Back to Italy

 We arrived back at our house in Italy Thursday evening.  Already the tedious journey that started badly when MrFF couldn’t open the car to add the final packing on our morning of departure.  We’d risen at 5.30, it was a tense half hour or so until he heard a little click, was able to open the boot, unpack the car and crawl through to the front. The fault turned out to be a mix up with keys and low battery in the fob, the manual key didn’t work at all. I might have pointed out the battery situation when the trauma began but my advice wasn’t well received.  We took spare batteries and didn’t lock the car at all en route even when dashing to the toilets at services. On the ferry MrFF replaced the battery. We prayed we wouldn’t be the ones at Calais who couldn’t open the car, we weren’t. However there was another problem, MrFF discovered that neither of the keys he had was the one he regularly uses and the one to which he had attached the door key for Italy.  We always enter and exit via what was the garage next to where we park our car, it’s handy to have it on the car key ring.  It wasn’t a major problem, he had all the keys for the many doors, gates and grilles and we knew Mario had a garage key.  He was waiting by the roadside with it after we messaged him.  So now we can spend a couple of months wondering where the usual key with the house key attached is.

It’s lovely here, sunny and warm with cooler evenings when we light the stove for a couple of hours. Ruperto aka Nigel, the youngest kitten last year, was here when we arrived.  A little shy but by next day he was happy to be petted and fussed.  Next morning we thought it was his brother Umberto/Brian who turned up looking a little porky.  It was in fact the mother Olive, she’s probably pregnant.  We’ve also been visited by two strays who arrive like clockwork at the time the auto feeder opens. They’ll be disappointed now it’s not in use and our kitties get personal service. 

As ever I am busy sorting the garden and ignoring the state of the house.  Everything seems quite advanced this year,  it’s delightful.

Spring depart

At last it feels springlike on my walks.  Plenty of people out in their fiercely manicured garden with lawnmowers, hedge cutters and leaf blowers, de rigour in this affluent town.  I have mixed feelings about these overly tended gardens. They do have beautiful specimen trees and shrubs, we are well stocked with showy magnolias, camellias and the like but to me they speak as much of wealth as gardening skill or enthusiasm.

I was delighted to see the woods are full of bluebells, they are particularly spectacular this year and lovely hawthorn hedges are in full flower.  I much prefer this kind of wildlife friendly hedge to the knife edged sterile evergreen pruned versions.

Maybe I am being unkind. I expect the owners get a lot of pleasure from their immaculate gardens and it’s good they work in them. I prefer something a bit more blousy and untamed, something more like me. 

So now that spring is here we are leaving.  On Monday we catch a not too early ferry and will spend a few days in France and one in northern Italy before reaching our house next Thursday. I have some anxiety about the fuel situation and really hope that if awful the war continues we don’t get stuck in Italy.  We hope to be back in Ilkley late June.

New books

It’s very rare for me to buy new books. My local library is a delight when we are in Yorkshire and I always stock up on charity paperbacks to take to Italy, returning them read to pass on to friends or back to the charity shop.  The many books we have in the penthouse are mostly non fiction. 

However recently I’ve had two new book experiences.  Firstly I reserved a library book which when I went to collect was a pristine brand new hardback.  I told the librarian that it was a lot of pressure for me to be the first to read it and also to take care of it, I did manage not to damage it.  Not always the case.  When I worked in Edinburgh I used the glorious central library which wasn’t too far from my office. I had taken out a sizeable brand new tome on organic gardening.  One morning I put it in my work bag to return, tucked in beside my packed lunch.  Sadly the latter had attempted an escape and a ripe peach squashed itself against the fore edge, the opening edge that isn’t the spine, of the book.  Of course I owned up at the returns desk, it really wasn’t that bad but they made me pay the full purchase price of the book then handed it back to me.  Lesson learnt.

Secondly this week I received as a gift a brand new book, below. My lovely neighbour had left it gift wrapped on my door step as a thank you for a bit of knitting I did for her.  It was such a nice surprise, a beautiful looking book with great reviews and best of all brand new but without responsibility. This is such a special treat for me and I will look after it.

