Home again

We arrived back in Yorkshire last Wednesday evening, that journey from Lazio doesn’t get any easier.  Our first two overnights were in Bergamo, we’ve discovered that getting back in the car for the day 4 mornings in a row is just too much.  So we had a lovely second day swimming in the pool and relaxing on the sunny balcony of our apartment before heading off for dinner in the old walled city.  We left early with the intention of strolling to the restaurant, we weren’t exactly sure where it was and of course it was at the very top of the town.  We ended up taking the funicular up and down the last stretch but we still walked over 6 miles, it was beautiful.

Back in the car next morning we drove to the champagne region of France to an elegant small hotel that was new to us in a pretty little village that we found time to walk round,  it didn’t disappoint.  

Our room was spacious and calm, we had an excellent dinner and fortunately breakfast started at 6.30 so we left in good time catching an earlier ferry than we’d booked.  Just over 12 hours after leaving our hotel we were home.

We are taking a long time to recover, fortunately we brought the sun back with us and have been sitting out on our balcony resting, taking gentle walks and watching a lot of football.  We have the bifold doors open all day and the windows are open day and night, it feels like we are finally on holiday after all the work in Lazio, which is now having a heatwave with temperatures in the high 30s.  This week we have friends here on two days, MrFF has a walk with his group and on Friday fittings arrive to build more wardrobe space and a dressing table in our spare room, holiday over.

Best news of all, our little cat Vincenzo has moved up the mountain to live with Giovanni as we all hoped he would, we left food and treats there for him and Giovanni sends regular reports. 

The closing ceremony

We plan to leave our house in Lazio on Sunday, preparations have begun and some bookings made. We are going back to Bergamo for a couple of nights, last year I had terrible eye problems that spoilt our visit so we are trying again.  We will have one night in France then take the ferry Wednesday to be home in Yorkshire that evening.

So there’s work to be done before we leave.  MrFF was up before six this morning to strim the rest of orchard and burn all our hedge clippings and cuttings.  We have to burn these on site and any fire must be extinguished before 9 am, he’s well on target so we don’t expect the police helicopter to be circling.

The garden is looking good and the new irrigation for my pots is almost ready for a trial run, not that I want to move everything under the spray just yet.

The rest of the garden will survive, it won’t be beautiful when we return but it will come back. I am a little worried for some large yucca cuttings I was given.  I’ve put them in the orchard and watered them for almost two weeks but it’s been very hot.  They are quite robust plants so if they make just a few roots they’ll be ok. I hope so, I have visions of a tropical border where we used to grow our tomatoes.  MrFF is not so keen and has plans for new retaining wall that could accommodate them

Vincenzo the little cat is here most of the time but still visits Giovanni daily.  When we leave I am sure Vincenzo will just move up the mountain so I’ll take some food and the treats he likes to Giovanni and make sure that Mario steps in if needed to for feeding duties.  Giovanni hopes his grand daughter who will be at staying in August might adopt Vincenzo, he’s a calm friendly cat who deserves a home.  

We’ve made huge progress while we’ve been here, it’s a relief to have the garden room finished and it looks better than I’d hoped.  Of course we’ll come back probably late September to a dirty dusty house and a wild garden, the prospect of more projects and the olives to pick.  Don’t mention the planning violation, we’ve heard nothing despite a meeting with our geometra who was going to the regional office to inspect our documents.  Six weeks later he’s still waiting for an appointment.  MrFF was chatting to a lady in the village who had a similar though smaller problem, she said the same geometra took 3 years to resolve it. So just over 2 more years to wait.  

A water solution

The weeks here go by so quickly.  We wake early to beautiful clear sunny mornings, sit out for breakfast and contemplate the day which seems endless.  Before you know it we are eating dinner then falling asleep in front of the 10 o’clock news that’s on at 11.  

In between there has been more progress in the garden room.   I finished oiling the terracotta floor tiles and MrFF is renovating the solid wooden doors.  Much of the brown furniture has left the building including this beer keller type arrangement, a really nice man from the next village was happy to have it.  For now we have the old wooden garden table and chairs, much more in keeping with the light airy room.

