La Buona Vita

2011-09-23T12:44:00.001+02:00

Hot, hot, hot

It has been the hottestSummer here for many, many years. It has only just started to cool down, to acomfortable 28-29 C in the shade. We have had no rain for something like eightweeks. The grass is very light brown. The veggies have survived but only becausewe have been watering them often.

I have probably told you whatwe do with the big plants like toms, but I’ll just mention it again. We buryhalf litre plastic bottles with their bottom cut out, head first at an angle tothe plants roots. The water that we give them are pretty much guaranteed toreach just the roots of the plant they have been buried next to. It takes verylittle water but the water is efficiently used. It seems to work very well bythe harvest we have been having I must say.

D-i-L

We have had the dad-in-lawstaying with us for a couple of weeks. He went back on Wednesday looking nicelychilled – mentally, not physically, in fact he looked very tanned!

His trips over and back againwere nice and easy-peasy so we hope he’ll book up again and we will see himagain soon in 2012.

Because of the heat, he tookit very sensibly and managed to completely read our library, twice! No, notreally, but he had an excellent reading session. Just what he needed.

We went out for a couple ofgreat meals with him. The first was a little traumatic as every where we triedto book wasn’t open, they were on “ferie”, holiday. I don’t blame them as theywere taken advantage of the continuing good weather and having some holidaythemselves. However we managed to get in to Pippo e Gabriella’s, which is oneof his favourites anyway. As usual we were not disappointed. Tremendous.

Then last Sunday we went to anew place we hadn’t been before, L’antico Gusto. Wow. Sunday lunch – pranzo –was a seven course, yes, seven, set menu, with wine and both fizzy and stillwater, as much as you wanted. €25,00 a head. The food was fabulous. Fantasticvalue. It lasted about four and a half hours. Brilliant. Mind you we didn’tbother eating anything substantial until Tuesday!

Animali

All present and correct.

Freya, who we thought wasgrowing up fairly well has reverted to early puppyhood. She is nicking knickersand chewing them to bits and no, I didn’t teach her to do it, she isself-taught. Digging holes where holes shouldn’t be dug. Attacking Bertie whenhe leasts expects it. Chewing plants and plant pots. We found we had threeAvocado plants growing in the compost bin. We rescued them and La D lovinglyplanted them in pots and there were doing incredibly well through her nursingskills. We gave one to a friend who is real whizz with plants – won prizes forhis garden’s output back in Wandsworth. Freya got one of those. In fact she isbeing a general nuisance. But is hard to be cross with a pup, especially whenshe wanders up to you and starts to lick you all over. Oh well, she will growup quickly enough.

A bit of better news

My son’s friend has been havinghis first interventions with chemo and they have gone very well. He is now ableto eat more or less as usual which is great news

One day at a time.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-09-01T18:00:00.001+02:00

August

Weather Report

Stifling. Pushed pass 40°C in the shade on many days. No rain since 1^stAugust.

The holiday season a la Casa Grotta,aka a change is asgood as a rest

Because we are as poor aschurch mice. La D and myself sat down atthe beginning of the month and asked ourselves how we could have a summerholiday without spending any money. We thought and we thought, and then we hadone of those “Eureka”moments. La D said, “I know it’s not much, but how do you fancy,” wait for it,“and it wouldn’t cost any extra”, keep waiting, “ we move into the spare bedroom?”

Wow, I thought, this is why Imarried this woman. Pure genius. It would be like being a different placealtogether, and we have the luxury of having an en suite.

Holiday report

The spare bedroom is slightlycooler and it is more difficult to hear some blasted dogs barking in the earlyhours of the morning (presumably at cinghiale). Err .. that’s it really. Wetried to behave as though we were on a holiday, but who were we kidding.Ourselves. Anyway, nothing ventured, nothing gained and it didn’t cost us acentesimo. But do we feel relaxed and refreshed? Do we buggery!

If I could meet the smartarsewho coined the phrase “a change is as good as rest” I’d punch him on the nose

Next year we arecontemplating a fortnight in the office!!!

Beach versus Pool

Because most of the Italianpopulation are mainly on holiday during August, we tend not to venture down tothe coast as it is so crowded. Fortunately, regular readers of the blog willknow that we have a public swimming pool about half a mile from us. As themonth has been the hottest here for many, many years, boy did the pool come inhandy, almost a necessity some days. We took to going down about 12:30 – maddogs and Englishmen, I know – just when those who had come for the morning werepacking up. Often we were the only ones there till about 3. It was fab and thepool’s temperature was about perfect. It was really holiday like. It closedtoday, but the people running it told us that next year they would be openingfor July as well. Good stuff.

Animali

We have had two cats livingaround us now for about 18 months producing kittens left, right and centre.Although here in Le Marche,there is a scheme wherby the authorities will pay for sterilisation ofsemi-feral cats if you agree to look after them, we made an application quite awhile ago and nothing has happened. We reckon we have housed 14 kittens overthe last couple of years and we couldn’t house any more. So, with a firm gripon our wallets we took them to the vet and had them done. At about the sametime we had Freya spayed too. Poor Bertie, and Freya too, but at least therewon’t be any “accidents” such as the patter of giant paws

Freya is still into “chickentossing” but, thankfully, it is becoming less frequent. Mind you, she is ony 7months old, today in fact. The trouble is she is now as tall as Bertie and itso hard to see her as a pup, or cucci in Italian.

The chicks are doingbrilliantly still giving us 3 eggs a day. Occasionally they have to “play” withFreya – see above – but it doesn’t put them off laying!

Orti

We have been watering everyother morning, very early before the sun comes up on us. The result has beenwell worthwhile with everything growing to abundance. Record onion crop. Tommiesare prolific. Corn is beautiful, etc., etc.. The only problem this years hasbeen with the spuds. They were very poor. I doubt we got more back in weightthan when we planted. We may not do them next year.

A bit of bad news

My son Pip was going to cometo Italy - Porto Recanati on the coast,not far from us - , with a friend for a few days and they were going to stopwith us a for a night and we were going up and see them. Just before they werecoming my son’s friend was diagnosed with oesophageal cancer and further testsnow show it has spread to his stomach and liver. Devastating news. So theholiday was cancelled and Pip is using his holiday time to spend with hisfriend. It is too early to say how he is getting on but we think about himoften here at Casa Grotta and are hoping that they will come out next year. Allthe very best to him.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-07-27T17:25:00.001+02:00

Water, water everywhere….what has happened to the sun?

Gosh it’s gone cold. La D andmyself were talking about a fire last night. It’s mad. Boiling temperatures oneweek and thinking-thermals the next. Both of us also seem to suffer a bit whenwe have these large temperature changes in very quick time. It seems to “knockus off” a bit. We feel very fatigued for a day or two. La D sometimes puts itdown to too much Vino Rosso, but I remain to be convinced as we don’t have anychanges to our imbibation (is this a word? If not, it certainly should be)

Enjoying ourselves

We are off for our annual weddinganniversary trip to the outdoor opera theatre, the Sferisterio in Macerata thisFriday. We are going to see Un Ballo In Maschera (The Masked Ball) by Verdi. Wehave listened to the music via Spotify – oh yes, we’re well up with the technobabes.It’s fabulous.

The weather, however, mightnot be. It’s looking a little flaky at the mo, but here’s hoping.

However, we won’t be caughtout like last year. We are going to take a tent and a gas stove. This maypresent Elf ‘n Safety issues as well as annoying some of the audience behindus, but we’ll cross that river, or bridge even, when we come to it.

We booked this back inJanuary and we are so looking forward to it. It is only on for three nights.Anyway, I will report back.

Animali

A couple of years ago we approachedour comune with a request to have some of the community cats here spayed.Apparently in this region, the comune will pay for this service as long as youtake responsibility for feeding and looking after them. With usual Italianzeal, we have heard no more. We also think we have exhausted our supply ofpotential homes for kittens. so we are arranging to have Tigger and Daisy, whoare our sort of cats “done” at our expense. It isn’t cheap.

On top of that, we havecontacted our vet about Freya and she has said that Freya really should be doneby the time she is 7 months, which is a month away. Gulp. We thought the catscost was bad until she told us that Freya was going to cost three times thecost of one cat!

So, we are going to have aneutering party. Bring a scalpel. No only joking. Make it anaesthetic. Ha, ha.

August looks like anexpensive month.

The kitties go to their newhome next week.

Veggies

Tremendous. Everythinggrowing very well. The toms are abundant and sweet and juicy. Have made somegreat tomato ketchup a la Jamie Oliver with our cherry toms and San Marzano(long in shape) and some Beef ones that a friend gave us. It is excellent.

The freezers are getting fuller.Fortunately our nearest neighbours don’t grow anything themselves so we areable to give them extra produce. Of course we also are able to give some to thechicks who do eat anything and in return provide us with some beautiful eggs.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-07-20T12:40:00.002+02:00

Weather

Yes, we still have it. Lotsof it. Now it’s a bit breezy too. Had to do some emergency repairs this morningto the stakes holding up the cherry toms. We think they will be OK.

Veggies

Doing well. Starting to harvestsome lovely toms, cucumbers, melanzane (egg plant), French beans, onions,spring onions, etc., etc..

Of course we are having towater every two to three days but it looks like we may have some rain over theweek-end.

Love amongst the animali – part 1

I had to go and shut thechickens in their coop the other night. It was dusk. We try to shut up shop forthem a little earlier than this usually.

As I made my way down to thepen, I noticed Freya lying in the garden playing with what looked like an oldpiece of black plastic. Tossing it in the air and then catching it again. As Igot nearer, I saw that the bit of plastic had wings and feet and feathers! Thebloody dog was “playing” with Wilma. Aghh.

I issued a sharp command andFreya immediately went running off, tail held high, with a body language thatsaid, “chase me, chase me.” That dog.

Anyway, I picked Wilma upquite gently. She was soaked with slobber. I placed her in the coop where Icould only see one other chicken, Na. I suddenly heard a soft clucking soundcoming from behind one of the olive trees just outside the pen. I went out andfound Doris. She too was rather soggy. She raninto the pen and I picked her up and put her into the coop.

I know Freya’s only a pup –she’s not 6 months yet – but tossing chickens should not be part of herrepertoire, particularly as her breed are protecting dogs. We know she does notmean any harm but we find it difficult to explain this to Doris, Na and Wilma.I have tried but they have lousy eye contact and just continue to cluck over meand peck the ground. There’s no reasoning with chickens,…..or dogs.

The next day the chicksseemed fine as though nothing had happened, although I did notice that wheneverFreya went too close, they all moved off quite surreptiously. They are stilllaying well. Phew.

Love amongst the animali – part 2

The kitties are doing welland will be going to their new home in about 10 days or so. We have juststarted them on proper food yesterday and they seem to have got the hang of it.

They are going to be calledSamson and Delilah, so we have started to call them Sammy and Del.

Sammy is a bit of a bruiser,but woossie. Delis petite but is into exploring everything she can. She has a great crush onFreya.

When the cats are out on theporch floor and Freya comes up, Delimmediately makes her way over to Freya and starts to touch her paws, tail,nose, any part really. Freya just loves this. She licks Delback and because her tongue is so large compared with Del,Del does abackward summersault. But the little kitten comes straight back for more.

So this is a very delightfulscene. Cats loving dogs and vice versa.

As I was getting breakfastready yesterday, La D took some implements out to the table and announced,“Where is Del?”This was a rhetorical question as I was in the kitchen preparing the coffee andfood and, as the saying goes, did not have eyes in the back of my head. Nonethe less, La D seemed to overlook this fact as she announced again, in a loudervoice, “Where is Del?WHERE IS SHE?”

We looked all round thebasket they sleep in, and all over the porch. Both she and Sammy are still toosmall to go down the stairs unless they fall. So we went down the stairs. Nosign of her.

We went round the back of thehouse and saw Freya lying in the garden, playing with something.

Yep. It was Del. Moreimperious commands were issued at the dog, who again went bounding off. Youcould almost sense the chuckling.

Poor little Del was pretty much unfazed by this. Apart frombeing covered with the, now, ubiquitous slobber she seemed fine. There was noway she could have got there under her own steam, so Freya must have carriedher in her mouth all the way there.

La D picked her up and gaveher a cuddle and bough her back to her brother and mum, where she settled rightback in.

Yesterday evening, Del and Freya werebilling and cooing over each other on the porch again. Quite lovely really as you can see.

One last thing, this morning,La D caught Freya with Del in her mouth just about to go down the stairs again,no doubt for a bit more of cat tossing. We didn’t let them proceed.

Here is a link to some kittiefun.

http://youtu.be/BoLn1PE937U

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-07-13T15:59:00.002+02:00

Serious Weather

La D, myself and the animali are sweltering at the moment. Under our gazebo at the back of the house, it was 42.7 deg C or if you like, 109 deg F, at 15:00 today. Man it's hot.

Too hot to do anything more than move your eyes and fingers over a keyboard in case you dissolve. There is a fan on most of the day in the middle room and then all night in the bedroom, when the temp dips to about 26 C inside. 26C at 03:00!!!!! One must assume that there will be a hiatus in births in about nine months time!

We can't sleep either. The dogs stay outside and occasionally start to bark at something, we are presuming cinghiale. We are up at 05:30 which is the only time when you are able to do anything physical. like having like water the veg - which are doing well right now because of the watering - or pick some apricots.

We've stopped walking the dogs this week as they were just poddling along with us, not running about. So there seemed no point. They start to play at about 21:30 and chase each other round the garden for a bit. More exercise than they would get when we went on a walk. Most of the day they just stay in the office with La D, which is the coolest, sorry, the least warm room at the moment.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-07-06T19:01:00.000+02:00

A great day out

Last week I told you we were going down to Abruzzo to see one of the writers that is involved with La D’s virtual writers’ group, www.writersabroad.com

The criteria to be a member is that you have to be living in a country other than your birth country and that you write in English. It is very successful with quite a number on the waiting list.

