Home - if only

Weave asked in my last ranty posts if I’d thought of coming back to Ilkley and knitting lovely socks.  Pat, my mind has been occupied with such thoughts for months and hopefully it won’t be long now.  With hindsight we should have returned for a couple of months during the scorching summer when we just sat around wilting and unable to do anything constructive.

We applied in July to cancel the residency we took during lockdown because we couldn’t travel back to the UK, after Brexit we would outstay our welcome and we needed to register for healthcare.  We asked many times for the official date of cancellation so we could calculate how long we could stay here. If cancellation was from the date we applied we’d need to be out of the Schengen area by next Monday which would involve leaving here today at the latest.   We had no response at all to 4 emails in the last 12 weeks, even a reply saying no idea would have been something.  Then this week we had one of those high security PEC emails, which don’t elicit a response either, saying our residency has been cancelled from 10 October.  So it’s taken 3 months to tick a few boxes and cross us off the list, good going Italy.   Happily it means we can stay at least another week to pick our olives, the local mill opens today.

The balcony is looking good, the final,waterproofing layer has to be installed but fingers crossed the worst is over.  The man who might re-lay the 1000 tiles was here to take a look and declared the work more or less perfect.  We still have to receive his price and he won’t do the work until next year but hopefully the room below is now watertight for winter.

I cannot wait to return to sanity.  We had a curt email after our meeting from the Comune about the water situation.  Such phrases as take it or leave it, like it or not,  the time for questions is over are hardly harmonious or appropriate for someone employed to serve the public.  I’m happy that in future we can only be in the Schengen for 90 days in 180, that’s more than enough.  I want to come home, I’m a UK resident, I’m a Yorkshire lass and being in Italy has made me cross more times than it’s made me happy this year, the love is lost forever.