Starry night

22nd August 2021

After a relaxing weekend it was all hands on deck – all two of us – on Monday as things got a bit busy, though it was by no means all work and no play.

Having completed the preliminaries the previous day, it was up and at the dressing room with gusto on Monday morning, with Stephen and I shifting all the wardrobes away from the walls. This meant that we could wash them down with the anti-mold detergent before Stephen went round filling cracks, gaps and holes as required. There was a slight hiccup as it had slipped his mind when we were at RisparmioCasa last week to throw some packs of plastic sheeting into the trolley, hence his trip to the Chinese store in Monte Urano after lunch.

This actually worked out not too badly as he had received a message late morning from Mirco, telling him to stop by the house around 2pm. There was no indication why, nor was Stephen any the wiser for a while after he arrived as they caught up on things and he managed politely to refuse Mrs C’s insistence he have a caffè (he’d already had is allotted one for that day). It was only after Mirco had slipped quietly away for a moment and returned with a bottle of red wine that it all became clear.

Mirco had come back the previous day from a week away in Southern Italy, at one point of which he visited the winery of the Italian legend that is Al Bano, entertainer, singer, alleged Romanian spy and erstwhile son-in-law of Tyrone Power, whose daughter Romina he was married to for almost 30 years and with whom he still sings on various Saturday night TV shows, for while spoil a cash cow just because you don’t want to share the same bed any longer? It’s a bit hard to find a British equivalent either to Al Bano or the musical duo; the best I can do is to ask you to imagine a shorter, fatter and more calculatingly middle-of-the-road version of Cliff Richard who managed to persuade Olivia Newton-John to marry him and form a duet rather than go to America and international stardom.

But to get to the point, when Stephen saw Mirco’s post that he was at the winery (which also, I am reliably told, has an adjacent water park) he requested a case of red. What he got was a single bottle, for which we are grateful and which we will save for Christmas dinner, being an appropriately kitsch time of year to pop its cork.

That was all, however, an overture as the real fun on Monday was Hotel Pina’s Cena Sotto le Stelle at a long row of tables stretching down Via Roma (enough for a reported 126 diners) and into the piazza and seating the great and the good of Monte San Pietrangeli. We did have a moment’s pause on arrival wondering if we had missed the memo stipulating white as the dress code as that was what most people seemed to be wearing. We hadn’t missed the memo but we had failed to read to the bottom of the poster promoting the event which suggested very nicely that it would be a good idea if you were so accoutred. At least my shirt had white leaves on its green background, but if we had taken the time to look properly (but why change the habits of a lifetime) I could have taken my vintage Miyake out of mothballs and floated around – so maybe it’s just as well.

It was a wonderful evening. The food was very good, especially the roasted prosciutto from the twins’ small holding, and the accompanying discs of aubergine parmigiana cooked, as we found out when she came round for a chat, to Daniela’s (ex Stefoni work colleague of Stephen’s) special recipe. There was live music courtesy of a man in a pork pie hat at an electric organ, whose party of supporters of a range of nationalities were at the next table to us (a party which included, we were told when we sat down and before they arrived, a former guitarist with Boney M). On a fittingly balmy evening, we were kept well supplied with bottles of water and half litre carafes of white wine, which, as we were walking home, it being all downhill, we could both enjoy with measured abandon.

It was back to normality the next morning with shopping and picking up the car we had left from the previous evening. Stephen had intended to make inroads on the painting, but despite a forecast of rain and cooler temperatures (which failed to materialise on any of the three predicted midweek days) Tuesday proved too hot for such things. Wednesday was still sunny but a little fresher, allowing him to make good with the paint and roller, meaning that by Thursday morning the walls and ceiling were painted and the tidying up of edges completed. It was time to move the furniture back – only not in the same position. It’s amazing how a new layout can give a spruce and more spacious new feel to a room – and, of course, Stephen’s decorating skills and the state-of-the-art paint helped.

That was about it for the week, if you discount Stephen gathering the chilis that had survived through the summer, and placing them out to dry in the sun, or would have been it if once again our farming neighbours had not come to our rescue. Initially, I thought I would have to mount a rescue mission when Stephen took the recycling up on Thursday evening and failed to return within the couple of minutes it usually takes. When it got to half-an-hour and he was not answering his phone, I consoled myself with the thought that he couldn’t be lying spreadeagled by the plastic bin as someone passing would surely have spotted him by that time. Another fifteen minutes went by with no sight or sound, and I was just weighing up whether it was better to try to drive the Freeclimber up the hill or put on my boots and walk up – and how many active Fitbit minutes the latter might be worth– when he came bouncing back down the road.

He had, it transpired, been collared by the Mogliani Two (another of my possible scenarios) who had been quizzing him about this and that and wood and, for some reason, the Stefonis – which in itself was somewhat odd as they are much more a font of gossip than Stephen is – and seemed reluctant to let him go. I suppose the good thing is that it was still a bit too early for them to try to cajole him into trying, in liquid form, this year’s grape harvest.

A positive outcome of this became apparent yesterday evening, when we were sitting on the terrazzo and an unidentified white transit van came down the hill. It pulled up in front of the house and Luigi emerged from the passenger side, followed by the driver from his side. Stephen donned his mask and went down, to be introduced to the wood man from Rapagnano that the brothers had mentioned previously. How he came to be there and what exactly is Luigi’s involvement in it all is a mystery, but after a bit of a chat it was tentatively agreed that the man was willing to deliver wood (with the caveat of tractor traction being on hand), that we would take 30 quintali as the price was better than if we took 20 (and presumably more worth the man’s while), and that he would have logs of the variety of shapes and sizes that Stephen preferred in a couple of weeks.

All that was left was for us to stop on the way back from the beach this morning and check the quality. This was easy as his house is just by the mini roundabout we use on the way up from Campiglione to Rapagnano. It was a matter of pulling into his “yard”, getting out of the car, looking at his pile of logs (yes, it was indeed wood) and getting back in and driving home, safe in the knowledge that we won’t be freezing this winter. I said all that was left, but there is, of course, one other matter to be settled: which party, buyer or seller, gives Luigi his finder’s fee and how do we ensure it is not both parties?