The person we went too see, Paola, is in fact Italian, but writes in English and lives, at the moment, in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She has never lived in Italy. She was born in East Africa. Quite a person.

She and a few others get together for a week near a small town called Abbateggio in the north of the Majella National Park which is in the region of Abruzzo. The group take over a whole B&B place, www.casagiumentina.it They teach each other things. For instance, one of them gives Yoga lessons, another does creative writing, etc.. La D’s contact teaches Italian. This is all mixed in with some personal repose, trip to the beach, maybe a visit to a vineyard, local restaurants. It sounds as though it could be a very relaxing and interesting time.

We made good time, despite driving through a torrential downpour for a few minutes and arrived in time for a coffee. Fantastic place. The views are quite spectacular. We were introduced to those that where there, and then a delicious bowl or two of soup that a couple of them had made. It also turned out that Paola’s husband came from Belfast and as I did all my schooling there, I was quizzed about which school I went to Methody (Methodist College Belfast to give it its full title). Her husband went to Methody’s traditional rival school Inst (Royal Belfast Academical Institution). Then we got onto the schools’ cup (rugby) but it turned out that he was two years younger than me so it was unlikely that we tried to knock seven bells out of each other on the pitch, sorry, played rugby against each other. Anyway, Methody leads the cup stats with 32 wins to Inst's 29. Oh yes.

Afterwards we went into Abbateggio itself. We parked up and then went walking into the centro storico (the historical centre). Paola’s parents moved there from Rome in 1947. Her dad was the appointed GP for the town. The commune helped with his transportation issues by lending him a mule!! If he were late at a baby delivery, he often kipped down in the same bed as the mum and new babe to get some essential ZZZs. We went past the house where they had lived and where Paola’s brother and sister were born. The house looked as though it was once quite grand, but now would require a total restoration. The population has reduced from 2500 pop to 450 pop over the last few decades. Desperate.

As were were walking down a street, Paola suddenly opened a door to a building and called out to someone. A few minutes later we were sitting in a tiny front room/kitchen listening to a lady talking about her family. When we asked her age, she replied that she was 98 and 5 months!

After we said our goodbyes and went for a bit more a walkabout, Paola did the same thing to another house and again we were ushered in and offered refreshments. This lady was one of the children that Paola’s father had brought into the world. It was really most interesting. We were treated to the tae of how she and her husband met and all sorts of family history.

We asked Paola how she had come to know people and things about Abbateggio when she only visited the place once a year, and then not until recently. She wasn’t even born there.

The town has very interesting mayor (sindaco). He wanted to try and make contact with all living diaspora of the town, and their offspring, because he was trying to reach out to people who knew the town and wanted more interest to be shown in what it, and he, were doing to promote it. He made the effort to trace as many people as he could and wrote to them asking them to make contact. He also gave them a vote they could use the for the town elections. He even found out that were 200 ex-Abbateggions in Belgium. He also wrote to them and invited them to a re-union with some current townsfolk in Brussels. He then flew up to Belgium with some of the towns people to meet up with the ex-pats. Just over 100 came to the meeting. I personally think that is a huge success.

Anyway, this was all a few years ago and Paola was so amazed at the effort being made that she came to Abbateggio and started making contacts with people who had known her parents and her siblings. She then started her annual bash. Her parents come often now and stay at the same B&B.

And yes, she did vote at the town elections.

Amazing.

Great day. Thank you Paola.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-07-01T11:48:00.001+02:00

Happy 1^st July to everyone.

How eggasperating is this?

The girls appear to have been having a bit of a break (ha, ha) in their egg laying. We have recently only been getting one or two eggs a day, which is not the norm. The weather has been v hot. A couple of days ago a local thermometer was nudging 45°C. So we have been putting down the lack of eggs due to overheated hens.

However, the hens have pretty much a free run of the middle and upper gardens and love wandering about. What they don’t like is Freya stalking them and suddenly leaping on them and grabbing their tail feathers. But that’s another tale.

This morning I had to go and do a few chores at one of the local villages and when I got back this is what La D had found in a nesting place in the garden. The little buggers. Why have they stopped laying in their perfectly good nesting box? Doh!

Matters of the teeth

Both La D and I have had reason to go to the dentista recently. Both of us hate it and it is expensive, or at least we think it’s expensive. But what can you do? We don’t to be called the “gummies” before our time do we? Having seen some pictures of Russian country people who use stainless steel for replacement teeth, maybe I’ll just go and have a “Jaws” job, a la James Bond character. On second thoughts, maybe not

I have to go back for a further consultation at the end of the month. Oh joy.

Social scene

Went for a great BBQ the other night. Some people we know have a great place with a pool that they rent out but this week there were no guests so they decided to have a do. Absolutely brill. We met up with the people who rescued Bertie and his siblings. Poor bloke, he recently fell off a ladder doing some arboreal work. Broke his back. Fortunately he fell very levelly(?) and the break is quite healable. Apparently if you break a vertebra from the side, that is a completely different matter.

The library is going well but quite slowly. I am on duty this afternoon. Hopefully there will be a few people through the doors.

Travelling down to Pescara next week for lunch with one of the people who belongs to La D’s Writers Abroad web group. She actually lives in Bangladesh – her husband is in the UK FO – having just moved there from Belgium. She runs a writing course in North Abruzzo once a year.

Bertie and Freya are going to spend the day with their friend Lola. I do hope Lola’s people know what they are taking on! I’m sure they do.

Talking if dogs, here is a picture taking today during our early morning constitution. The sun is just rising at this time and it creates beautiful dappled light in some areas where we go.

Had a lovely long ‘phone call with my number three son this week. He and one of his friends are thinking of coming to Italy for a week in August and was sounding me out about some places. Have given him lots of info on places in Le Marche but also in the South (Sorrento peninsula) and North West (Italian Riviera, Liguria). So we’ll wait and see.

No more news on baby Annalise. Some photos have appeared on Facebook, but that is all. It’s rather sad really as Facebook as most of you know is a massive personal networking website, with people able to acknowledge others as friends. My son only has two friends on it. Rather defeats the object.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-06-24T12:18:00.000+02:00

New Granddaughter

It’s been confirmed that her name is Annalise. They are not sure if she will have middle names at the moment.

There is a new book that has just been published about very small children. It is a book for parents and is called “Go the f&*k to sleep”.

It is a bedtime book for parents who live in the real world, where a few snoozing kitties and cutesy rhymes don't always send a toddler sailing off to dreamland. Profane, affectionate and refreshingly honest, it captures the familiar and unspoken tribulations of putting your child to bed for the night.

It has got some brilliant reviews. Perhaps my son and his wife should hold off on the official naming thing until they have all got used to living together. You never know, the experience might throw up some fairly apt names.

How about Enyo, goddess of war or perhaps Anushka, goddess of temper. You just never know.

Haven’t had any photos through yet but it’s early days.

Freya

Larger than life. She weighed in at 22 kilos last week. Up from 15 four weeks previously. Gulp. I’m going to weigh her next Friday when she will be 5 months old and see what the brute weighs then. Still gorgeous. Doesn’t appreciate her biting strength. Adores Bert and follows him around a lot of the time. Shedding her coat like billy-o. Still very timid of people, sometimes even us which is a bit odd. But what is really strange is that if we meet up with fiends to go for a walk with the dogs, Freya will not come near them whilst we are getting ready. As soon as we set off, she’s like their new best friend. Running up to them, wagging her tail, trying to lick and jump up at them. It’s like a switch has been thrown, the effect is immediate. Odd.

Weather

Yes. Lots of it and all roasting. Saw a temperature sign above a pharmacy yesterday reading 45° at about midday. Glad Wimbledon is on. Shut the shutters, sit slightly apart from La D – nothing to do with personal hygiene, just tooooo hot – and watch some excellent sports men and women. We saw the matches between Venus Williams and Kimiko Date-Krum and the one between Li Na and Sabine Lisicki. What absolutely riveting tennis.

The forecast looks like more of the same. Oh dear. More out with the pooches just after 6 am.

The only problem with these early morning starts is that we are not alone! We were joined this morning by this lot.

This the third time we have seen them in the past couple of weeks

What else?

One of the little kittens passed away yesterday. It wasn’t growing or suckling mum so we are not surprised really. Still the remaining two are doing well. Their new owners are hopefully coming over today or tomorrow to have a look at them They’ll probably go from us about 5 weeks, once they have weaned.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-06-14T17:47:00.001+02:00

A Special 14th June

Fourth granddaughter born this afternoon. Called Annalise or Annalisa. Still to be confirmed. Mum had to be induced yesterday and forceps were required at the end. Both babe and ma doing well by all accounts. Weight unknown, to me, at present. Will revert.
Over and out.

Ciao, Mantenere la fede

2011-06-10T11:21:00.000+02:00

Freshwater Fun and Frolics

Bertie and Freya get down and clean in the Fiume Tenna. Great fun.

http://youtu.be/6f9YRdwxlyY

We take the dogs out very early these days because of the heat. We have been going down paths mainly because we want to get Freya used to regular exercise and paths are not too onerous for her. We will gradually build her up to some decent lengths of walks. The other day we took her into a field of uncut grass. This is a picture of her after we got back. She seems to shrink by a third when her coat gets wet. It’s more obvious when she is in the river but it is still quite clear even with early morning dew on her coat.

Pussy(ies) Galore

We have more kittens as of yesterday morning. Got up to let the dogs out at 05:30 – yes, that’s right, half five in the morning – and instead of two cats on the mat there were five. Tigger had three kittens.

Lovely colouring especially a little tortoiseshell one. Haven’t sexed them yet as they are very small. Just hoping that the male cats don’t come and take them away when they are a couple of weeks old as they did to Daisy’s a few weeks ago.

We hope we have homes for them all. Will keep you posted.

Orti

The veggie patches are doing great guns, just like all the other vegetation. We have had lots more rain and with good temperatures the rate of growth is phenomenal. Last pea picking tomorrow then we will take them out and plant some brassicas. I think. La D is the Director of Operations (why am I so surprised?).

Had first of our new potatoes yesterday. Absolutely gorgeous they were too. Having some more tomorrow a la Patate Dauphinoise as it’s our wedding anniversary. I wonder what would happen if I ever forgot our wedding anniversary? I tend not to think about those sort of things, it makes me go all queasy, weak at the knees and funny up the bum!.

Galline

The chickens are fine. Still getting three eggs a day. Friends and neighbours have been benefitting from our girls’ largesse. Freya seems to have gone off the idea of chicken biting. Not completely, but almost. So hopefully she has grown out of that particular phase.

Lurgi

I have been attacked by the vegetation. Very itchy and pretty disgusting to touch. I have these sores over my left arm, hand and knee. A litle bit on my right arm and knee. It should go soon, hopefully. At least ti keeps the women at bay. Ha, ha says La D!!

Ciao

Mantenere la fede

2011-06-02T14:41:00.001+02:00

It's Freya again!

Here's a video we made last week down at the river. Freya adores the water as you can see. It won't be long before she is chasing after the sticks with Bertie!

http://youtu.be/CrBAsmYKt58

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-05-27T11:01:00.000+02:00

Freya Update.

Freya continues to delight and annoy us in equal measure. No, not really. She is a lovely big pup.

The D-i-L came over a couple of weeks ago and little Freya took a few days before she was comfortable around him as she is terribly shy of new people she meets. But she was soon won round with D-i-L’s general pleasing demeanour and, it has to be said, his terrible jokes.

She has already been swimming, although not intentionally. She was trying to follow Bertie whilst he was chasing sticks and got quickly out of her depth and had to doggy paddle to get back to the shallows. She absolutely loves the river. We have been three times now and every time she is a little more adventurous.

We went to Lago san Ruffino early this week with our friends who have Lola. Freya absolutely loved the walk and the water. We let her off the lead and she was very good. A lot of chasing after the other dogs, then back to the humans to check we were all there. Looking for a quick pat. The off again. An immensely happy dog.

Bertie, we think, is loving having a pal. La D was right, of course. (“Of course I was right!” La D speaking, sorry, writing.) A friend for Bertie would be a good thing, and so it is proving. They play a lot together. Tumbling all over the place. Bertie is often on his back with Freya trying to bit his neck and other bits, the unmentionables. It says a lot for his confidence with her that he lies like that. Of course there is still the occasional snap and corresponding whimper when Bertie has had enough. But these are few and far between and Freya seems to bring him round to more play or else goes and has a kip in the shade of the hazelnut tree.

She also loves the chickens. So much so that one of her favourite games is to sneak up behind and grab them by the tail feathers. It’s an odd sight to see a chicken with a large white dog attached to its rear end. We tend to discourage this sort of behaviour as it may affect egg laying, but so far it hasn’t as we still getting out tre uova per day.

As I have already mentioned, it really is a good time of year to have a pup as they are outside all the time and of course there is plenty of space for them. The weather also helps. It’s has been pretty lovely the last few weeks. The odd shower but then back to mid 30s and glorious sunshine.

Garden Update

Those of you with a keen eye will have seen that La D now does a gardening blog associated with this one.

We were out at 6 this morning planting some more tomatoes (pomodori), cucumbers (citrioli), beans (fagioli) and courgettes (zucchini). La D has also planted quite a few flowers around the place so we should have wonderful colours over the Summer. Somebody we knew who lived briefly over here left us a Bottle Brush plant rather than take it back to the UK. Lovely isn’t it?

English Library

Together with a few other “Inglesi” we have opened a library in a town near us, Servigliano.

There must be well over a 1000 books now with more coming in. There is a tremendous breadth to the books as well.

We are open twice a week at the moment and take it in turns to play Librarian – not the way of Peter Sellers in ”Only Two Can Play” mind you!. We have been given a room by a charity in a fabulous old “palazzo” in the middle of the town. The architecture is quite stunning.

