The road home

25th October 2020

After a quiet week last week, and one in which the Freeclimber, following its sprucing up with a new battery and a new set of tyres, had lulled us into a false sense of security, we should really have known better than to think we could relax and enjoy an extended period of trouble-free driving.

All seemed fine on Monday morning, especially as the spell of sunny weather that Sunday afternoon had promised set in for the week, so it was a double blow to Stephen when he came out of the factory at lunchtime to head home to find he couldn’t as one of the car’s new tyres was flat. I suppose we can’t complain that it lasted nine days, but it did mean we had to drop by on Ivano, the friendly garage man, when I collected Stephen to bring him back to LCDDB, leaving him with the keys.

His first prognosis, on an initial inspection, wasn’t good as he reckoned the tyre wall had split (again), which would have meant a whole new tyre. Fortunately, however, when he got it to the garage and had a proper look he found that it was only (!) a puncture, the culprit of which was a wood screw still imbedded in the tread. He plugged the hole and Stephen was able to collect the car, and offending screw, later that afternoon. As to where the perpetrator came from, that is a moot point but Mr Carelli’s finger of suspicion pointed firmly at Sigma and the workmen responsible for changing the signage to Coal, who, he averred, wilfully tossed their debris willy-nilly around the road. Having little evidence to sustain this accusation, we feel that suing Coal for damages would be both fruitless and expensive, and we do need to harbour our resources against the next thing to go wrong.

Nothing much happened of note over the next couple of days, apart from the usual Tuesday shopping trip and my appointment with Claudia the dentist for a check up and clean and polish. With the weather being so clear, on both journeys the view across to the Sibillini Mountains was sparklingly crisp and the topmost summits were already snow-capped following the weekend’s precipitation.

It is some time since the vet’s has featured on these pages, but Thursday changed all that when we decided Harry needed a bit of professional tlc. He had been worrying at his paw for a couple of days but at first we couldn’t see any reason why he was doing so. On Thursday morning, however, when Stephen had another look he spotted that a part of one of his pads was almost white so thought a visit to the vet was in order. Mindful that both he and Bella were due for their vaccinations and working on the basis that it was better to get them done while there was still freedom of movement, not knowing how the one thing and another situation was going to develop over then next few weeks, we set off en famille.

A quick check by the vet and Chiara (for Maddalena’s sister was on duty, we were reassured to see) confirmed that he had somehow managed to scrape the top off part of his pad and we were given some thing to wash it with and some balm to put on it and advised to dig out the buster collar as he needed to avoid licking it for a few days. The vaccinations were then administered and it was homeward bound for dinner followed by an hour at Marco and Maddalena’s, where we had been invited for coffee and cheesecake – with the addition of a spot of Prosecco because it is Marco, after all.

The good news on Thursday was that at lunchtime I spotted a large tractor or some such vehicle making stately progress up the road. When we went out later, we could tell that there had been some filling in of various depressions. This turned out to be a preliminary strike as on Friday, when we left to do the shopping, we passed our friend the road man in his mini digger tootling about just below Mario and Luigi’s. On our return an hour or so later we had to leave the Panda at the top of the road and carry the bags down to the house as in the interim the road man had positioned piles of hardcore, rather like sleeping policemen, at intervals all the way down the road. These he then flattened out so that in the afternoon when Stephen took me up in the Freeclimber so I could drive the Panda to my lesson, it was, in our world, akin to walking on air.

With a view to the newly re-re-resurfaced road, after a week of sunshine we were content to see clouds gathering yesterday morning, and then turn to rain by early afternoon - and the elements were most obliging, it raining hard enough to soak the freshly laid hardcore but not so heavy as to wash it away. We took the rain as a sign that we should indulge in a spot of shopping, as we needed a new box of coffee bags from our nice friend at Click Café as well as a visit to Acqua e Sapone to stock up on certain basics. We did, though, find time to drop into Girasole for a caffè and a quick look in OVS, leaving there some twenty minutes later with four pullovers. Before you start thinking that this was somewhat profligate, two of them were in the sales, one for me and one for Stephen at €8 and €6 respectively, and two just for me from the new season’s stock. Well, seeing as Stephen had lit the first fire of the season on Wednesday, our thoughts were turning to keeping warm in the coming winter, and what better way than snuggling up in a practical acrylic/wool mix?