursion.

Stephen also spent an odd hour yesterday and today getting the dressing room/dogs’ bedroom/spare room ready to start painting tomorrow, moving anything moveable into the bedroom or back room and shifting the wardrobes away from the walls, ready for an early start on the work tomorrow.

We also, on Friday, had a visit in the early evening from Luigi. As ever with these things, I let Stephen go down to see what it was about, but I was at first stunned and then inordinately pleased to realise that I was able for once to understand part of what Luigi was saying. He was being neighbourly in our hour of need and had brought us the card of an alternative wood man that he had found lurking in a drawer. “He delivers to the house and the cost of delivery is included in the price,” I heard him say, chuffed with myself.

It was only later when I looked at the card, which may be of some age so we are not holding our breath, that I realised he had been reading the rubric at the bottom, a shattering revelation as it didn’t mean that my comprehension had suddenly improved or that my ear had become attuned to the local dialect, but rather for the first time I had actually heard Luigi speaking Italian, or at least a close approximation of it. It looks like it is still going to be a good few years before I can be considered to have gone native.