Activity is slow but we are hoping that will slowly increase as the library becomes more known.

It will definitely save on Amazon orders!

Spring has Sprung

As usual at this time of year the local felines have had kittens or are pregnant. One of the ones that hang around our place, Daisy, had three a little while ago, but they mysteriously disappeared when they were about 16/17 days old. We understand that the male cats come along and take the kittens off somewhere, so that the queens will again come into season then the toms can get their end away again. All seems rather brutal to me, but there you go. C’è la vita

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-04-26T17:05:00.001+02:00

Once again I apologise

For the tardiness I have shown recently on blog updating. I’ve been that busy. Heard that one before have you? I expect so.

Anyway a quick fill in before the big, and I mean BIG news.

La D had a good time with her siblings and pa but it was rather lovely to pick her up from the airport.

With the lumberjacking done, I had been in charge of the slash and burn of the ground to liberate it from the weeds and general overgrowth. It was great. When La D got back it was time to move the timber up to the house. It was hard going but we managed it over several days and now have a good wood stack which I am hoping will last perhaps two years.

With the advent of some warmer and dryer weather we have also done a bit of decorating in the kitchen and sitting/dining room. We had the doors and windows open all the time so the smell of the paint didn’t get to us too much. Looks very good.

The lovely Spring weather has also meant we have been eating breakfast and lunch outdoors for about three weeks now. Lovely.

Veggie gardening is about to go ballistic as we head into the major sowing season although our fava (broadbeans) are ready now. Lovely with sheep’s’ cheese. So there will be lots of weeding and putting up of support canes. Good fun. In fact one of things that La D have been thinking about is perhaps going into a sort of partnership with some friends and working out what we all grow best and set up a small cooperative venture. If we grow toms best then we grow all the toms, if somebody else grows onions best then they grow all the onions, etc.. Or something like that. We’ll see. We haven’t talked to anybody about it yet.

BIG NEWS TIME!

La D has been banging on about something for quite a while now and I have been resisting – not that hard mind you, just a bit to give her something to push against!!

When we heard that what we have just got was likely to be “at risk” quite soon, we took the plunge.

We now have a friend for Bertie!! She (another dog might prove problematical in the future, temperament-wise) is just about 12 weeks old and scrummy.

Her name is Freya and she is one of six pups from a farm not too far from here. The shepherd’s dogs had 5 bitches and 1 dog. Whilst the shepherd has no problem with a dog, they don’t need bitches as they tend to breed. Surprising that. So he wants rid of them. Mind you she was expensive compared to Bertie. We had to give the shepherd a packet of cigarettes, when Bertie cost us nothing! The shepherd was more than pleased someone took on one of the pups and he was thrilled by the ciggies.

Some friends have seen the pups since they were born. They do in fact have a sister of Freya’s from the previous litter.

Freya’s great. Very pretty, clumsy, fluffy, bitey but licky too, and almost house-trained already. When you think she spent the first nine weeks of her life living in a field, she has taken to domestic living very quickly.

Bertie has come round rapidly. He was a little distant at first but I expect couldn’t resist the way Freya just threw herself at him, literally, to get him to play. Bertie is just coming to the end of his moulting and we often see Freya with a mouthful of white fur from where she has charged into him, mouth agape, nipping him. He tells her off sometimes. Not often.

The time of year is of course brilliant. The dogs are outside all the time. Of course a lot of puppy-watching is essential to her correct upbringing.

Here are some photographs.

So you share in our delight you can have a look at a couple of short videos we have put on Youtube. Here are the links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBpCRACQprg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHKg54OV_A8&feature=related

Happy viewing!

I will keep you informed of progress and probably put some more videos up on Youtube too.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-03-21T17:17:00.000+01:00

I’m a lumberjack and I’m OK

Last week we had to take the Golf for its first Revisione (MOT). As usual I had been fretting about whether she would pass and how much it was going to cost to put things right. I don’t know why she wouldn’t pass as she is well looked after, but then, that’s me. Anyway it was fine and she is now OK until March 2013. Great.

So, with no expense associated with the Revision and after much cogitation and deliberation I finally went and got a chainsaw (petrol) to start on next Winter’s firewood. It was a difficult decision. I find – much to La D’s annoyance – that I have to cover all aspects of a major purchase from north to south, east to west, back to front, etc., and then spend a bit (OK, a lot) of time on the web researching the myriad options. My view is that we buy very little these days and so when we do, I need to feel comfortable with the decision, in other words, fluffy. Now La D is much more practical.

She’ll ask, “Do we need it/one?” If the answer is yes, then it’s JFBI.

Actually this is pretty good, because we complement each other

So in the end I plumped for a Jonsered. For those not in the know they are one of the top brands, made by Husqvarna in Sweden. Consequently they are not cheap but it should be a reliable investment and give us a few good years of service. I would much prefer to spend €150 on a pair of shoes that will last for 15 years r more rather than pay €60 for some that might last three. But there you go.

The reason I went for them rather than another brand was because the other good ones are all about the same price but the Jonsered dealer is the nearest. I felt it better to buy from a dealer because of spares (these machines do need a few consumables) and also if anything should go wrong they will be able to deal with it. So there we are.

First thing did when I got it home was to get out the manual. It was printed only in Italiano. Oops. Onto the net. Downloaded the manula in English, printed it out a d set to work understanding how it works and what to do. This “homework” continued on Sunday. La D kept throwing glances in my direction as I was obviously not giving her 100% of my attention as I should have done.

“Isn’t it just a question of click and go?” she said, rather abruptly. Oh dear.

“No darling, not quite as simple as that I’m afraid.” I’m not sure she believed me.

We went down to the bottom of the estate this morning and got stuck in. La D had a go but decided to let me “lumberjack” whilst she cleared up and piled the logs into graded piles. Oh yes, very organised.

We nearly had the tree sawn up by lunchtime! The only thing we haven’t been able to finish is the last bit of the trunk as it is lying awkwardly, so I need to give this some thought as to how we can finish the job. The trunk will provide us with some great logs.

We also felled the tree next door to it as it was leaning pretty precariously. We hope to make inroads on that tomorrow.

Of course there is just one problemette. We have to move the timber from the bottom to the top where the house is. It’s a stiff old climb just getting yourself up, never mind pushing a barrow of logs in front of you .I did one trip this afternoon. That’s why I decided to come in and write this blog entry!

Well you know the saying, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I hope that’s right.

I’m expecting I’ll look like a body builder by the time La D returns from her trip to England for her dad’s birthday and to see her mum and family. Well, even more body builder-like than I do now. Ahem.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-03-05T15:53:00.002+01:00

Wow!

Well, where do I begin.

The weather has been atrocious all week. First we had torrential rain – 12 inches in 12 hours at one point! – then we had loads of snow, then more rain and then even more rain. This has been accompanied with 48 hours without electricity due to the very heavy snowfall. 5 towns near us were all blacked out. The regional government has called for a regional state of emergency to be declared. It’s been raining since and still raining now.

3 people killed. Rivers bursting banks. Road sides collapsed. Earth and trees pushed onto the roads. It’s really terrible.

Just down from us a huge amount of earth and trees had slid into the road, turning it into a one lane road. This morning as I went past it, more slippage had a occurred because of the continuous rain. Fortunately there were a load of workman there with several great lorries waiting to take away all the debris and a big digger that was pulling down more earth down - to make it stable I guess.

We hear that the coast has had it the worst, but goodness knows what it’s like over there, Must be desperate.

On Thursday we braved the weather and took Bertie out down to the river just to have a look. We’ve never seen it in full spate. My goodness what a sight. The walk down to little “Torrente Saline” – this is effectively a stream just dribbles along usually but comes into its own when the snow starts to melt on the mountains – was littered with earth and rock falls that we had to climb over. At the end of the path there is a water testing plant, pretty small. From there, there are some steps down to the stream. These steps had completely disappeared!!!.

We went down a different way to the river. Devastation. There was a path by the side of the river that we usually walked down once we had joined the proper river from the stream. A good 50 metre length of it was gone. This path was about 2 metres high and at least 2 metres wide. Just nothing there at all. The whole vista had changed. Bertie took it into his head to swim across, or rather down, but we had trouble getting him back as the poor lad was just treading water trying to reach us. Eventually we were able to get hold of him and were together again. Phew.

From the right hand side of the log in the river to the side, there was a path 3 days ago. It ran from where the stream enters the river on the right, down as far as you can see. The river has almost doubled in width at this juncture.

The bottom of our garden is criss- crossed with little streams. The path that La D and I have carved out during our daily walks with Bertie is now a stream. Never seen anything like it.

Apparently the worst weather to hit this region for 40 years. Let’s hope there is nothing like this for another 40 years. We have heard lots of stories about how people have fared. We get this info through Facebook and the Italian Community website.

We have a big tree down at the end of garden, which in some way may be propitious as it could provide next Winter’s (or the one after definitely) fire wood supply. I just need to get a petrol-driven chainsaw – we have an electric one but it is far to far away. Such a shame. Ha, ha, ha. More gadgets. Can we afford it? Probably not. But, I should be able to get a saw for about €150.00 and the value of the wood I would think is at least that. So, cost neutral. It also means that I can venture into our woods and cut up quite a bit of old timber that is there that I haven’t been able to do before.

The poor chickens don’t seem to know what to do. They have been constantly wet. Don’t think Doris and Wilma – the new ones – have been dry since they have been here. But we are getting one to two eggs a day so that is good.

A sort of spin off from all this meteorological rubbish is that La D and I have cancelled our birthday break to Venice. We were going to go next Thursday for three nights, but we are looking after Bertie’s sister – and Rustic – again as their owners have gone to Venice this week-end. Whilst it is looking dry (but very cold) for the next few days, the time we were going is looking decidedly wet. There was going to be hardly anytime for the change over of dog-looking after roles and the forecasr is for more crap weather coming our way. La D decided we really didn’t fancy leaving rain here just to holiday in more rain. So we bit the bullet and cancelled the little pensione that we had booked. We have lost the train fare, but it was a good deal so it’s not too bad. We are going to re-group and have a break maybe in the fairer weather.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-02-24T17:26:00.000+01:00

Dog for sale. One owner. Free to good home. Reason for sale? He’s absolutely useless.

Well, it’s happened again. Mr Bloody fox visited us last week and took two of our girls, Tir and Nog. We couldn’t believe it. The weather was as it had been before when the fox came, very grey and p***ing with rain. However, big difference this time, Bertie was outside and we were in the house.

It happened in the afternoon. The girls had been out all morning and lunchtime. The heavens opened about midday. It had finally stopped raining. I went out about 3 to check if there were any eggs. I saw Na in the pen, scratching around, but couldn’t see the others. Then I came across what was left of Nog, our beautiful French Black Copper Marans, and quite a few brown feathers from Tir, but nothing else.

La D and myself cursed ourselves for not remembering the conditions that Foxy likes to come hunting. Oh, dear, dear, dear.

Again we had become very attached to them all and they would usually come running if they heard us. They would never be any bother picking them up. Our lovely garden friends when we were out there in the garden.

The next day I was despatched down to the chicken farm and picked up a couple of replacements, Doris (another Marans) and Wilma (a red one). They have settled in pretty well. We have even had a couple of eggs from one. We think it is the red as the black last time took months before she was laying. Na is a bit fed up because we haven’t let her out of the pen yet because we need to get the others acclimatised to their immediate surroundings first. We also don’t want them laying eggs anywhere apart from the nesting box.

So what happened with Bertie? We don’t know. His breed’s whole raison d’etre is to guard anything that “belongs” in a recognised boundary, in this case, our house and garden-at least that bit that is fenced in. Well that’s proved to be a load of bunkum. Perhaps Bertie is the exception that proves the rule as far as a Maremma’s qualities are concerned.

If you want him, we’ll also throw in some dog food and possibly a couple of cats, free, gratis and for nothing. Now that’s a good deal. He’s also fully vaccinated for another year against rabies and the usual dog diseases.

La D has just informed me that Bertie is not for sale at any price. I did say I know that and that is why I am offering him for free. I am unable to print her response as most likely the paper will combust!

Looks like this is what we need, a bit of self defence:

Weather

Turned cold and wintry again over the last couple of days. Had quite a bit of snow yesterday morning but it didn’t hang around. More snow and cold winds forecast for the next few days. Brrrrr. Have to make sure we’ve got some firewood ready.

Other things

Shame about the Bahrain GP, but totally understandable.

Shame about the

Ireland

–

France

result. It just makes me think that 3 points for a penalty for minor infringements is too much. For a vicious foul/dirty play, fair enough. I think they should reduce the points to 2 or even 1 so that tries really do count for much more of a side’s points. I will be sending my three centissimi’s worth to the RFU and IRB. Come on

England

and

Italy

this Saturday and

Ireland

on Sunday.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-02-14T17:27:00.001+01:00

Happy Valentine’s day!

Hope you all remembered. I did. I’m in need of a few brownie points. Always am. Better to have a few banked instead of always chasing for them I think.

So, what have we been up to.

Not a lot really.

We’ve booked to go to Venice as our birthday presents to us both. Got a couple of really cheap rail tickets and have booked a lovely little “pensione” not far from St Mark’s square. We’re going up just after Carnivale finishes. The prices at least double at Carnivale time. It’s a bit ridiculous if you ask me.

The tickets for the opera season at Sferisterio in Macerata came on sale about a week ago and we have booked there for our wedding anniversary.

We don’t seem to go out anywhere apart to celebrate our birthdays and anniversary. Still, it makes it all the more special. If we were going out every week, it would begin to pall a bit, we think. Anyway, it suits us.

Although having said that we are going out for meal this Thursday with some friends who are celebrating having lived in Italy for 5 years. That should be fun.

