Girding our loins

We plan to start our olive harvest on Tuesday of this week. The olives are turning black so they are much more visible and we seem to have a reasonable amount. Two men were here last week picking our neighbours, they worked for 4 days and appeared to get plenty of crates though Pietro the owner has extra land below us so more trees.   MrFF has strimmed the orchard so it’d easier to put the nets down, no excuses we need to get to work.

However Monday we are taking our cat Olive to the vets to be sterilised.  We drop her off at midday and collect her at 6 pm.  This is a new vet, we were unhappy with the treatment Grigio received, the experience and the cost.  This place is larger and looks much more modern plus it’s not so far from the fashion outlet so we might spend a few hours there rather than traipse home and back again.  Olive is calm and friendly cat so we hope she will cope with the experience.  

Her friend the extremely feral Alfonso who takes full advantage of the automatic feeder when we are away is around too.  I’ve been feeding him and can get a little closer but he’s still very shy.  Olive like Alfonso and he isn’t greedy when food is around so once she is sterile we will be happy for her to have his company without his male attention.

So a day of stress for Olive then several days of exhaustion because of the olives, not a week I am looking forward to but I hope it will all be worthwhile.  

Who knows where the time goes

Definitely not our Comune who have had for at least 6 months all the required documents and extortionate fees required to comply with the violation order we received.  MrFF found documentation showing they should have responded to one part of the process within 60 days and another within 6 months, both dates have passed.  Then again it took them 40 years to discover the planning was not in order despite giving a habitation certificate, two changes of owner and collecting the charges all that time.

We provided all the reports and details required and thought we were on the home straight until MrFF had a conversation with our late friend Giovanni’s daughter.  Basically he was asking if the Comune were expecting some cash in a brown envelope, she thought not which is just as well as we wouldn’t have paid.  However she did tell us that Giovanni went through a similar process and offered to show us the papers.  Basically Giovanni built his lovely house without any permission and applied during an amnesty period in the 1980s to regulate this.  The file was huge but the big shock was that after he had all the documents in place it took 10, that’s ten, years for approval to be granted, including a court case after the Comune gave approval that was then refused and annulled in Rome but reinstated by the courts. We are only at year 3, 78 years old and wondering if we will ever see the end.

We take a little comfort from the fact that there are two identical houses in our road, if ours is not acceptable neither are they, both neighbours tell us they have approval in which case why can’t we.  

If you want to join us in this challenge there is an unfinished house beyond Giovanni’s for sale, it’s basically just a concrete frame that was started more than 30 years ago with no access road.   What a surprise it has no planning permission,  belongs to the now retired local police woman and she wants 35,000 euro for it,  a small price to pay for years of frustration Italian style.

On the road again

To be in Italy into November to pick our olives meant we could not return to the Schengen area until 21 September so we decided to make the journey to Kent on the 20th, stay overnight and take an early tunnel crossing next morning to drive to Dijon.  Best laid plans.  

We decided to include in our journey a return visit for me, first for MrFF, to Sissinghurst, my favourite ever garden.  That was wonderful, as lovely as I remembered.  We got to our hotel the Holiday Inn at Ashford late afternoon.  I suggested we fill the car with fuel then rather than wait till next morning but MrFF has sussed there was cheaper fuel en route, ever the Yorkshireman.  

Our evening meal and breakfast were excellent, our room was spacious and comfortable, it was going so well.  We got lost sourcing the cheaper petrol and despite expectations of getting an earlier crossing we ended up missing the one we’d booked.  The crossing we were now on was delayed.  In Calais there were diversions that involved travelling away from the port then back again.  We arrived at our accommodation around 7.30 pm.

We were booked for 2 nights and spent a pleasant day in Dijon using the local bus.  The city has a wonderful food market, interesting buildings and a walking route marked by little brass owls embedded in the pavement.  We went off piste a few times and covered over 5 miles, it was a relaxing day.

We left next morning but hadn’t got very far when we had a call from our accommodation. MrFF had left his computer bag in reception, it contains his wallet, our passports, iPad and house keys. We were so grateful to the receptionist for contacting us so quickly, imagine if we’d got all the way into Italy to discover the loss.  In fact when we pulled up in the car park the receptionist rushed out with our bag, we couldn’t thank her enough.   

We enjoyed our stay in Aosta before the final day on the autostrada.  In fact we had time to drive up to Pila the ski resort above Aosta that was a stage finish on this years Giro d’Italia. 

Our final day wasn’t as bad as we expected, definitely less lorries than usual, we wondered if it was a holiday in the north.  We finally exited the autostrada early evening,  I put our ticket into the toll machine, nothing happened.  I pressed the help button several times while MrFF went to apologise to the several drivers who were waiting behind us. One man came to help me, I explained the situation and he asked me where we had come from.  Aosta I said, Rome Sud he replied, that is just up the road and costs a few euros.  No Aosta I said, in the north, in the mountains, we left this morning. Then the help line came on, my helper took control and told them we’d come from Aosta, the screen showed 82 euros and some cents which I paid and the barrier opened.  