Naturally rather than relax and enjoy our efforts we are thinking of returning to Ilkley.  The sooner we leave the sooner we can come back, the heat is starting to build, 30 degrees today when we went down into the valley for provisions and worst of all the mosquitoes are back.  I am disappointed to be leaving the garden now I’ve regained control as so many plants are yet to flower.  I have hardly bought anything new this year, a tray of trailing geraniums that just started to bloom this week 

and a yellow portaluca that I’m not so keen on.  But I want to see the plumbago open, the hydrangea that I thought was dead but is showing a few green shoots come back to life and these geraniums that I’ve had for several years are almost out but not quite.

So today I had a word with MrFF about the possibility of some irrigation for the pots.  Much tutting and head shaking from him as he doesn’t want to leave the water on inside the house, pleading from me.   We have a solution, we will leave all the pots at the front of the house where they’ll be in shade most of the day and netted off from badger invasion.  He’s already bought the plumbing parts and started work on some sort of isolation valve so there will be no water entering the house just supplying the garden tap.  He will then connect a timed sprinkler for the pots.   However at present it looks like he might be installing the Trevi fountain

The garden room

I quite like pretentious room names.  In Scotland we had a large room above the double garage that we called the morning room because it got the sun am. I know a keen weaver and spinner who called her workroom the loom room, you get the idea.  The garden room sounds better than the room under the balcony and makes it acceptable to be a mix of outside and inside.

So the garden room is coming on, it’s decorated, cleaned and partially restored.  I’ve been applying linseed oil to the unsealed terracotta tiles, i love the smell of that stuff, and they look much better.  MrFF has cleaned and repaired the fireplace, it was pretty awful with crumbling plaster and mortar splattered bricks.  

The room was full of brown furniture, we donated the table, bench and chairs to someone opening a taverna down in the valley, the brother of our local bar owner. We have a white wooden garden table and chairs that are far too heavy to move in and out that we can use instead to fill the space, I doubt we will ever wish to traipse our meal downstairs.

I am toying with the idea of chalk painting the large dark dresser as there is far too much brown in the room, it needs lifting and the change would be worth the effort.

Between the spiral stairs and the room we have made a library.  I enjoyed dusting and re-shelving all the books, most of which I’ve read. 

There’s still work to do and it feels rather make do and mend but when I remember that two years ago water was pouring from the ceiling and the walls were black with mould it does feel like progress.  It’s not the beautiful space it could be but neither is it the embarrassment it was, for now we’ve spent enough time and energy on a room we have never used.

Oranges and Lemons

A slight blip in posting as I was logged out of my account, all fixed now and nothing compared to the hassles of Italian life which goes like this.

Two weeks after our meeting with the geometra who as usual told us what he needs to do, nothing has been done.  

The room below the balcony, which I have decided to call the garden room, is almost finished.  It certainly looks better than it did when water was pouring in and the walls were covered in mould but the floor, which has unsealed terracotta tiles is not great and neither is the old furniture in there.  I may do a post to show you.

MrFF ordered some aluminium posts to support a new sun sail for the balcony, to be delivered to our house as they are quite large.  Delivery was due on Monday, by Monday afternoon delivery was due Tuesday.  On Tuesday the tracker said our address was invalid and the courier awaited instructions from the sender.  We’d provided our full address plus what three words identification and our Italian landline number to make sure they’d find us.  So MrFF sent to the supplier a copy of a letter from our Comune that showed our address, they replied that delivery would be on Wednesday, we knew it wouldn’t.  Today Thursday the tracker says the courier is waiting for instructions for re-delivery which is odd since the have definitely not been here to try to deliver, and we have camera evidence, or even tried to phone us.  I am thinking the couriers should offer different delivery options - this year, next year, sometime, never.

In happier news the sun is shining and yesterday we had a morning doing nothing before returning to the work.  The garden is great and my lemon tree is filling me with joy, lots of beautiful large lemons and it’s covered in blossom and bees for the next crop. Not only that, my single orange is gradually changing colour and there are a few more flowers on the tree that I have nurtured for 20 years.  There are also a few flowers on the little kumquat, but the bees are so busy on the lemon I worry the latter two won’t be fertilised.  