Oh yes and I nearly forgot, we are going out to Saturday lunch to some friends, they are the one’s who have Lola, a Bertie-type dog. She is lovely. We think Bertie is deeply in love with her as when our friends first bought her round with them, Bertie’s nose was virtually inserted where the sun doesn’t shine for whole time of their visit. V embarrassing! Never work with children and animals.

Orti and other things

All the vegetable patches are now ready to be planted. We have turned them, fertilised them and are now just waiting for the appropriate time to sow. It should start pretty soon.

We have our potatoes “chitting” in the potting shed. La D has ordered some new seeds that we are going to try this year. We’ve got some scallions (spring onions), beetroot, swede and asparagus, that we going to try. So, a bit more experimentation.

All the animals are fit. Bertie has had his annual Rabies jab and his other vaccination booster. He does not like going to the vet, at all. It takes both La D and myself to hold him whilst he has having his jabs. I’m sure they don’t hurt him, he just doesn’t like being there. Poor la D got nearly knocked out as he whipped his head up at one point as he was struggling.

We have some new neighbours moving in soon. Another Albanian family, who, if I understood someone properly, are going to try and make a go at growing tomatoes commercially. This of course may be a load of bollocks and I have completely mis-heard/mis-translated what I was told. Only time will tell. I’ll keep you informed.

The other thing is that there will be more people for Bertie to bark at. Doh! He is a bit noisy.

In her own words

We were watching something on television the other day about some people being stuck in an impossible position in a foreign jail.

La D tut-tutted and said, “Those poor people. They must have felt they were in perjury ”.

Do you know, I’m still smiling at one.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-01-24T17:27:00.001+01:00

Fresh Lemons

La D’s mum and dad bought us a lemon tree about two years ago. We’d given up hope of ever having lemons from it. The flowers would come and the fruit would follow. The thing was the fruit was ever only small and green. It would never get large and yellow. Well, we now have some lemons. They aren’t very big but boy oh boy are they lemony! The wonderful aroma that comes from them when you cut into the fruit.

La D is terribly fond of a G&T and now that we can make one with our own lemons she is even more stirred up to become a professional G&T tippler! Mind you, it won’t be a big move. Ha, ha.

The odd thing is the timing of the fruit. Very strange, but very welcome.

Big Egg!

The girls are doing very well, even in this bitterly cold weather. They are still cranking out three a day. That is apart from the other day when only two eggs were in the nest.

Oh well, we thought, it is cold so it’s not surprising that one of them hasn’t laid an egg.

However the next day there were three eggs again, but one of them was a whopper as this picture shows.

And it turned out to be a double-yoker. It was as delicious as all the others the chicks are laying for us. We really can’t get through all the eggs they produce for us but our friends and neighbours are very grateful!

La D is still at it

These are two classic La D verbal faux pas (what is the plural of faux pas? I don’t know either, so just make up your own!)

You may remember that I was given a great little gadget that measured the temperatures inside and outside and also gives pressure readings. Of late we have been looking at the temp outside – I don’t really know why as we can see it’s cold and also if you were to put your nose just outside the door, it would probably be frozen in a few seconds

However, the pressure monitor displays an upwards arrow and a sun when the pressure is on the rise and a downward arrow along with clouds when the pressure is on the way down.

There is also a humidity indicator. It displays a number corresponding to the percentage of humidity.

Well, the other day La D was looking at this little weather station and she looked at the humidity figure and announced, “Do you know L’uomochifa, the humidity today is 56 miles per hour.”

As often in these cases of La D’s misunderstanding, I was quite mystified for a few microseconds and then painfully trying not to show the humour that was bubbling up inside.

“Hmmm.” I managed in quite a high pitched way.

A side long glance by La D was enough for me to grab my inner desire with an iron fist and hold it, tight.

The other one was a beaut of a malapropism

Can you spot the difference?

We were walking with Bert and saw a couple of engineers on the roads taking measurements for something or other.

“I wonder what those men do with those troglodytes L’uomochifa?”

“Non lo so (I don’t know) my darling,” I said “But I think you mean theodolites.”

“Do I? Alright, what are those theodolites doing with those troglodytes?” She grinned. She’s playing me, I thought.

Doh. I give up. Well, not altogether.

A posto.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2011-01-13T18:19:00.000+01:00

Felice Nuovo Anno Tutti!

This means Happy New Year all, in Italian, as if you couldn’t guess.

Well, what have we been up to? Not a lot really.

We have had Bert’s sister with us again for a week whilst her owners, M&S, went to

Austria

with M’s parents. They went to look into some family history as it has only come to light quite recently that M’s father’s father was not his real father, but somebody else altogether who died in WW2.

They had a revelatory few days and have discovered a whole chunk of family they did know existed and of course vice versa. Fascinating.

Family

Some news on the family front. My eldest boy and his wife are going to have a baby. This will be their first (and last?). They have waited quite a while but both are getting on, in terms of having babies that is, and also his wife is almost 40 so I suppose they didn’t want to leave it any later if they were going to start a family. Also he has been so busy whizzing up and down motorways and things for his job and she has been running stables and been very involved with horse jumping things, that we are quite surprised.

Anyway, many congrats to them.

So, we will be grandparents again. The child is due at the end of June.

Also we have just been informed that my nephew is getting married in the Autumn. We have met his fiancé when they both came over and stayed with us in 2009. She was part of the crew of a boat in a Trans- Atlantic yacht race a couple of years ago.

So many congrats to them too!

My nephew’s dad, my brother, has just moved. He was living up a mountain about 250 miles from Seattle on the west coast of the

USA

and he now lives 3000 miles east in Maine on the Eastern Seaboard. Apparently, whilst loving the area, he and his wife got fed up being so far from any services and suffering from the extreme winters and the extreme summers. Although they did know this when they moved there seven years ago. It took them ten days to make the journey and the trip was not without interest. At one stage they had to drive through a proper blizzard!!.

My brother now knows a sure fire way of putting on weight. Drive across

America

! The only eateries he ever came across were those that sold burgers and fries. Very comforting but not too good for the waistline and scales.

Foraging

In an effort to eke out our wood supply for the fire in the kitchen, I have been doing some foraging in our woods at the bottom of the garden. It’s brilliant. There is quite a lot of dead wood, big branches, that have fallen from the trees whether in a bit of wind or just through age.

I go down there with my wheel barrow, bow saw – La D doesn’t like me to use my chopper too much - and a length of old TV aerial cable and cut up loads of this wood. The reason for the cable is that the timber is very light and I can stack the barrow really full of it without making it too heavy to push up the hill. The problem is then one of stability. This is where the cable comes in. I just keep going under the barrow and over the load with the cable, tie it down tightly and I can then easily transport my spoils up to the wood shed by the house. Free fuel. Excellent.

It makes very good fire starting material as well as being useful to get the fire going again if I have forgotten to keep it fed. I have to admit I do do this occasionally and then I incur the wrath of “she who must be obeyed” and I’d rather not invite her displeasure.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-12-23T17:00:00.002+01:00

BUON NATALE E SERENO ANNO NUOVO A TUTTI
Merry Christmas and have a peaceful New Year to all

Do ensure you have an ample supply of wine to toast all your absent friends and family. Let's just hope there aren't too many absent or you might end up on the floor!!

Whoever you are, wherever you are are, have a cracking Christmas and New Year.

L'uomo chi fa and La D

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-12-17T15:36:00.000+01:00

Chickens do not make good spies ... continuing the spy theme stated last week

Following the olive picking, the next job was to prune. Now in the past we have always waited till February or March to do the pruning, but this year we have seen many people pruning as they pick, so we thought we would do the same. The other thing that has had an impact on our decision was that we have had loads of what we call “sproutings”. These are new growths on the trunk and limbs of the tress. Often a few together. They grow rapidly and get in the way of picking as well of course as taken away goodness that would otherwise go to the berries. We have had this the last two years and have been wondering whether it has anything to do with our pruning effectively in Spring when the sap is rising. Anyway, we’ll have to wait and see.

So, there we were chatting away, snipping and sawing and getting our lovely olive trees into better and better “goblet” shapes. We let the chickens out as they are all laying now and love to poddle about the middle garden where most of the olive trees are. They followed us about from tree to tree, which made me think that they would be bloody useless as spies. They are so obvious. Why did that thought come into my mind? I have no idea.

I said to La D, “Darling. Do you think that chickens would make good spies?”

I can’t really describe the look she gave me. She stopped pruning, slowly lowered her pruning arm and had this look of utter disbelief in her face.

“What are you talking about Luomochifa? Of course they wouldn’t make good spies they’re chickens. How could they possibly use all those gadgets that Q comes up with? Let alone drive those super cars and boats and go scuba diving. Can you imagine a chicken with a diving mask on and a little oxygen bottle on their back? No of course you can’t you moron. Get on with the job Luomochifa. Now.”

Her witty response really threw me. She’s playing me at my own game,…. and winning!! She shouldn’t be having these wild, surrealistic thoughts. Damn.

Just then I looked around for our potential chicken spies only to see that they had disappeared. What did it mean? Could they understand what we were saying and decided to show us that there might be a future section in MI6 just for chickens?

Where were they? Suddenly out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of brown amongst the bamboo. I looked harder and sure enough there were the three of them clucking and scratching about round the bottoms of the bamboo, looking very nonchalant, I thought. Just a quick glimpse over in our direction every now and then. I think they might be leading us on a bit, making themselves out to be more stupid than they really are. But then again ……..

See what I mean? What do you think?

Snow

We have had some snow and very cold weather like a lot of Northern Europe. It was quite funny the other morning I went down to let the chickens out and there was about 10cms of snow. I opened the coop hatch and tried to put the steps up so the chicks to get down and as usual they were onto the steps before I had attached them to the coop. The first one rushed down and stopped abruptly at the end as she just noticed that there was all this white stuff where the ground should be. The second one bowled down the steps and bashed into the first one. The third one did the same and crashed into the second. The upshot was they all fell off the steps and onto the snow. They were very taken aback. It was very amusing. It looked like a chicken pile up.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-12-10T16:59:00.000+01:00

The third chicken is laying. I repeat, the third chicken is laying

No it’s not some sort of code that spies might use when they meet their contact. It is a fact. Our last chicken has started to lay at long last. She is laying consistently since last Saturday. Brilliant. Of course we are now coming to the stage where we have too many eggs for ourselves and we can give some away to neighbours and friends. But that’s good.

Since they are all laying we have now let the chicks come out into the middle garden. They really love it. There is loads to explore and lots of green things, as well as insect, for them to feed on.

It has taken some while. About six months. But there we are.

Breezy

We went out to do some shopping yesterday and every time we got out of the car the wind would start to gust. Funny because it wasn’t the least bit windy when we left the house. As we drove back and turned into our lane the trees were swaying and the leaves were swirling all around the place. We got back to house to find the little greenhouse had disappeared! We found it eventually. There were broken pots and plants and soil spoils all over the place. The bottom of the stairs was covered in about 4 inches of leaves – at one point Bertie thought they would make a good bed, see picture.

Bertie on a bed of leaves. Doesn’t sound too appetising thank goodness!

Large pieces of corrugated iron had been blown across the garden. There were also a couple of corrugated iron sheets that we had used in the walls of the chicken pen that had become detached and were flapping about in the wind. It was terrible. It was aright mess.

Of course there was no point in trying to tidy up in those winds as you’d just be, literally, pissing into the wind. And you know what happens then!

Fortunately the gazebo frame was standing nice and rigid and erect. Good, I thought. Because we haven’t got the top on, the frame is so thin, the wind should just blow round it.

A little while later, La D popped her head round the door and said, “Luomochifa. What was that you telling me about the gazebo frame? About how resilient it is in the wind. Well that’s a load of b******s my old mucker (she does love to put on a bit of a mockney accent now and again) because it’s now lying all twisted and torn.”

I rushed to the window and gazed down on the unedifying spectacle.

“What a mess,” I said

“Are these things really meant to last more than a season?” La D asked in a bored fashion. “We do seem to get through them Luomochifa.”

“We do, my darling. We do.” I replied. However, there is a little bit of an upside in this and that is that the cover was very thin and didn’t provide much protection from the sunlight, whereas the previous one did. So next year we will have to get one with a little more protection. Besides I was bored with this one anyway. So there.

Weather

V strange. Yesterday in the massive breeze, our little outside temperature guage registered, wait for it. Are you ready? 25.5°C. 9th December. 25° plus? Can hardly believe it. It felt so warm. Tomorrow’s forecast is about 3°.

Weird

Christmas

Still nicely understated here compared to the

. Just about to see the Christmas “thing” get really underway now. Very lovely.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-12-04T16:31:00.000+01:00

The olive oil is in!