MrFF returned to the car,  my helper turned back to his, Aosta he said to MrFF smiling, I would have preferred Roma Sud said the Yorkshireman who then asked me why I hadn’t agree to Roma Sud and saved a lot of money.   

We picked up milk bread and pizza in the village and were soon at our house to be greeted by Olive our cat.  I was so happy to see her and for the journey to be over, let’s not think about having to do it in reverse in a few weeks time.

We’ve had friends here for a week, time mostly spent in the sun on our terrace, chatting and reading with some gardening.  Now they’ve left we need to think about the olive harvest.  The mills have opened earlier than usual,  people are picking. Our olives are very small but the ones I cut open seemed to have plenty of oil. Friends who started harvest at the weekend said it’s a nightmare with such small olives that are hard to detach from tree, it’s taking an age.  We will hang on a bit longer and hope our crop does too.

In italy

In case you are wondering where I am we arrived at our house in Italy just over a week ago.  The long journey was without incident and we spent three days cleaning inside and out before friends arrived to stay with us for a week.  

We are enjoying sunny lazy days with a lot of chat and of course the company of our cat Olive who appeared as we parked the car on the drive.  I’ll update you properly next week.

Knitting now - colour work

I don’t know who is who is responsible for reminding me that I don’t like knitting colours, whoever they are they forgot.  I had been looking at the Rowan Bessie cowl kit for some time and eventually caved in, it’s definitely beautiful and seemed straight forward, no shaping, not a big project, what could go wrong.

Photo from Knit Rowan

Firstly the actual pattern.  To buy it separately costs £5 for download but I took the option of pattern and yarn as a bundle.  The yarn arrived without the pattern, I had to contact Rowan who then sent me a link to the download.  I asked MrFF to print this for me next time he had the printer on but unfortunately he produced a black and white copy, I said I’d try to work with that.

We didn’t have any way to enlarge the download so rather than go blind I ended up writing out my own interpretation of each row, a better person would have produced a spread sheet.  I did mention this to Rowan in my feedback, a colour print out of a decent scale on card would have been nice especially if you paid £5 for only the pattern, they didn’t respond.

So I’ve soldiered on.  It’s the kind of work that requires much concentration, impossible to watch tv or even speak while I am knitting. I am even getting cross writing about it.  There are 192 stitches to a row and some rows can take almost 30 minutes especially if I lose the plot as I often do.  I can be heard chanting to myself 3 orange, 2 green, 1 orange and so on not in a calming way.

On the bright side the yarn, Felted Tweed, is beautiful, the colours are gorgeous and I shall have enough yarn left over to knit an additional item that will be much less complicated.

The pressure is on to finish this project not just for my well being but we leave for Italy soon.  It’s not coming with us, I cannot face picking it up again a couple months later and I might like to wear it on the continent.

I would walk 100 miles

Since his ascent of Scafell Pike MrFF has been suffering pain in his calf, he is seeing the doctor next week as it isn’t improving.   So he’s been occupying his time with DIY, moving cables from the loft to sockets in the hall cupboard so we can connect to the fibre network already installed to outside our apartment door.  Our provider will make the final connection but not carry out the internal work.

This has involved emptying the contents of the hall cupboard into the hall, we endured this chaotic state for a week.

However it was quite a voyage of discovery for me.  I found a nice wool jacket I had forgotten about and also these

I bought these hand made trainers from the maker Norman Walsh in Bolton, among the fell running fraternity he was a legend.  I remember making a special journey and meeting the great man with his colleagues cobbling away in a small workshop, it was a delight.  I wore the shoes when MrFF and I took part in the 1982 Pilgrims 100, a long distance walking challenge event of 100 miles/160 kilometres from Guildford to Canterbury, to be completed within 48 hours.  Before the event I had tried to break in the shoes but by the time I completed 65 miles my feet were blistered.  Our friend who was supporting both us and her husband, he completed the optional 140 miles route, met us at the checkpoint where we got breakfast.  I told her my feet were so sore, she said she’d take a look. I lay on the ground, I have recollections she might have thrown me down, she quickly burst the blisters with a sterile needle, applied plasters, stuck my clean socks and spare trainers on my feet, relieved me of my overnight gear and told me to get on with it.  I completed the walk in less than 32.5 hours.  I have no idea why I kept these trainers, I wore them afterwards for shorter walks but looking at them now they had very little cushioning, my supportive friend couldn’t believe I still have them.  They went in the bin.

The hall is back to normal.

Fatal Crossing

Now the European athletics is finished we have been watching this Danish murder mystery.  It’s a brooding Scandi series showing beautiful Danish landscape and an investigative journalist with a wonderful wardrobe of chunky knitwear and heavy duty scarves.  It makes me want to knit more of both, I’ve already been looking at yarn and have a jumper pattern in mind. Watch this space. 

The film is in the Danish language with subtitles which usually I don’t like as they require concentration so there is no knitting while I view.  However it’s been worth it, we’ve both enjoyed the episodes so far. 

Oddly we were watching last week and for some reason MrFF decided to turn the volume up.  We both laughed when he realised what he’d done, he said he was brushing up on his Danish and it would soon be as good as his (almost non existent) Italian.  Thats about right.