Ups and downs

12th January 2025

The twelve days of Christmas came to an end on Monday, and being Epiphany that meant the arrival of Befana to reward the good boys and girls with a stocking of goodies and the bad ones with coal. I received neither; make of that what you will.

It was back to normal on Tuesday with Stephen’s proper return to work after his one-off last week, catching up with his boss and discovering a whole new exciting solution if you should happen to lock yourself out of your home. This is what Bertrando did over the weekend, leaving his keys on the table in the living room. Fortunately, the window had been left slightly open, as Rossana, his wife, pointed out, which was not an open invitation to any passing burglar as their flat, not so fortunately in these circumstances, is on the first floor of the building that houses the Post Office and which looks out onto the square.

How to get up there was the conundrum, until Bertrando had the bright idea to phone the fire brigade. These heroes arrived, got out a ladder, positioned it against the wall and shimmied up into the living room (an operation that seemed to require five firefighters – one to go up the ladder, one to hold it, one to give advice and two to look on). Ever the gentleman, Bertrando showed his appreciation by treating them to aperitivo in Pina across the way. Ever hopeful, Stephen is storing this away as a possible way to get the vigili del fuoco to LCDDB – but I reckon one look at the road and they’ll tell him to sort it out himself.

There was also news on the house front, news that makes us even more convinced that the work is fated. As you know, Irene and her helper measured all of the inside a couple of weeks before Christmas and she said that a man with a drone would be coming to measure the outside area. Well he isn’t, because he has very inconsiderately snapped his Achilles tendon. Irene has to reorganise things and will let us know when she has sorted it. As I might have said before, watch this space.

After a couple of quiet days, Friday was the usual shopping and haircut in the morning but we were faced with a dilemma in the evening. Having eked out the ridiculousness of Emily in Paris we finally came to the end last week (when she became Emily in Rome with a guest appearance by Rupert Everett which we had been awaiting with a modicum of anticipation, looking forward to his urbane English schtick, but for some reason best known to themselves they decided to put him in heavy make-up with an unconvincing Italian English accent and an even worse Italian Italian one) but streaming Book Club more than made up for it – Jane Fonda, Diane Keaton, Candice Bergen and Mary Steenburgen, what’s not to like, especially when they throw in Andy Garcia for good measure.

There not having been any word about this year’s supply of recycling bags Stephen went to the ecocentro yesterday, with proof of that we were up-to-date with our council charge payments, and presented himself hopefully at the little hut ready to be given this year’s quota. He was out of luck. The worker on duty told him they had no idea when the bags would be available nor if there would be a calendar showing the rota of the different collections. Since last year the service has been taken over by a company in Porto Sant’Elpidio, presumably because it is much more cost effective and efficient than a small local operation – as proved so often in the UK, too.

We had much more success on our jaunt this morning, first to Totò where it was almost standing room only when we called by for breakfast, taking the opportunity to stock up on some of their fabulous bread and for Stephen to add two individual Sachertortes while I was momentarily occupied in finding my wallet.  Next was EcoCasa, the Chinese store in Monte Urano, in search of new cleaning cloths as I’d decided January and a new year was time to throw out all the old ones (which meant Stephen putting them in a plastic carrier to use for cleaning the fire). It was tough deciding which ones would be best, but in the end we left with a very satisfying collection of new microfibre dusters, new dishcloths, new bathroom cloths and new window cleaning cloths, ensuring that while this past week registered pretty low on the Richter scale of excitement, next week will be rocking.