We managed to get all our olives picked by Thursday lunchtime. Dodging the showers and morning dews was a bit precarious. Mustn't pick them when wet. Nipped up to the olificio and was greeted with no activity whatsoever. Oops, we thought. Are we too late for pressing?
Wasn't really a problem. At the end of the picking and pressing season, it is normal for them to group customers pickings as it costs quite a bit of money to run the presses, so they don't want to have to gear things up just for one customer a few hundred kilos of olives. So we arranged to go back yesterday afternoon about 3:30 to tie in with some other customers he had already arranged.
When we arrived there again yesterday, we met one of our neighbours along with one of his grandsons who has some learning difficulties. He had been picking since the beginning of November and he told us that this last lot brought his total up to 3500 kilos!!! That's about 650-700 litres. That's a lot of oil. We expect they must either give some away or sell it.
He was the customer ahead of us. When it was his turn, they poured all his olives into the hopper and the process was started. After a while the miller asked us to bring ours in and put in onto the scales. 212 kilos, minus the weight of the boxes, 14 kilos, gave us a grand total of 198 kilos, about 30 kilos more than the last time. Excellent.
I was busy looking at all the fantastic machinery at the mill when La D tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Should he be doing that?" and pointed at our neighbour's grandson who had just tipped one of our boxes of olives - about 20 kilos worth - into the hopper on top of his grandfather's berries.
Fortunately one of the mill workers also saw this and stopped the lad from putting any more of our berries into the hopper. The man looked at us and shrugged his shoulders. He then spoke with the capo and together they took our empty box and disappeared outside for a few minutes and returned with a full box! No idea where he kept his secret stash of olives but thank goodness he had one. So we were back to full weight.
The grandfather apologised for the boy who looked very embarrassed. We said not to worry. What else could we have said? The poor lad didn't know he wasn't helping.
Soon it was our turn to empty all our olives into the beast. They get taken up a conveyor from the hopper. They are then vibrated as they pass through a blower which gets rid of any stray leaves. From there they go into a great macerator and get mulched up. The mill has two of these so each customer gets only the oil from their own berries. Whilst this is going on the previous customer is getting his oil at the end of the production.
The colour of freshly pressed olives is a fantastic sight. It's almost fluorescent green. It's is quite beautiful, at least to our eyes.
We brought our containers over. We had brought a 20 litre jerry can and two 5 litre glass wine flagons. I had bought the second flagon just in case, as I did not expect to get any more than 23-25 litres. The jerry can got filled way past the 20 litre mark, then we went onto the fist glass flagon. That got brimmed. Then onto the second flagon. It was filling up quickly. La D and I couldn't believe it. The capo asked us for another flagon, but we hadn't got one. He rushed off and brought another glass flagon from somewhere in the mill.
"You'll have to replace this, OK?" he said to me. "Si, si. Grazie mille." I replied. The oil just finished pouring when this third flagon was pretty much up to the brim. We had 37 litres of beautiful greeny-yellow freshly milled olive oil from our own berries.Fan-bloody-tastic! It cost us €40.00. that's €1.10 per litre of "real" Extra Virgin Olive Oil. Wow, were we chuffed to bits.
Now I've just got to get on with the pruning.

Ciao. mantenere la fede. A posto

2010-12-01T10:17:00.001+01:00

I can’t believe a month has gone by

Last month has pretty much been all about La D’s mum. La D had to go over again and sort out her mum’s situation. We bought her a one way ticket as she wasn’t going to leave until she had sorted it out.

The long and short of it is that her mum is unable to live at home any more. La D, together with her dad and, with the support of her siblings, have managed to get her out of hospital and into a very lovely nursing home close by.

The processes and protocols that La D had to go through have, to be honest, quite daunting, especially as for more than half the time, all the parties involved seemed to be working on the same objective but with different scripts! Not helpful when you are trying to deal with something like this.

The hospital’s nursing care was not good. La D’s mum was passed around from pillar to post, with no-one really knowing what to do with her. Of course all this time her physical and mental health was deteriorating as there was little interaction by the various staff. It was a very poor nine weeks for her and for the family.

The nursing home staff are a very different bunch. OK you may say, they only have to deal with people like La D’s mother, but there was nothing stopping the hospital staff to give a little more thought and time to her when she was in their care.

Anyway there is no more to be done.

I flew out a few days ago and we did a bit of family visiting, which was fun. We got back on Sunday leaving a very chilly

(no snow encountered thank goodness) to return to a cold and very rainy Le Marche. Brrrrrrrrr.

We collected the chickens on the way home from some good friends who looked after them and who gave us a welcoming bowl of soup bread and cheese. Wonderful.

We got unpacked, put the heating on, put the chicks in their pen and then went to collect the Bert.

He was ecstatic to see us, especially La D as he hadn’t seen her for three weeks.

More refreshments were offered to us and gratefully accepted.

Got back home, had a lovely hot meal and glass of wine and then collapsed into bed, pretty pooped. It was going to be a busy day tomorrow too.

Olives

Because of all the goings on in the

we still have to pick our olives. November is the picking season around here so we are at the end of the picking time.

Well we were out at first light and apart from a quick coffee and some soup and bread for lunch we worked until we couldn’t see the olives dropping onto the net. We had bagged about 140 kilos and reckon there is probably about another 50-60 kilos on the remaining trees. The weather was great. Windy and sunny.

Since Monday evening it has been p***ing down and no more have been picked.

We are hoping that by this afternoon the rain will have cleared off and we can pick the remainder. We really want to get the olives pressed by the end of the week. Here’s hoping…….

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-11-05T12:23:00.001+01:00

Hunters

The hunters are out again. Lots of bangs and barking dogs. Although the bangs and the barks seem to be less that last year. We commented on this with some friends and they confirmed that this was their thoughts too. They have had some near misses with Italian cacciatore (hunters) in the past and are therefore quite conscious of the apparent lessening of hunting activity.

What was it Oscar Wilde was quoted as saying about those who hunted foxes:

“The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”

Bit different here though with local wild boar being a sought after meat. It is very nice I must say.

Plans, plans, plans

We arranged for a geometra (sort of a house-engineer come designer, come pretty much-everything-else-to-do-with-houses-apart-from-building-them chappie or chappess) to come round and have a look and a chat about what we would ideally like to end up doing to Casa Grotta.

Very nice bloke. Suffered from a stroke last year, but he can’t be more than mid-forties. Speaks fluent English which of course is fantastic for us.

So we are having some plans drawn up. The next step would be seek planning permission from the comune with the following step being actually to do something. Gulp. The permissions cover things like extending the size of the property (which we aren’t) and change of use of rooms (which we are as we have a very long earth floored room that was used to keep livestock on the ground floor. As we do not intend to continue that tradition we want to have the room as living space. We have to get permission to do that. Odd I know, but that is what you have to do)

You might well ask, “How are you going to pay for all this?” A very good question. Our thinking runs along the lines that if we have a proper, drawn-up plan (which won’t be very expensive at all and is essential to doing anything), and we have the correct permissions from the comune (again which we believe won’t be very expensive), then we will be in a position to start just as soon as we are able to fund some work.

I hasten to add that there is no time limit being put to this.

I am working on a couple of income-generating schemes, such as forging grand masters (unfortunately I am a lousy painter, especially in oils) nobbling race horses (I know nothing about horses) and last but not least, major frored and embesselement (difficult to have success with spelling this bad).

Should any of you know of anything that I might turn my hand too with a modicum of success, please do let me know. The more legal the better.

Good Blooper.

Using the word embezzlement just now reminds me a great La D blooper.

We were talking about someone who had really told a very exaggerated tale about his goings on and La D remarked that he had really embezzled his story! I did say to her that I thought the word she meant was embroidered, but she convinced me that embroidered was only a form of needle therapy. I have the puncture marks to prove it!!

La D’s mum

Some change. Still in hospital. Will report later

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-10-27T16:57:00.000+02:00

Family problems cont’d ….

Poor La D’s mum has not improved much, if at all, since she went into hospital a month ago. The family is, as you would expect, rallying round as best they can to support her and their dad.

La D has been trying to get the hospital to “speak with one voice" as there have been numerous times when one nurse says one thing and the next nurse completely contradicts the first one. It is so frustrating for La D and the rest of the family.

However, La D is doing her famous Freya, Queen of The Valkyries, impression and leading the family into battle. Heads will roll, and not all the way to Valhalla either. She’s guiding the charge from 1200 miles away against obfuscation and lack of progress on her mum’s behalf. She can’t do any more. We’re rooting for you ma.

A disgusting sight

We popped over for coffee yesterday to our friends who took two of the kittens back in September. They also have a pup like Bertie-dog called Lola, and of course this was the real reason we went (no, not really).

You have to drive up a pretty old dirt road before you reach their drive. Just as were about 50 metres from the drive entrance, at the side of the road there was a fully grown Bertie-dog eating a full size sheep. Honestly. The sheep had most of its ribs showing and the dog was pulling bits out of the sheep’s stomach. The dog’s front was covered in blood. It really was disgusting.

We told our friends what we had seen, and they told us that apparently the farmers give the dogs a sheep that has died as food for them. It really is totally weird. Here is a breed of dog whose sole purpose in life is to guard sheep with their life, which is what they do. Then if one of their charges dies, they eat it. It’s almost seems like a form of cannibalism.

Anyway. Lola. What a cutie she is. Not shy at all. Very playful. Very good at sitting and lying down (Bertie doesn’t do lying down!) but not brilliant at coming back yet. She had had all her jabs and stuff so we are going to introduce her to Bertie soon.

Both La D and myself were taken with her coat. It’s still fluffy and she has, what you could say of a human first thing in the morning, “bed hair”.

This morning I unearthed a picture of Bertie taken when he was four months and it’s quite extraordinary. He looked so much like Lola looks now. I probably put this on the blog at the beginning of last year, but here it is again.

Gardening matters

It certainly does. No, what I mean is things to do with the garden. We are getting it ready for the Winter now and putting to bed most of the orti. We have planted some peas, broad beans and last week-end, onions. But we are doing lots of tidying up. Hopefully there will be a bonfire or two with the old vegetation.

The olives are looking good. Most of them are nice and plump and we should be picking around mid-November all being well.

Weather

Up and down. We have been having our coffee breaks and lunch outside apart form the last two days. When the clouds aren’t there, it’s gloriously warm in an Autumnal way if you get my drift. But at nights the heating is needed, as well as the fire in the kitchen. Very pleasant indeed.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-10-22T12:33:00.002+02:00

“Cats! What are they good for? Absolutely nothing. Say it again”

(With a nod to Edwin Starr for his song, “War! What is it good for ……….”)

La D was preparing a salad for us the other day and she went to get the salad spinner that we have. You know the sort of thing. It has a plastic basket into which you put lettuce, wash it and put into a slightly larger container. You then put on a special lid, spin the basket and it throws off the water and dirt from the lettuce.

She brought it from the pantry and into the kitchen and lifted the lid. There was then a piercing shriek from La D as a small furry rodent jumped out of the spinner and scurried across the top towards the sink.

“Oh my God. Oh my God. It’s a mouse!” she exclaimed. Now, I hadn’t actually seen the event but when La D uses her vocal chords at this pitch and intensity, it is a foolish person who doesn’t respond within a nano second to her cries.

“Where did it go?” I asked.

“I don’t bloody know and I don’t care. Just get rid of it. NOW!” I was ordered as La D went into the living room and shut the door hastily.

At this time we had the two kittens we were looking after for their new owners. As they had been kept inside, we thought we should do the same for the two weeks we were having them. They were in the kitchen with me so I had strength on side to capture the little sod who had had the effrontery to extract me from my reverie of whatever I was doing at the time I received La D’s summons.

I finally saw it under the cooker. On my hands and knees I used a long pasta rolling pin to try and push it out. It worked. The mouse shot out and tried to get under the back door. At this point one of the cats saw and jumped at it. He managed to grab it but too loosely and the mouse scrabbled away. However, it seemed to me, it dawned on the kitten that this was the sort of thing it was put on this earth to do. Get rid of mice. He dashed after it and this time got a good hold. The mouse had been captured.

“It’s OK La D. Marlon has caught it.” I shouted through the door. Perhaps I should explain about Marlon’s owners naming convention. They have a dog called Brando. They wanted a cat, a male cat, so they could call it Marlon. With me so far?

When they saw the kittens they fell in love with another one so took two of them. The little female they took was to be called Sophia. After a little while, they knew we had had some more kittens and asked if they could have a third one. Mad, I know.

Guess what they were going to call it? Yep, Loren. You just don’t mess with other peoples’ naming conventions, especially if they relieve you of unwanted kittens, no matter how bizarre you may think them.

Anyway, back to the story. Marlon had this mouse firmly in his mouth with the mouse’s tail hanging down. The mouse was no longer. It had passed, as they say. I managed to put my foot on the tail and gradually moved my foot neared Marlon’s mouth so in the end he had to relinquish his catch. I was able to put a container over the mouse, and no, it wasn’t the salad spinner, put some card underneath and take the wretched little rodent and chuck it over the hedge. A little undignified I appreciate but I didn’t see anybody clamouring for a proper funeral.

La D came out of the sitting room, fairly cautiously I should add. We both gave Marlon a lot of attention as he definitely deserved it.

Now the point about the title of this tale is that we regularly feed 5 to 6 cats and not one of them had prevented our house from being invaded by vermin! So what is the use of having the blighters?

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-10-14T09:39:00.001+02:00

Family problems

Unfortunately La D’s mum had a fall a little while ago and broke her hip. She has had a new ball and socket fitted, so that is good. The problem is really with her pre-existing medical condition, it is making it hard for her to have a quick recovery, physio and stuff.

La D went over a couple of days ago to give her dad some support and to try and help move her mum’s rehab on a bit.

I just hope she doesn’t make the national news for threatening and then machine-gunning some very sweet but totally hopeless clinicians. Some of the stuff that they been saying is quite unbelievable. They are supposed to be trained to “nurse” people and get them up and running, not just commiserating, albeit very nicely, with relatives. Life can be pretty s*** sometimes.

Then there were none

The last kitten went to his new home yesterday. We called the little fellah Gizmo, after one of the gremlins in the film of the same name. All the other kittens had very erect ears on the side of the top of their heads. Little Giz’s ears were lower down and tended to stick out more than up. But what a character he is. Although he does have very poor table manners. He “talks” as he eats. Really strange but amusing. Here are a couple of photos taken at the week-end. I am sure he will enjoy his new home, with two more of our ex kittens and also a Maremma like Bert. More of the same for him really.

Weather

Pretty grooby actually. Gorillas in the Mist job at the moment. Hopefully picking up the week-end. Dogs don’t like it either as I’m not going out in this. They have a big enough garden to run around in if they really want.

