Remember...

27th June 2021

With the vast majority of Italy waking up to being a white zone on Monday, you would have been forgiven for thinking we’d have been taking the opportunity for a moment of celebration and thanks. I can’t speak for others across the country, but our attention was diverted early in the proceedings by an unforeseen circumstance.

It was as Stephen was returning to the house after his early morning comfort stroll with Bella and Harry that I was called from my breakfast preparations. On going out onto the terrazzo, he beckoned me down stairs, inviting me to “Come and look at this.” Of course, numerous possibilities (ok, two) raced through my mind but neither of them was the thought that an almost perfect circle of plaster, some 2½ to 3 feet in diameter, had fallen from the ceiling. What had prompted this is a mystery, it being perfectly dry and there being, to the best of our knowledge, no wild overnight raves on the terrazzo. We will have to have it seen to at some point, no doubt, though it seems a shame that the exposed concrete hasn’t revealed a configuration of the beatific face of Padre Pio, so we can’t even claim divine intervention.

After this surprising start, the rest of the week was somewhat more predictable. With nothing particularly demanding his attention at work, Stephen had a busy day at home on Wednesday – in the morning anyway, the afternoon proving too hot when he made a brief attempt to waft the strimmer at the grass. Still, he accomplished enough in the am to feel satisfied, cutting back some of the trees in the lane (and obtaining an unspecified rash in the process) before titivating the fireplace with a coat of white paint, its usual summer defence against the fires of winter.

Thursday there was a modification to my routine, and an early start, when I was in Montegranaro by 8.30 for my lesson with Diego and Marzia – a change of time dictated by social necessities (theirs). It was no hardship, as a certain canine duo always makes sure we have to be up and about betimes, and it is flattering to think that despite it being the holidays D&M are still keen to fit in our weekly session though in future maybe more than ten hours’ notice would be appreciated.

When I returned home it was to be welcomed by our first cucumber of the year, which fulfilled its manifest destiny when Stephen chopped it up and added it to our lunchtime salad. Homegrown produce was even more in evidence when he returned from a quick trip to the factory with a cardboard box full of apricots from the Carellis’ trees. Upwards of 6lbs is a bit of a commitment for two people, but we managed to eat a swathe through a decent quantity and yesterday morning I turned a reasonable proportion into chutney.

And that would have been about it - if you exclude firstly the shock of no sushi orders being taken when we tried to put one in at Sigma/Coal for a Saturday evening treat, with no real explanation given, and secondly our surprisingly easy downloading of our Covid green passes (once you remembered to use the health card number and not the ID card one) in response to messages we’d received on our mobile devices – if it wasn’t for the reinstating of Sunday walks on Porto San Giorgio beach this morning for the first time since late August 2019.

We erred on the side of caution last year when almost everyone else – and not just in Italy – seemed to become demob happy with what they perceived to be the end of you know what. This year, with weekly numbers in the country being regularly well below 1,000 and the vaccination offensive well underway we thought we’d chance it, and we couldn’t have chosen a better inaugural day, with a cloudless blue sky and just a bit of a breeze coming in off the sea.

So what difference did some 22 months make? Generally not a lot, and it seemed like old days when we stopped off at Bar Funari on the bottom road to Campiglione for breakfast. We were, though, a little taken aback when we turned onto the beginning of the lungomare (if you can call it that when it is beside waste ground and the port, and still half a kilometre away from the start of the chalets) to find that our erstwhile regular parking spot at the side of the road was no longer available seeing as an inconsiderate Comune had built a cycleway all along the promenade. Fortunately, Stephen hung a left when there was an opening in the central reservation and found a space fifty yards or so down a side street, outside an apartment block – though with the expected July and August influx that is not an option we really want to bank on. We (by which I mean he) will have to give the matter some thought before next Sunday.

As for the beach itself, it was relatively quiet when we set off but by the time we finished, around 11 am, it was, if anything, busier than we remembered. This might have had something to do with more space being taken up by the chalets and their sunbeds. At first I thought this was due to extra social distancing spacing, but a second look showed that no, the spacing was just the same, there were just more beds on a slow march to the sea. Let’s hope they don’t encroach further or our beach walks may come yet again to a sudden halt for lack of beach.

And how did we finish off our morning? What better way than to stop off at Maria Teresa’s pasta shop in the village to buy two portions of lasagne, still hot from the oven, meaning that when we got home lunch did not require any chopping, mixing, prepping, assembling or, even more importantly, cooking, for while we can stand the heat, in weather like this it is really advisable to stay out of the kitchen.