This is not an April fool post

Some days I feel my latest decluttering exercise is making little progress. Charity donations have been made and I sold a few items on eBay but three Emma Bridgewater mini mugs and a Scottish pottery tartan cup and saucer haven’t released a lot of shelf space. 

MrFF has been regularly badgered to sort through the collection of 200+ CDs that we have not had the means to play for the last 11 years.  His modus operandi so far is to take 30 off the storage rack, put them in various piles round the office and think about them.  12 have so far been released to the charity shop. I mentioned how pleased they were to have them, sadly that didn’t motivate him to send more.

This week our hardly used now vintage arctic grade sleeping bags were brought down from the loft, photographed and offered for sale.  That’s great except they are now in the lounge awaiting a buyer, please consider them if you are venturing into the frozen wastes any time soon, they are lovely.

However this week my mindset has been completely changed.  I was browsing property for sale in our Italian village which you might think is an interesting and possibly inspiring thing to do, you’d be wrong.  These are two of the sales photos from a detached semi rural property with a reasonable asking price. 

I cannot comprehend how the vendors expect to sell their over cluttered hardly visible house looking like this or why the estate agents don’t explain the bit about putting personal stuff out of sight.  Either way I feel a whole lot better. 

Division of labour

This is how last Saturday panned out. The alarm went off before 7 am as MrFF needed to catch 2 trains to get to the start of his group walk.  I had set the breakfast table the night before and left out a chocolate bar and home made banana bread for his snack, lunch was at a pub in Howarth.

He brought me a cup of tea to bed and I read for an hour.  I got up, stripped the bed and started the first load of washing.  After my breakfast I did the second load of washing, emptied the dishwasher and had a quick dust and vacuum round the penthouse,  I then returned the quite heavy patio planters and furniture back to their positions, MrFF had moved them the previous day to apply an organic cleaner to the porcelain tiles.

After I remade the bed I went for my 7 mile walk picking up some fruit and vegetables in town on my return. My late lunch was a piece of banana bread and a yoghurt, after which I did the ironing.

MrFF was home just after 5 pm, we chatted for a while before he went for a shower.  I started preparing dinner when he came to sit in the kitchen with a beer and the newspaper. When I mentioned it must be nice to spend your day walking twice as far as me, doing nothing else then take it easy till fed.  He replied well what do you want me to do.   He was lucky he didn’t end up wearing his dinner.

cartoon from internet 

MrFF’s days out

 MrFF was out twice last week on group walks.  The first with a new local group that described their pace as exhilarating.  We were both rather apprehensive about how this would go, he returned to tell me he’d fallen and hurt his leg and had a gash on his head where he’d been savaged by a tree branch, I wasn’t surprised by any of that. Once washed the wound wasn’t so bad, he may have left the blood on his head for dramatic effect.

He was sufficiently recovered next day to be out again for a calmer walk with another group. He said that some of the ladies had failed to apply or take with them any sunscreen or maybe they’d forgotten what sunshine is.   MrFF was able to offer his, I keep him supplied with SPF 50. One lady remarked how easy and pleasant to apply the product was and asked him where it was from.  He replied that I’d given it to him and knowing me it was probably from some artisan organic bee keeper up in the dales.  Seems he does listen to me after all.

His photos were taken on the second gentler walk when there was time to do so.

Knitting now

I have just finished knitting MrFF a new outdoor/walking jumper.  I first made him one of these maybe 40 years ago with Herdwick Wool I bought on the cone in The Lake District.  The original Sheepy as they have all been called, this is the third, lasted at least 25 years, was worn to destruction and became legendary amongst the long distance walking fraternity.  The yarn from sheep native to the Cumbria fells is hardwearing with great thermal and weather resistant properties, while perhaps being a little harsh and rustic with some brittle guard hairs, it’s definitely not for wearing direct to the skin.

The yarn knitted up quickly, I used 800 g of Aran weight from World of Wool who had it on offer in February, it cost me less than £50.  I showed MrFF this, we are both happy especially me as I am now back to knitting socks and loving the soft silky Yorkshire yarn