Birthday Boy

Had our first video call (Skype) with number 4 son, Ed, on his 20^th birthday last Saturday. It was brilliant. He is looking very well. He was able to show us round his room in the halls of residence at Leeds. It was about 2 in the afternoon and I asked what the weather was like. He reached over his laptop and pulled open the curtains!!!!!

“Not too bad,” he announced.

“Just got up.”

Ahhhhh, the youth of today.

He then proceeded to get dressed in his costume for partaking in the Otley Road Run. It was a giant babygro that he had bought from Primark for £7.50! He looked absolutely daft in it. He was obviously determined to have a good laugh. The Otley Road Run is in fact just an old fashioned pub crawl, down a road called Otley Road. Apparently there are 20 pubs along it and the object is, … need I explain more. I do hope his Sunday morning headache and biliousness wasn’t too bad!! I will have to look at Facebook to get some photographic evidence of the night’s proceedings.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-10-07T12:50:00.000+02:00

Casa Grotta New Year!

Yes, it’s that time again. La D and I embark on our fourth year at Casa Grotta. A little wiser, a little poorer, a little older but …… we’re still here and I am still in my shorts. La D refuses to got out with me at the moment because people keep staring at this strange Inglese in his shorts whilst they are dressed in coats, hat, scarves and boots.

The weather is actually glorious. We are still eating out in the morning and lunch times. Wonderful.

I will try and be a bit better at regular reporting from this idyllic corner of central

Italy

Relly Season officially closed

Last month we had my big sis and her husband over. Had a most enjoyable time. A great walk in the Sibillinis, some market days and general chill out time. Much needed by my sister as her son and his family are emigrating to

New Zealand

and she is going to find it difficult whilst she gets used to their absence. Of course they are planning to visit as soon as possible, but it’s not particularly cheap and she hates flying. She has problems with her balance. In fact she confided to me that she has difficulty walking across Norwich market, which is on a slope, with out feeling a little woozey. I tried to suppress a smirk when thinking of a few seconds crossing an English market compared to a 12000 mile journey to the other side of the world.

Cats are gone ….. hopefully

We think we have found homes for the latest batch of gattini. It’s been a bit like a menagerie here over the last couple of weeks. We have had our friend’s dogs to stay whilst they went back to the

. Also we have had to look after a couple of the kittens we re-homed because their owners had to go to the

too. Then we have the three new ones. Agghhhhhh.

I only signed up for a dog, Bertie. He has been brilliant. He seems to love all the animals. Let’s just hope he doesn’t want to develop a meaningful relationship with the cinghiale.

Electricity

Whilst all this animal looking after was going on, we had a major problem with the house electrics ……. we suddenly didn’t have any.

I managed to rig up wires and adaptors all over the house, as a temporary measure until we were able to get an electrician out. What a great bloke. He and his assistant managed to locate the problem and partial rewire the house in three hours. I suppose it is one of the benefits of having wiring not channelled into the walls. The old wiring was desperate. We were without “proper” electricity for 5 days. It was a testing time, but La D and myself came through it stronger than before. I have a few bruises to prove it!!!!!!!

Chickens

We still have three chickens, which is a positive, but eggs are slow to appear. We are having one a day and an occasionally another one, but we are nowhere near to having three a day. All a bit worrying.

Autumn

Ahhhh. I can almost smell the smoke, but La D has hidden the lighters. Bugger.

Still, lots to do in the garden without expiring before 10:00!

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-09-16T12:42:00.001+02:00

Cooking fats!

That’s not quite what I said, but move a couple of letters around and you get the exact exclamation.

It was La D’s turn to see to the zoo yesterday morning. I was just snuggling down in a lovely somnolence with pictures floating through my mind as I raced round Rascasse for the last time, just in front of the chasing pack on my final lap of Monaco, ready to take the chequered flag, when …….

“Out of bed, out of bed. Just you come and see this, L’uomo chi fa!.” La D bellowed in my ear.

I went to pull the covers over my head, I was only meters from the finish line and I so much wanted to win, when they were suddenly whisked away from my reach.

“Oh no you don’t. I want you out of bed now.” She got hold of one my arms and yanked me off the bed – she’s a powerful woman, La D .. ooooh, luvverly. Anyway. I was then frog marched to the back door and pushed outside.

“La D! La D!,” I exclaimed. “I’m buck naked!”

“I’ve never heard you called that before. I thought you were called L’uomo chi fa.”

“Oh yes. Very funny, not. It’s quarter to seven in the morning, I haven’t got a stitch of clothing on and you’ve forced me outside. Why?”

“Look. Look. You silly man,” La D said and pointed to a basket that she had left out for the adult cats to cuddle up in now all the kittens had gone. I knew it was a bad idea leaving some receptacle out that a cat can get into.

There, nestling in a corner were three more bloody kittens.

“Where the hell did they come from?” I asked no-one in particular.

“I think they must be Mum’s,” la D said. Mum has been living around here for as long as we have. She always gets pregnant twice a year, but we have never seen any kittens of hers. This year was no different and we have seen her bulging, twice. About four weeks ago she suddenly became thinner, so she must have had her litter somewhere. We did hear some small mewing coming from our neighbour’s gardens, but that was a few weeks ago and haven’t heard anything else since. Since she is feeding them, we can only conclude that they are indeed hers. But why bring them round to us? Maybe she sensed that the kittens we have just re-housed were OK here, and as they have now gone, perhaps we would like some more. I think Mum may only half a brain cell.

You can tell we are not best pleased, but what can we do?

La D has already broadcast the event via the Internet, with pictures, and we are hoping we can get shot of them soon.

Here is a picture of them, and, pulease, no “Ahhs, aren’t they sweet,” otherwise I think I’ll throw up.

Any other news

No! Too cross and grumpy. I mustn't take it out on the rellies though. Oh, bollocks, why not!

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-09-10T17:34:00.000+02:00

I can’t believe it was the 4^th August that I last broadcast some brief news items from the dizzy world of Casa Grotta.

After my second to last son visited with his girlfriend Meg, we had a bit of a break before the out-laws arrived. It was great to see Pip again and to meet Meg properly. We had a lovely relaxed time and a couple of good evenings out. Their time with us was over far too quickly, but never mind. We look forward to seeing them over here again when they can manage it.

So, what about the chickens you ask. Well. The last lot we got, the Three Weird Sisters really did turn out to quite odd. One of them started to loose her feathers at the bottom of her back. As a consequence the other two started to peck her. It was quite unsettling to watch. Anyway, she pegged out quite soon after we got them. So that was a good start. That left two. After about a week, one them suddenly went off her feet. It was though she had had a stroke or something. She’d no balance and had real difficulty moving around. The other one, sensing a weakness, started to peck at her. It’s obviously something hard-wired into them. After about a week, ten days, she was on her back with her legs in the air, and not in the rumpy-pumpy sense either. We were reduced to one. If the bloody fox doesn’t get them disease and pestilence seems to have a go. Are we cut out to have chickens?

La D and I had a good chinwag about it and decided to leave her on her own for a few days before we re-stocked, for the last time (?)

We bought another little brown hen and a little black one. This lot has now been called Tir-Na-Nog – the Celtic version of the Greek Elysium – so we are hoping they will stay young for quite a bit and be very happy and lay lots of eggs. We have two layers at the moment, the oldest one Tir and Na the young brown one. Nog seems a little unsure of the egg laying business but I’m confident that three a day will happen soon.

More Kittens

Yes, two of last year’s kittens gave birth. One had three and the other had one. As before they seemed quite happy to share mothers when it came to feeding time, so they have got off to a good start. What is even better is that through friends and Facebook, we have managed to home all four of them. What is really strange about it is that the people that have gone to both have dogs like Bertie! That is quite serendipitous. As the kits are so used to sharing their space and growing up with a big white dog, it’s not a shock to them. However, one the dogs is the same age as they are. We went to see her – Lola – and her proud owners yesterday to drop off their kittens. Lola is just adorable. Eight weeks of fluff. Her coat looks exactly like a lambs. All curly. We all think she must be pure breed, as she came from the sheep farmer next door who has about four adult Maremmas.

There were other litters of \kittens in the neighbourhood, but we don’t know what happened to them. We still haven’t heard from the comune about sterilising the cats. I am not that surprised though.

Opera

I really wanted to enthuse about our wedding anniversary treat but I can’t really. In the afternoon it p***ed it down but we were assured of a dry night. Ahem. We did our, by now, usual “passeggiata” round Macerata and bought a CD of the opera – I Lombardi della Prima Crociata (The Lombardys of the First Crusade) by Verdi. Found the fab pizza restaurant we had gone to two years ago and had a superb pizza and bottle of wine. Then we made our way to the arena, umbrella in hand, extra clothes in rucksack. What we noticed first was that how many of the audience were wearing Winter clothes. I was in shorts – well it was August and I’m English as someone remarked to me today in the shops as it happens. He said I couldn’t be mistaken for an Italian as I was wearing what only foreigners would wear in weather we are having today. That’s bye-the-bye.

So we huddled down, raided the rucksack and clambered into the few extra layers we had brought with us. The show started. To say it was a minimalist set would be like saying the Pope is a Catholic, a real no-brainer. It was just like a choral piece, but of course with more passion in the songs and a bit of moving about. The only set was a cross that they out up and put down. Wow! The set designer was definitely overpaid on this one.

The music was fabulous, it really was. But as a spectacle, well, it left us feeling even colder than we were. At half time, I hate to admit to you, we called it a night and went back home, with the heater in the car at full blast and Verdi blasting out of the CD player. Excellent.

Hordes of family descend

LA D’s sister, the Contessa and her family came over at the same time as the out-laws. La C and her entourage were staying a very lovely Agriturismo not far from us whilst ma and da were staying with us. We had a great time. La C and her brood were only staying a week but the out-laws stayed for what seemed like years but was really only 16 days. The weather was v hot. Sometimes too much and we had to retreat indoors to find somewhere that was less that 35° in the shade. Phew.

We have my sister and her husband arriving very soon. They have been given a list as long as your arm, as they are driving over so they have plenty of room. Ha, ha.

General outlook on growing matters

Very good. The toms seem never ending. We are making tomato sauce, which I have to say, is something quite special, tomato jam, which is extremely moreish, frozen tomatoes, tomato soup. We are even looking into trying to make tomato aeroplanes, musical instruments, children’s shoes from the skins and even little people as this photograph of an early prototype clearly shows.

Oh, yes, we are very inventive here at Casa Grotta.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-08-04T18:17:00.002+02:00

Sorry!

Sorry it's been a while, but it is the Summer you know.

Lots has been happening:

Weeds and veggies growing like billy-o
Inundated with rellies - more expected soon
Chickens dying
Kittens being born - yes, again
Off to the Opera tomorrow night
Hospital on Friday

It never ends.Of course, it does, I'm just being melodramatic.

But would I ever the utter the words, "But I've been that busy"? You know me. Of course I wouldn't. I'd rather die!!!!

I will return to some normality and regularity, soon, I promise.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-07-16T17:04:00.000+02:00

It’s almost too hot to blog

Happy Birthday to my brother!

Yes it’s my brother’s birthday today. Tricky Dicky’s only 63, but he looks 73 and tells me he feels 83!! I don’t know what to put it down to apart from whisky and loose women, although I’m not sure his wife would agree!!!! Moving on…….

Youngest son

Had a great time with the young lad and his girlfriend, Amy. Went to the beach, a market, all the usual stuff.

The first day after they arrived La D and I had to go off and help some people we know pack up as they were returning to the

Oooh it were hot work. I was sweating my socks off after about 6 seconds. But we got them packed up by about 11:00. We heard from them a couple of days later and they had arrived back in

England

after a good journey. I digress.

Ed and Amy took us out for a lovely meal at the Osteria del Lago in San Ruffino. Great meal. We took Bertie with us and gave him a good walk round the lake. He loves that walk and a lot of it is in the shade so it wasn’t too hot. He had a few dips in the lake too.

His girlfriend was very naughty and bought La D and myself a rather lovely bottle of wine. She asked me to choose a bottle for her to take home to her dad. Of course I naturally asked her how much she wanted to spend. Fortunately the wine I chose for her was at the lower end of her budget spectrum. You’ll see why later. Actually it is a lovely wine from the wine makers Antinori. A Chianti Classico called Peppoli. La D have eaten at their cantina in Florence, twice as it happens. It is essentially an enoteca, a wine bar/shop in English, but they serve food there using as much fresh produce from their estates all over

Italy

as they are able. It’s a fab experience.

At the back of the place they have models of all their vineyards (vigneti).

Anyway just as we were leaving to take them back to the airport, she presented us with the bottle and apologised for the little white lie about it being for her dad. As far as La D and myself were concerned she could tell as many of those type of white lies as she liked.

Yes we went to see U2 last Saturday night. Not the real U2 you understand, but a tribute band from Porto san Giorgio, called Babeface (I cannot see the link either)

They were really good. A girl from the audience, although I expect it was a bit of a put up job, went on stage with them to sing the duet that Bono does with Mary J Blige, One Love. It wasn’t half bad.

Where did we see them? We saw them in a municipal car park in a local town. The stage was the flat bed of a truck. Good night out. It was free too.

Weather Update

It’s frighteningly hot and looks as though it will continue for some time to come. My second boy who is coming over tomorrow wth his girlfriend, e-mailed last night and asked whether they should bring any jeans or coats. A couple of weeks back I sent him a link to the online weather forecast that we use here which have proved to be pretty good. If he had only looked at it he would have seen that the point of anyone bringing long trousers and coats here at the moment is that they thought they were coming to visit Dignitas.

The Bert just lies in the office all day sleeping. We take him out first thing in the morning every other day, but he just doesn’t run, he walks at a speed not much greater than ours.

Veggies.

Going well. Keeping the watering up.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-06-30T16:18:00.002+02:00

Weather?

Not half. 38°C under the gazebo at 3:00 in the afternoon yesterday. Phew!

