Three's company

29th May 2022

So, how’s the eye? Very good, I’m happy to say, and after a few days doing very little I restarted lessons on Monday (or tried to, see below) for the new week. As for things around the house, they have continued to be on sabbatical, but I have increased the length and pace of Harry and Bella’s walks, as my Fitbit active minutes were suffering sorely. On Friday, the application of drops fell from ten times a day to six, which will continue until 5thJune, though it will be another couple of weeks after that before I can visit the nice optician in Corridonia for new lenses.

While the eye is working satisfactorily, we can’t, unfortunately, say the same about other things around the house. The news towards the end of the week on the lawnmower was very much as expected so we will have to think about what to do with a replacement. The Panda, after keeping going through last week, was in a huff at being ignored all weekend and refused, again, to start of Monday morning. It was, as I mentioned before, due for a service and a replacement battery on Tuesday, and these were both completed and normal service resumed. We are contemplating, though, having the car checked over a couple of times a year, maybe at the end of March and October, because when we get the car back the clock has been adjusted to show the correct time. We can never figure out what to do no matter which buttons we press, and the instruction manual being in Spanish is no help.

The car wasn’t the only thing not to respond on Monday, for in the afternoon at 2pm our Internet stopped working. This was the fourth week in a row that it had gone down at or around this time, but on this occasion it went on for over three hours, putting the kibosh on my two scheduled Skype lessons. Enough was enough, so Stephen called Eolo the next morning, when the nice lady expressed no surprise when he told her about it. “Oh yes,” she said, “there’s a man working in your area to improve the service and he can only do it on Monday afternoons – but I think he’s finished now so it should be ok next week.”

If you unpick her words, they say an awful lot about life in Italy:

1. that the company knew about the disruption but didn’t think it really worth the bother of informing their customers about it.

2. that there was no hurry in completing the work, it being left to one dedicated engineer for a couple of hours once a week.

3. that there was no hint of an apology or recognition of any inconvenience caused (not that no one cares, but rather that it doesn’t occur to anyone that it could be a problem).

4. that the nice lady didn’t know when the work would be finished, because that is the future and what is the point of making plans so far in advance as next week?

People (well, Manuel) have asked if we were offered compensation or if we are going to pursue it. The answers to these questions being, respectively, “Are you serious?” and “Life’s too short.” In the meantime, we are crossing our fingers that the lady really did have her finger on the pulse, and all will be well with our connection when 14.00 rolls around again next Monday.

If our mechanical issues prove that things come in threes, then this was further confirmed by our brushes with the world of nature, starting on Monday when Stephen, going into the bedroom to close the shutters, saw a scorpion stationary high up on the wall. We have seen the odd one outside, though not for a while, but this is the first time one has been seen inside. On the plus side, they are not actually very big, maybe the length of a thumb, and as it seemed not to want to go anywhere in particular our brave hero was able, with the use of a glass and piece of card, to remove it and tip it over the terrazzo at the far end of the house by the barn, giving it plenty of opportunity to find a more suitable place to hang out.

Much more welcome was our Tuesday night visitor. Stephen was passing by the front of the house when taking Harry and Bella for their last walk of the day when he spotted, happily squatting in the water bowl by the downstairs tubs, a rather plump toad. Presumably, with all the hot, dry weather we have been experiencing, it was finding a convenient spot to cool down. It was still there when he returned, but it hopped away when Stephen called to me and I came out to peer down at it, presumably because it felt that being gawked at while engaged on ones ablutions was not quite the thing.

Making it three days on the trot, after my Wednesday evening lesson, I had just backed the car into the space by the end of the house ready for the return run of the Webster complimentary taxi service when a gecko scuttled out of the side of the banking and hurried across the drive into the herb garden, closely followed by a wriggling black snake. A few moments later the gecko tottered back not, this time, pursued by its serpentine mate. I like to think that the snake had found something more wholesome for dinner, like the odd leaf, instead, because in the world of LCDDB we are all God’s creatures and respect each other for being so.

After all this excitement, the second half of the week has passed very quietly, which is all the better for my recuperation. We were happy to see that rain was forecast for this weekend, as the fields and our orto are in desperate need, and unlike for the toad, a dog bowlful is not going to cut it. The weather made a vague attempt yesterday, but really it was very half-heated. Today though, in a move designed to encourage it, Stephen brought the sun umbrellas onto the terrazzo, and indeed it did the trick. The rain started around late morning and kept up a good pace through the afternoon, being considerate enough to ease off when it was dog walking time. We are due a bit more tomorrow but then the warm, dry weather should return – which is fine, because while we are more than happy for some much needed rain, we don’t want it to get carried away with itself.