We had a wonderful Sunday lunch with friends, so nice to be out socialising after all the decorating and cleaning.  I came away with a large bag of bitter oranges from one of their many ladened citrus trees.  I made 15 jars of fresh fruity marmalade, the taste isn’t quite the same as Seville oranges and it was a challenge getting a set but I was determined.  With all the challenges here I have to be.

Italian update

We’ve been here just over two weeks now and progress is good.  As usual the garden has been my priority.  I’ve lost a few plants, the badgers seem to take the tuberous ones so little sign of irises or dahlias, but generally everything is thriving.  My single orange is still on the tree and changing colour, it also has several new flowers which I hope will set.  My lemon tree is amazing, having been told it would never grow at our altitude, 750 metres, it’s full of fruit, new flowers and happy bees.

MrFF has been busy in the room below the previously leaking now retiled balcony Over the winter the walls and ceiling remained dry so he’s removed the old black mold, which fortunately was superficial and is busy redecorating.  He’s happy to work on his own with me joining in as required to do the cutting in round skirtings, switches etc and help with the cleaning, there was a lot of sanding down that filled the room with dust.

We’ve never used this room which is a pity.  Its huge room and opens onto the lower garden, it’s very private and slightly cooler in summer than the rooms under the roof.  I’ve always had a desire for a day bed in there or maybe a hammock for afternoon snoozes. 

Sadly there is no sign of Grigio.  We’ve walked out and called her a lot, it doesn’t look good as she hasn’t been seen since Christmas.   Meanwhile a youngish ginger cat has appeared.  At first we ignored him but since we have cat food to spare it seemed mean not to give him some, we are a soft touch.  He’s quite friendly, we can stroke him and pick him up, but he doesn’t hang around too long after he’s eaten. We get the impression he has a home which is fine, we like to see him but are glad he doesn’t rely on us.  We really don’t want any more of the stress of leaving a cat for months on end however well we provide for it. So for now we have Vincenzo our time share boy who is very sweet, we are trying not to get attached.

Finally we have a meeting with our geometra on Friday early evening about the planning violation.  He seems incapable of action, so far as we know he hasn’t made any approach to the Comune since we asked him to help us last August.  However his recent email acknowledged we were returning to the village after Easter so he was on programme, his own programme which bears no resemblance to ours.  

That’s just the way things are

When we were in the UK we saw on our Italian security camera a man wearing an unidentifiable high viz uniform call at our back door, leave and come back again with something in his hand.  His car or van was obviously parked up the road so we couldn’t identify that. 

A few weeks later the same man was back, this time he again went back to his car and return with a screw driver spending time at the back door, which is where our electricity meter is housed.  We have a smart meter so there is no need for readings to be taken, besides if he wanted to just read the numbers he wouldn’t need a screw driver.  As a precaution we asked Mario to check and the house was fine.

However this time MrFF took from the camera a still of the visitor which he then sent to our provider asking if they could identify the person and explain what he was doing.  They replied, eventually, saying they couldn’t respond because MrFF had written in English, it must be a special law that utilities cannot use translator. MrFF sent everything again in Italian and this time they replied, in their own good time, that it wasn’t their department and we needed to contact the distributor.  Third time lucky, not, we got no reply at all from the distributor. 

When we arrived at our house last week MrFF discovered that the lock on the meter cupboard had been tampered with, broken and inoperable, so much for the screw driver.  Maybe it’s also a rule that keys cannot be taken out of the office.  MrFF wrote to the distributor complaining that we no longer have access to our meter and are unable to isolate our electricity supply should we need to.   In fact if the meter trips off, as often happens, we have no way to turn it back on without breaking the door open.  We got no response.

Mario arrived with our mail and there was a letter from the electricity people, dated 2 days after our complaint, saying they need to change our meter urgently and we should make an appointment.

If they’d asked us to make an appointment before the first visit and said they didn’t have a key for the cupboard that they provided we could have arranged for Mario to give them access.  Now we have no idea how the man intends to open the meter cupboard and doubt if he going to replace the lock. I know I am being too logical about this, we’ve only been back a few days and I have yet to adjust my brain into Italian mode but now as the usual senseless challenges return we really feel we’ve arrived.