It’s looking good for the next couple of weeks too. Too hot to do much after midday. Blog could become short for a while.

Rellies

We’ve got the round the world traveller arriving tomorrow, con sua regazza. Really looking forward to a good catch up and natter with the lad. Since he got back from his trip he’s been working as a labourer and will be able to go back to that when he returns from here. It’ll be good for his bank balance and his rugby prep too.

A week after he returns, his brother is coming out with his girlfriend, who we finally saw when we were over earlier this month. All good stuff.

The Weird Sisters

They are becoming more attuned to their new surroundings and are venturing out of the coop very readily. We are getting the occasional egg fro one of them. We think they are not that young and we should be getting eggs off all of them soon.

We have improved the pen again and we are so impressed with our work that we are going to write to the director of the last Mad Max movie to see if he would like to shoot a sequel in our hen-pen!

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-06-25T12:45:00.000+02:00

The Three Weird Sisters – Chicken Update

We welcomed The Three Weird Sisters aka new chickens, to Casa Grotta yesterday. La D is doing a Hecate impression and encouraging them to work on anti-fox potions.

For those of you who are completely foxed (excuse the pun) by what I’ve just said, I refer you to Shakespeare’s MacBeth.

They are incarcerated in their coop for the moment. La D and myself are putting up reinforcements around the pen today or tomorrow, before they start to come out.

Have just checked them and unfortunately one looks as though she is being pecked by the others. They have drawn blood. Poor sister. Hopefully it will stop soon.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-06-22T16:04:00.001+02:00

Sorry about that ......

I know it has been a long time, but, well, there are no excuses really. But there have been a few things happening.

The Good and The Not So Good

Just before we were about to go the

to see Sukie and the rest of the children and grandchildren, we were invited out to a birthday lunch for one of ur friends. We went to the Osteria del Lago at San Ruffino. Had a great time but half way through the meal, the heavens opened and the lightning and thunder started up. Upon our return home we found that there had been a power cut. We got the computer on but there was no Internet connection. Doh!

Eventually we got one of our friends to ring Telecom who informed him that the storm that had knocked out the ADSL facility on our line. Several days later, our nails bitten down to the quick through the sheer boredom of having to wait whilst we tried to do something online via a dial-up connection, Telecom appeared and checked our line here, at the house.

After a couple of minutes, he said, “Nah mate (in Italian of course), the line’s fine, your router’s f***ed though!”

Oh joy, we thought. Quickly decided to nip off to our nearest router shop, spent €60,00 and were back on line within the hour. That certainly helped us get tidied up before our trip.

Also, we found upon our arrival home from the birthday lunch, that Freddy Effing Fox had visited us, again. He couldn’t get the chickens out of the pen, so he just left the three bodies lying there while he made his escape. The wire fence was very bent were he had got in and out. Bastard. La D was devastated

I know I had said that that was going to be it if the fox came again, but we are going to give it one more go. Designs on a new sort of inverted Stalag begin tomorrow. Will keep you posted.

So we were then ready to fly off to

England

, all our jobs were up to date. A couple of hours before we were going to take Bertie over to stay with his sister, I found blood all over the kitchen floor. It was a lovely hot day and the outside door had been open. I thought that one of the cats must have got hold of some animal and was spreading its blood everywhere.

I went down the steps and there was more blood. I went into the office and there was blood everywhere!

Then Betie came round the corner leaving blood behind whenever he moved. He had a huge gash along the side of one of his back paws.

We groaned in unison. Checked it over and knew we were going to have to go the vets.

We were expected at Jess’ place at about 6:30 and the vet opened at 4:30, so we should be alright.

We arrived at the vets and fortunately there were no other animals waiting to be seen, but the vet we normally see, who speaks fluent English was not there, just her assistant. Anyway, he could obviously see what the problem was and started on Bertie straight away.

La D and myself were part of the surgical team. Holding the patient so he didn’t fall off the table (he’s so big!) in his anaesthetised state. We were there for almost two hours. Bertie had cut the connective tissue surrounding the bone and the vet had to do internal stitches and then external stitches. He also was going to have to wear one of those lampshade things to stop him licking the wound. Paid the vet’s bill of €94,00 and arrived at Jess’ place at 7:30.

Jess’ owners were fantastic. It was no problem leaving this dog that needed to have pills jammed down his throat and not allowed to mix with his sister and very bestest friend, Jess, whilst Jess’ owners had loads of things to do with guests and a wedding party. They really are brilliant people.

So off we went to the

. Travel was very good. Stopped off down South for a few days and then travelled North for a few more. Weather for most of the time was fab. Children and grandchildren were on top form, all apart from Sukie of course who, being only a couple of weeks old, found it difficult to discourse with her Italian-based grandparents. She seemed very calm and relaxed, probably because both of her parents are calm and relaxed. We were also fortunate to see Ed who had come back a few days early from his round the world trip, which was fantastic.

It was great to see them all.

Travel back was as uneventful as going out and we arrived back last Friday. There was an odd smell that greeted us as we opened the door. There must have been a power cut, judging by the smell, that had occurred the minute we left the house. Both the freezers were full of warm, very gone-off food. The fridge wasn’t much better. Bloody hell we thought. We cleared out all the mess and dropped it off at the amenity tip, or Isola d’Ecologia (sounds better than the “dump” doesn’t it?) on the way to pick up Bertie. He was in fine form and his stitches were intact and his wound clean and of a normal colour.

Phew. We’re exhausted. Just had time to stop off at a supermarket on the way home with Bertie to do some shopping for the weekend and of course for the freezer. Bah!

Weather or Not ….

The temperature yesterday, which was the start of Summer, was 12°C and it tonked down for over 24 hours!!! When we left to go to

England

, we passed a sign outside a chemists that displays the date, time and temperature. It read 36°C, and that was at 10:15 in the morning, with a cloudless sky above. Weird.

Just a little word play.

La D came up with a real corker the other day. Again it was when we were doing a crossword.

“An instrument used by engineers building a road” was the clue.

“I know, I know.” La D piped up. “A troglodyte.” They just keep getting better and better!

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-05-28T20:00:00.000+02:00

********EXCITING NEWS*************

Granddaughter has arrived!

Little Sukie Ella was born at 10:15 (UK time) this morning. She was delivered by C section after a few complications. She weighed in at 7 ponds 4 ounces. Both Sukie and her mum are doing well, so the father has reported.
Well done to them all.
I have a little bit of fingernail left!!!

Ciao

2010-05-28T12:44:00.003+02:00

Nail-Biting Time.

The latest granddaughter is nearly with us, nine days after her due date. Very early morning text messages have been received advising us of mum’s hospitalization and therefore imminent addition to the human race. It’s very exciting.

Wiltshire Winkers

We have just had a memorable time with our great friends, the WWs. The weather really cheered up for their stay which was fantastic. They took us for a beautiful meal at a restaurant called Da Rosa in the grounds of an Abbey. We had tried it before back in March to see if it was up to the required standard of our illustrious guests. It didn’t disappoint. There was also a huge sort of artisan and produce fair that was being held over four days. It was tremendous.

I think the highlight of their stay though was the afternoon and early evening spent playing a game called Cranium. If you don’t know it, it is an amalgam of Trivial Pursuits, Pictionary, Charades and a few others thrown in. It involves, miming, drawing things with your eyes closed, whistling or humming tunes, moulding plasticine shapes, all so that your team members have to guess what it is.

There are three levels of the game:

Standard: comprises board, questions, paper, pencils,, plasticine, as well as one glass and one bottle of wine per player.
Deluxe: same as standard but with two bottles of wine per player.
Platinum: I’m not sure anyone has ever played at this level and lived!

The Deluxe version takes longer to play than the Standard for fairly obvious reasons. This is the one we played. Men versus women.

We started at about 14:30 and continued to play, disturbing the flora and fauna all around us with a serious amount of noise, or din, if you want, until about 20:00.

I don’t think I have enjoyed myself and laughed so much as the last time I played this game, with, funnily enough, the same friends, on a cold February week-end in Lee, North Devon about five years ago.

What an afternoon. By the way, the women won ……. just.

The evening prior to their departure, we had a game of scrabble. Same pairings, but the women were very cocky and decided to give their team the name “Bellisime Bitches” – I think it was La D’s idea. Tacky I thought. Particularly as they won again. Bah.

Sadly their visit was fairly fleeting and they have now flown home. We are so looking forward to their company again, when ever that will be.

Bertie’s Sister

We’ve got Jess staying with us whilst her owners whizzed off to North Cyprus and Istanbul to watch the Turkish GP this week-end. Hope it is a good race. I did say I would probably see them in the stands. The GP is so under-audienced (is that a real term? I somehow doubt it) that they will be easy to spot as they will probably have a stand all to themselves.

Jess and Bertie just chase each other round and round till they conk out, sleep for a bit, they start all over again. Still it keeps them busy.

The World Traveller

Got news a couple of days ago that my son had managed to meet up with his uncle, my brother, in Seattle. He is having a whale of a time. He and his friends bought a car for US$1200 in Los Angeles and travelled almost 2000 miles up the east coast of the USA to Seattle. What a great thing to do. He’s off to Chicago for a few days, then on to New York before coming home.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-05-12T17:16:00.001+02:00

Weather or not?

It really doesn’t know what to do at the moment. It goes from bright blue skies to overcast and rain. We have to do our chores by the weather. That is the only planning tool we have.

We are getting some good growth from our veggies and have had the most succulent little fave (broad beans) which we eat with pieces of sheeps’ cheese called Pecorino. Simply divine. We have given some to friends who were very pleased.

Cats’ orgy-fest

The bloody cats are at it again. Bonking all over the place. We did contact our comune some months ago about having them sterilised. Apparently in this part of Italy at least, the comune will arrange for semi-feral cats to be neutered as long as you agree to look after them. Well that’s fine and dandy as long as they do arrange it. But along with many things, it all takes a bit of time. Meanwhile of course some of the older cats have been having litters when they could have been spayed a while ago.

I got so fed up with the noise the other morning that I got up and let Bertie out at about 5:30 with the intention of him running round the house putting the bloody males off their amorous – no, that’s far too good a term, savage is better - attacks. Not a peep from him. I think he must have paid them to watch ot something equally perverse. The noise went on and we had yet another interrupted nights sleep. La D does not take too kindly to being poorly slept. I can vouch for that.

Windy dogs

Yesterday we had some good friends over for lunch. They are the couple that own Bert’s sister Jess (she is in fact coming to stay with us for a few days while they go to Northern Cyprus and nipping over to Istanbul for the F1GP).

We were having a lovely light meal outside with the dogs running round each other and playing. They soon got fed up because of the heat and came to see us. Jess decided she wanted a stretch so she stretched out her front legs as far as they would go so her chest was almost touching the ground leaving her backside in the air, and then proceeded to do an enormous fart (La D said I must change this to "break wind") right by me. Honestly. Of course the others all thought it was highly amusing and started blaming me. What a cheek – excuse the pun.

Our parkland

I have decided that this year I will keep the third level of the estate cut. Last year I left it and then cut it once in late Autumn. Big mistake. Took me days to do it. So this year I am trying the opposite. It takes about 3 to 4 hours twice a month at the moment, which is OK and because it is predominantly up and down hill, good for my medical emergency status – I’m a diabetic you know.

So I took a couple of pics after it had been cut the other day. Looks rather good I think.

Countdown

Only about a week before the granddaughter arrives on the scene. I spoke to my son last night who informed me that his wife looks as though she is actually going to explode any minute now. Ooh, I do hope not.

Will keep you posted.

A quick pic of Bert keeping guard

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-05-05T11:40:00.000+02:00

It’s not just us.

The bloody fox has struck again. Our friends who have just got into chicken keeping have been hit by the BF. It came in the middle of the day and took the lovely Gilda (she is, or rather was, the French Black Copper Marans I talked about earlier.) They had taken to letting the hens out for a bit during the day so they could get used to scratching around and feeding outside their pen, just as we have done. It was a nice sunny day. The BF had a lot of front to come and take a hen in those circumstances, but perhaps he (or she) had some hungry kittens back at the den.
Our friends, as you can imagine, are pretty fed up. They are going to put a net over the run so in effect the hens(I assume they will be getting a replacement) will be caged in. They will let them out but only when they are in the garden too and can offer some form of protection from the predators through closeness.

Biters

I can’t believe it. I received my first insect bite yesterday as I was weeding the potato patch. It got me on the crease behind my right knee. I suppose it was my fault as I put on my sexy cut-off jean shorts as soon as I can so that my little (this the word that La D uses to describe my walking limbs) white legs can get some colour in them. This will allow me to wear shorts (proper shorts of course) when I go out and will not constitute a threat to the sensibilities of old women and young children who are of a nervous disposition. I have no desire to frighten other people through the display of my little white legs.
Anyway, back to the bugs. After I had slapped the back of my leg in the vague hope of killing the thing that was literally sucking the life-blood out of me, I noticed some more starting to “sniff me up” so to speak. Well I put paid to them alright.
I completely forgot the weeding and stood as still as I could and became a bug-killing machine. As soon as they landed on my skin or clothes, I let them settle in for a few seconds, you know to get them to drop their guard a bit and feeling smug, and then WHAM! BANG! TWHACK! KAPOW! There was blood, wing bits, pieces of fly all over my shorts, t-shit and legs and arms. It was a bloodbath.

At least that was my intention. I actually got one fly, and as she (yes, it’s normally the females of the species that is deadlier than the male) had not had time to dip her needle deep into my flesh and drink my crimson body fluid to satiate her vampiric desires, there was no mess just a crumpled fly on the earth after I had whacked her on my cut-off jeans.
Although clearly she won’t do that again, it’s her relations I am worrying about now. Gulp. I must get some stuff to spray on my naked limbs that they don’t like and hopefully they will leave me well alone. We’ll see. I do seem to attract them for some reason. La D says they like rotten flesh, I personally tend to believe they like tender meat. I’m sticking to that.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-29T12:19:00.000+02:00

Mechanical Noises and Smells.

