Stalling for time

11th December 2022

I suppose you could say that it was too good to be true, or that we are fated and just have to accept that for some reason the Gods have taken against us, but after two weeks of joyful driving the Renegade let us down, with more than a shade of the old Freeclimber haunting proceedings.

Picture this: Sicily, 1934, a young peasant girl in the flush of a first love… Sorry, wrong anecdote.

Picture this (instead): Monday evening, as part of my taxi service, I was waiting for my young student to arrive for his 7 o’clock lesson. And I waited, and waited, until, being quick on the uptake, I messaged his aunt, Fouzia, who replied to say that he wasn’t coming and apologising that the message she had sent at lunchtime for some reason hadn’t gone. Oh well, technology will let us down at times, and just to emphasise that point when I pressed the button to start the car it growled briefly before sputtering to a stop. I tried a second time, and a third, but with no luck. I even, just to make sure as I was so incredulous that we were back in the old routine, tried a fourth time, but after that called in the cavalry in the shape of Stephen.

He drove up in the Panda, but when he tried, it was just growl, sputter, stop. He suggested we try to push it down the hill, about which I was a tad doubtful as it wasn’t like navigating down a smoothly tarmacked surface, but I needn’t have worried as being on the hefty side, we just about got the Renegade round the corner from the real road when it stopped and refused to go any further. Obviously, we had to get the big guns involved. No, not Manuel on this occasion but Ivano from the garage.

Stephen drove round and fortunately it was still open (thank goodness for Italian working hours). He returned some minutes later, closely followed by Ivano who used a handy battery he had lying around to jump start the Renegade. “You should take it to Pompei now,” was his advice, which came free, as did his services, as when Stephen asked how much Ivano waved his hand with a dismissive “Ciao!” Imagine that happening in Milan.

We didn’t take it to Pompei then, as it was heading to 8 by this time, and they would be closing. Instead, the next morning, after he had checked it to make sure it was starting, he called Pompei to tell them what had happened. They were aghast, apologised and told him to take the car in that morning. He did, but not till after we did the shopping (in the Panda) as some things in life are sacrosanct and chief amongst these is breakfast at Pina. When he arrived, they whipped in a new battery (free of charge, even though the man in the service office tried to make Stephen pay and wouldn’t take his word for it till he had phoned the showroom and spoke to Mr P Jr) and gave the car a quick check up, pronouncing it fit for action. We very much hope so, as if anything happens again Stephen will really get his dander up, and that, I can assure you, is not a pretty sight.

All this excitement must have been too much for him as when lunchtime rolled around, although he had remembered his lunchbox containing his pasta salad, he had forgotten to take a fork with him. What to do, as picking up individual lumaconi pasta pieces (or snail shell pasta if you prefer) would not only be tedious but on the messy side. He did jokingly say to Bertrando’s assistant when she was heading out to the Chinese supermarket that she could bring back some cutlery, but before she returned with a handful, he found a solution: plastic pincers, which actually looked not a million miles away from some ingenious device K-tel could have marketed in the 70’s as an alternative to chopsticks.

Thursday, being the 8th, was a national holiday for the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, this year conveniently falling at the end of the week and thus facilitating a Friday bridge and a four-day weekend for a lot of people. Not quite Stephen, for while Bertrando had declared the 9th a holiday as well, there were so many emails and messages, and a mercy dash to the office to locate a sample of material that only he seemed to know where it was, that it might have been easier if Stephen had worked as usual.

We did take advantage of the break, however, with Stephen wrapping up the lemon trees for the winter and putting the Christmas lights around the terrazzo railings in the morning and then, later on in the afternoon, going, to Fermo for the Christmas market and the start of the presepi exhibition. We were not the only ones, either, to have this thought as I have never seen the centre so busy, once we got there, that is. The car park we normally use was full, and after driving around without finding a space and seeing the trail of cars continuing to arrive, we thought that parking down near the hospital was a better idea. It was, as there were only two other cars there, maybe because it was a ten-minute walk or so uphill to get back to the main drag, but we have always worked on the basis that ease of parking and a bit of exercise is often the simpler solution.

It was worth the effort, as the presepi (nativity scenes, as regular readers will know) were well up to scratch and a welcome return after missing out for a couple of years, if you discount our disappointment at there not being one made from pasta this time. As for purchases, we came away with the usual: two jars of honey from different stalls and a second-hand hand-embroidered Christmas teacloth, at 3 euro a bargain in anyone’s book.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement, Stephen stopped on the way home at Funari, the bar on the main road where we breakfast on our Sunday beach walking days, or any other time that we are heading Fermo way, where we had a Campari soda aperitivo and enjoyed not only the cheese and prosciutto the proprietor tempted us with, but also browsed the selection of Christmas sweetmeats. Prime amongst these were not so much the Dolce and Gabbana panettoni, again this year in brashly patterned tins, as you can’t go into any shop with aspirations without falling over them, but the more muted Gucci ones. How much, Stephen asked our host, not so much because he wanted to buy one as out of curiosity. 90 euro – but the panettone isn’t that good, was the reply. Style over substance yet again.

We had another jolly on Friday when we went, again in the late afternoon, to Civitanova to meet up with Computer Luca for our Christmas get-together. We squeezed in a spot of shopping as there one or two things we needed to get for presents before Luca joined us for an aperitivo at, of course, Thirteen. As we were going on to dinner afterwards, we were nigh on abstemious, sharing a bottle of very acceptable Prosecco rosé and a small tagliere of cheese and cold cuts, just to put us on.

Dinner was at Molo74, a new restaurant to us and one which Rocco the barber described, not quite dismissively, as a fashion restaurant. In this he was probably correct as it had the urban chic minimal look inside, and, what is more telling, the reason Luca wanted to eat there was because the waiter was an influencer (that dreaded word) on TikTok. All I can say is that the camera must love him as his uniqueness, charisma, nerve, and talent weren’t immediately discernible in the flesh, but Luca was more than happy to have been in his presence and quivered ever so slightly when we were handed our menus. As for the food, that was acceptable, but again, as I was taking the meat option in a mainly seafood restaurant, it is for others to give a more valid review.

That was the end of our junketing, mainly thanks to the rain which began yesterday morning and continued more or less steadily for the rest of the day. The result of this was that a message came through on Facebook in the afternoon that today’s Christmas market in MSP, and which we had intended to visit this afternoon, was postponed, presumably because although the weather was dry today, they won’t have been able to carry out the preparations and erect the stalls. It did say that a new date would be advised, but seeing as there is only one more weekend till Christmas that would require a triumph of optimism –there again, as the season to be jolly, or at least moderately diverted, now seems to last for most of the year, maybe they’ll hold it in February?