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3rd October 2021

The rain that set in last Sunday evening led to a mostly grey start to the week. Fortunately, this was just a blip as by Tuesday lunchtime the sun was back in residence and after a brief flirtation with jeans to go shopping in the morning, I have been back in shorts for the rest of the week - even though now we have slipped into October the evenings feel a little fresh around my knees.

Not that the weather was of very great importance to Stephen, other than worrying about getting all his washing from his week away dried, as he was occupied for most of Monday, and for most of the following days, with matters arising from MICAM. It does all seem to have gone a lot better than expected, with more customers, and more oversees customers, than anyone predicted and a definite positive buzz in the air.

All that aside, the most exciting thing about the start of the week looked like it was going to be our new kettle, a necessity as the lid of our old one had parted company with its knob. So why not just glue it back on? Well, we did the first time it happened a few months ago and then the second, and the third, and the fourth, with the time between reapplications reducing on a rapidly diminishing scale, and really, prising the lid off with a side knife didn’t seem a viable alternative. Hence the new kettle, which as I said would have been the nearest thing to some excitement if Stephen hadn’t decided to dice with death, ladders and an electrical cable on Tuesday evening.

This all started when we took our evening merenda out onto the terrazzo (yes, we can still do that as long as we don’t linger too late) and noticed a scattering of expired insects on my side table. I brushed them off (I’m brave that way) then noticed a few floating about in Bella and Harry’s water bowl. At this point, Stephen looked up and saw a host of the blighters up near the outside light and announced that there was a nest of flying ants, which he would deal with by first getting his brush from downstairs.

I have to say that the brush, when he returned, was not something that you would expect to see on the Joseph and Joseph site, being neither ergonomically designed nor cutting edge. What it was, was an old, long brush head, the sort they say is good for getting behind radiators, stuck on the end of a bamboo cane, which is where the problem arose. It was fine while he was stretching up and sweeping across the wall, but when he tried to work his way around the light, it became trapped in the power supply cables to the house, and when he tried to pull it free it parted company with the bamboo and just hung there.

What to do? Well first Stephen tried to shove the cane back on the end of the brush, but that didn’t work. He then tried to knock it free with our other long-handled brush (extendable to 15 feet), and that didn’t work. Next he went to get the ladders and set them up in an A frame configuration, but when he went up he could only just touch the end so wasn’t able to get a good grip. This was when you could tell things had got serious as I, Mr Acrophobia, volunteered to try as long as I could go up with my back to the railings and therefore blind to the dizzying (in my eyes) drop to the ground below. I teetered up, safe in the knowledge that Stephen was holding the leg of my shorts, a 100% foolproof method to prevent me falling. Unfortunately, though I was able to get a better grip on the end of it, the brush would still not come down as the top of it was bent over like a shepherd’s crook and had hooked over one of the cables.

There was nothing else for it, the ladders were extended into their full length, leant against the wall and Stephen, being the less vertiginous member of the household, shimmied up while I held them stable. He was able to stretch across, unhook the brush and drop it to the ground, before climbing back to a hero’s welcome. As for the ants, he finished off the job the next morning with a more circumspect use of the brush and they seem to have taken the hint. As for the merenda, all things considered we deemed it best to enjoy that inside.

The rest of the week would have paled into insignificance after that if we hadn’t have been invited for coffee at Marco and Maddalena’s after dinner on Wednesday so they could give me my birthday present. Of course, though we said we didn’t want a fuss, apart from the obligatory bottle of spumante Maddalena also proudly presented our dolce for the occasion – make your own cannoli that she slowly unpacked from its retro box in stages, like some sort of deluxe pass the parcel as each layer gave way until only a golden lidded tray was left.

In the final reveal, she lifted the lid to unveil empty cannoli shells, small tubs of toppings (ground pistachio, candied orange, chocolate bits and icing sugar) before whipping out the ricotta cream filling that she had been keeping chilled in its sealed piping bag in the fridge. A snip of the end and off we went, and it’s a moot point which gave greater pleasure, the assembling of the cannoli or the eating of them, but either way interactive desserts definitely seem the way to go. As for my present, that was a fetching Armani Exchange t-shirt, the most wonderful thing about it being that it was only a large, leading to many comments about how wonderfully I had done on my diet – though if I get outside many more such delicious deserts it’ll be back to the XL.

The rest of the week gave us time to regroup. Friday morning we made a detour to the ferramenta to stock up on some more insect spray after Tuesday’s escapade before heading home and the biannual visit of the fire extinguisher man (who, Stephen noted, still hadn’t invested in a belt to keep his trousers up where they should be when a person bends over to inspect the equipment). Unfortunately for him, the company had decided to give him a new van, which again unfortunately for him wasn’t a Panda. It was, like the trousers, low at the back, made all the lower with the weight of the equipment he was carrying.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened, though with an elegant variation. While the van had enough power and traction to make it up the hill, the low-slung rear hit the raised centre of the road and brought the vehicle to a stop about two-thirds of the way up – partly from the drag and partly from the grinding noise. The good thing about this from our point is that the extinguisher man immediately went to see Mario and Luigi, whom he had visited prior to us and who had joked with him about the road (be careful what you wish for…), meaning that unlike others he didn’t try to reverse and make a second or, indeed, third attempt, churning things up in the process.

It’s been a while since the Mogliani brothers had to ride to the rescue but it was good to see that they hadn’t lost their touch and with a confab and a bit of a moan and a tug from the tractor the driver was soon on his way. As for next time, Stephen told him before he left that he should phone and we would put the tried and tested LCDDB taxi service into operation, which is much more convenient for all involved.

With a week to go to Bella and Harry’s trial weekend at the kennels, and knowing that we would not be going to visit Marco my conversation partner as had been the original idea due to him recovering from a very severe bout of tonsilitis, we thought it about time we booked somewhere for the three nights. This we did yesterday, at what appears from the pictures and the reviews to be a very nice agriturismo near Deruta, well placed for visiting there as well as Perugia, Assisi and, if we have the time, Spoleto.

Stephen did find time, though, to get wield his painting brush around the bathroom this morning, completing the decorating of the west wing with the super-duper thermal anti-muffa paint. And very good it all looks too. He may, bless him, face some challenges when it comes to dealing with flying ants around the outside light, but for titivating those internal corners few can touch him, which, if you were that way inclined, could be viewed not so much as glowing praise on my part as a pre-emptive get out clause.