February and March over here are months when the Italians do their tree surgery and felling. Gathering and providing timber for the following years stoves and boilers. The sound of petrol chain saws echoes all around us, even during the most inclement days, of which we have had a bucketful, believe me.

Come the end of March and into April, petrol driven noises continue unabated, but the engines are driving strimmers and brush cutters rather than saws. The notes are perceptibly different. Saws tend to either be idling or on full blast as they cut into the timber. Strimmers tend to be constantly up and down as the automatic clutch systems works to do their job.

I like the noise I must say. Sounds like busy insects, but then I am completely mad.

I do love the smell of freshly cut grass. I always have, even as a nipper as my father used to despatch me into the garden once a week during the season to mow the lawn. It was a fair old size, about three quarters of an acre. In fact it was a good job I liked cutting the grass because of the smell of it. I was given my first petrol driven mower at the age of three!!!! I think I should have sued my parents for mental and physical abuse, but I was too young to understand, and besides it was brilliant. No, only joking, it was dad’s mower all I had to do was use it.; and I was a bit older than 3. Enough.

Orioles and Hoopoes

The beautiful Orioles are back. La D heard them first last Monday and now we can hear them all the time. They have a lovely simple and distinctive song. Also the hoopoes are here again. We have not seen either of them but we hope to spy them soon.

Roxie is a strange bird

The two new chickens seem to be settling in ok, but Roxie often doesn’t want to come off the roost and go outside when we open up the coop in the morning. Velma, on the other hand, virtually jumps down before we have put up the steps for them. Quite odd. Still only one egg a day at the moment, despite having a couple for the first two days the new hens joined us. It does take a while for them to settle into a new home and environment.

Gazebo time

Yes, it’s that time of year. We were going to put the gazebo back up when the Winkers were going to be here, but when we knew they would be delayed we didn’t and to be frank the weather has been that rubbish, we haven’t bothered. But the weather is much brighter now. It has been since Sunday really. It is lovely and warm and we have been eating outside everyday this week, so the gazebo had to go up. Excellent. It’s great.

Our dining room table – when not in use

As I have previously stated the weather has been terrible for a long time now. It’s been so bad sometimes that even Bertie has been known to give up sitting outside in the rain. Sometimes he avails himself of our dining room table when it’s not in use as this picture shows!

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-21T12:33:00.000+02:00

Che Peccato

I am afraid that I won’t be able to let you have news of how the Wiltshire Winkers trip to Italy went as they have not been able to get here, due to the Icelandic volcano.

It’s a real shame as the house and grounds have never looked so clean, neat and tidy – frankly we’re knackered – and I doubt they will be again.

But wait, good news. They have rebooked and will be over – everything willing – four weeks tomorrow. So, we’ll have longer daylight, warmer weather and there will be more things on to give us some more choice of what-to-do-when-on-holiday-in-Italy. So, all is not lost. They are off to Devon to their caravan on the South coast. That sounds great.

Bertie’s hair

Continuing on the volcano front for a moment, Bertie is moulting at the moment. I have never encountered so much dead hair coming off a dog as that coming off the Bert. He’s like a mini natural disaster whenever he shakes himself. He almost disappears in a mist of very fine white hair. The hair swirls around him and up into the air. The hair is so fine that even the slightest breeze sends it into something akin to a snow flurry. We comb him everyday and it just keeps coming out in handfuls. We don’t really understand why he is not bald. Hopefully we are nearing the end.

Chicken update

Roxie and Velma are settling in OK. They do tend to stay in the coop a lot. In fact so much so that we have taken to putting them out in the morning and shutting the coop door so they have to wander about a bit. But, it’s early days yet. La D said that they do look quite a bit older than the other hens we have bought and she wonders if they have got used more to being in cages and therefore are taking longer to acclimatise to more “freedom”. She could be right. Smart bird La D, you know.

A nightingale sang at Casa Grotta

During the last few nights we have been hearing a wonderful nightingale singing just outside the house. It really is a wonderful sound. How do we know it’s a nightingale when it’s pitch black outside? I referred to a some birdsong CDs we obtained from The Independent newspaper some years. Mind you this is the first time IO have ever listened to them, but I knew they would come in handy one of these days. A bit like having a man-drawer in the house! Have a look at this, it’s brilliant: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grRI-m-Nr2U

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-15T15:12:00.006+02:00

Welcome Roxie and Velma!

Despite us saying that we were not going to give names to our chickens in case we get too sentimental over time, they don't seem to be lasting too long to become attached that way - said with tongue in cheek.

So we have decided to give our new hens names. We got two more today to join Xena as we found out that hens are quite social creatures and you shouldn't really keep only one. It's not good chicken-keeping practice.

They look quite feisty girls and as we are avid fans of Bob Fosse, we have called them Roxie and Velma. We think the names go well with Xena, and they didn't seem to mind.

We put them into the coop to join Xena as soon as we got back. Xena seemed to take to some new friends pretty well. La D went back to the house to get some fresh water and put it inside, and guess what she found? An egg. A very warm egg. We assume it was Xena, but we have no way of telling whether she was the one who hadn't yet begun laying before last Sunday. Any way we are taking this as a good sign.

We are now back up to strength and can do no more to protect the hens. If it doesn't work out again, I think we may have to seriously think about our egg supply.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-14T11:36:00.006+02:00

More sad news of a feathered kind …..

On Saturday it was showing 35° C on an outside temperature indicator that we drove past, brilliant sunshine. On Sunday the temperature didn’t get past 9° C on our gauge and rain, rain, gloom and snow!. Ridiculous.
But, despite the weather we were having a lovely Sunday. Just relaxing. Lovely roast chicken for lunch. A DVD in the afternoon. La D had a good chat with her sister – La Contessa. I went out to lock the chickens away at 7 but could only find one, huddled up in the corner on the nest box. At this time it was snowing, a fair bit. I couldn’t see them anywhere.
I rushed back to la D and then we both went out and spent an hour calling and searching getting soaked through and very cold. We came in when we could hardly see beyond the end of out noses. Nothing. No sign of the other two at all. What had happened? We didn’t see any signs of a struggle. No feathers, although the gloom and the snow made it difficult to see much detail. Could an eagle have got them? We had seen an eagle munching on something in a field we passed in the car not far from here the week before. Although they normally stay nearer the mountains, but obviously they will search further afield if food is not available at this time of year. We couldn’t have lost more chickens to the f***ing fox, could we? We felt guilty, cross, sad and whole lot more irrational things. We’d only had them for six weeks and not all of three were laying yet. Rotten..
The next day we checked over our remaining hen and she does have some feathers broken and missing on her side. We are going to call her Xena, Warrior Princess for surviving the ordeal, whatever it was. We did find some feathers where they shouldn’t be, although not many. We think it must have been the fox again.
We have raised the level of the fence to over 2 metres now all round by various means of protective material. It looks like a small fortress, something out of a Mad Max movie.
We looked up various sites on the Internet and we seem to be everything right. One new thing we are doing, or at least I am, as it is not a very lady-like thing to do, is to start peeing all round the edge of the pen in the evening. Apparently foxes do not like the smell of human urine at all. As I have got lots of ketones in my wee from my diabetes, I am hoping that the fox(es) won’t even come into the area let alone anywhere near the pen as they’ll pick up the scent miles away. I have also thought of getting a small shot gun, something like a 4/10, but we did read that if a fox is killed, another one moves into the area to take its place. So they are difficult to deal with permanently. So deterrence seems to be the only answer
Xena, is not wandering about much at the moment, poor girl. We haven’t rushed off and replaced the other two yet but will probably later this week.
Oh the joys of living in the countryside.

Lighter subjects ….

The birds are back and how.

The noise of the birds in the morning is so loud at the moment. Myriad calls fill the air from about 5:45 onwards.
We’ve seen a small group of Gold Finches bustling about the top garden. A couple of Redstarts have been flitting in and out of the budding Hibiscus bushes. A little Blue Tit looks like nesting again in the wall just where we have the gazebo. Woodpeckers tree boring can be heard from the woods all around us. Various little birds can be seen occasionally with bits of Bertie’s hair in their beaks as they start their nest building escapades. It really is lovely and I have to say it is my favourite time of the year, especially when it was so lovely and sunny and warm last week. As I mentioned earlier, we have regressed a little with the weather but it will get back on track soon.

The return of the Wiltshire Winkers

Yes, they are coming again. They arrive next week for a few days. La D and myself are really looking forward to seeing them over here again.
We have gone into major Spring cleaning mode.
The panty is spotless (as it can be given the fact that it needs re-plastered!) and looks almost bare as we went through all the food items and surprise, surprise, threw out about a third of them as they should have been consumed in the previous millennium!
I think we are ready, but are they ready for the Bert? They have not had the pleasure yet. Will report later.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-07T12:41:00.002+02:00

Some sad news

On Easter Monday, the lady from whom we bought Casa Grotta, Ida, passed away. She was 95. She was a lovely, vivacious woman whom we had met several times over the purchase of her house. The penultimate time we saw her was when her grandson invited La D and myself to a family celebration for the completion of the sale. There were about 14 of us altogether. We went to an Agriturismo, owned by some friends of the family and had lunch. It started at 12:30 and we left at just after 5! It was absolutely brilliant. Ida was like a little bird, very tiny, and she had piercing blue eyes and a mischievous smile.
She was very taken with la D because of La D’s light, almost blonde hair, and the fact that La D was about twice as tall as her.
We saw her once more after that when she had come over to see a neighbour and as she saw that we were here, we weren’t living here then, just on holiday, she popped in. We showed round the house and the small changes we had made outside, like knocking the pig house down and a couple of other out-buildings so we vastly improved the view from the back of the house. She thought it was good and praised us for it.

Over here, when someone dies, posters are put up normally within 24 hours after death announcing some details about the funeral. I saw it on Tuesday as I had to nip into Penna, but when I got back La D told me that Ida’s great-granddaughter had e-mailed us with the news and said that if we could get to the funeral to say goodbye to Ida, the family would love to see us.
So we have just come back from the funeral. It’s a lovely church in the middle of Penna. There was a good turnout and the family was really pleased we had come to pay our respected. Ida’s granddaughter told La D that Ida often mentioned and talked about us. She was very fond of us and was genuinely pleased we were going to live in her house. We too were glad we went.

2 Out of 3 Ain’t Bad

We now have two of the Three Degrees Mk II laying eggs daily. Superb. Hopefully by next week we should be on full production.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-02T11:15:00.003+02:00

World Traveller

Just wanted to say that the youngest of our lot set off yesterday on a three month round the world trip with a couple of friends before he settles down for a three year "lounge" at Leeds University (only joking, about the lounge bit!)
Right now he should be taking in the sights, sounds and smells of Hong Kong.
Hope he has fab time and takes lots of photographs.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-04-02T10:29:00.009+02:00

The Dog Flap – most ingenious

Because we are fast approaching the time of year when there will be lots of green and other coloured vegetables flourishing in our orti, we have decided to put up a barrier between the top garden and the middle one. This is to keep out the hens, of which more later. Last year the hens did start to make an inroad to some of our vegetables but it didn’t matter too much as we got the hens later in the year.
So, that’s fine. We’ll put up a fence. Hang on. Slight problem. Yep, the Bert. How is he going to be able to wander freely around the gardens if there a fence between them? We’ll obviously have to have a gate for our own use, but we don’t want to have let him in and out as he needs. Hmmm.
Bingo! I’ll design an outside Dog Flap to go in the gate.
Brilliant.
So, here it is.

The first picture it looks just like any old garden gate. However look at the second and you’ll see that in fact it has swing gate built into the lower section. Bertie will easily be able to push his way through, but the chickens won’t. Neat, eh?
There is only one possible drawback. We are going to have to teach Bertie to go through it by himself.
No doubt I’ll be reverting to this topic later in the year, hopefully with good news. But then, Bert can be a tricky bugger when he wants to be…..

Speggtacular!

Yippee! The Three Degrees Mk II have finally started laying – well one has. Yes we have had our first egg on the 31st March and here is a picture to prove it. To date we have had three eggs. La D used the first one to make lovely spinach and ricotta pancakes with, of course, our own fresh pasta. It was truly gorgeous. The second egg is going to make some Hot Cross Buns (without the Cross). Hmmmm. I’m beginning to feel a bit hungry.

Italian Politics – How does he do it?

Good old Silvio. Battered, beaten but definitely not out as he has just increased his electoral share when everyone, well political commentators and pundits, which by this standard are about as good as their financial brothers and sisters at getting things right, thought he’d be out on his ear. Like football, strange old game.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-03-25T17:39:00.002+01:00

If you want something done, call the eggsperts!

Some friends of ours went into the chicken buying business on the same day as we purchased The Three Degrees Mk II. They bought two, a run-of-the-mill brown one like ours called Ruby, and a very good looking French Black Copper Marans (see photo) that they call Gilda., She has beautiful plumage, although not like a Norwegian Blue! Neither their birds nor ours are layers yet, but we are hoping for the first egg any day now as it will be four weeks next Monday when we got them.

Our friends told us that the brown hen has been flying up and sitting on the fence and they have been concerned that she might eggscape.
We said not to worry, they just had to trim the flight feathers so the hen couldn’t actually get off the ground to any real height. Probably about as far as they could jump, although to be honest I have never ever seen a hen trying to jump. Perhaps we could train them and have a hen jumping competition. Hmmm. O2 Arena for the main event? Possible income generation scheme.

Anyway they asked if we could pop over and help them with the bird trimming (no not trimming as in a nice roast chicken with all the trimmings) as they hadn’t any eggsperience of it. To set the record straight, we have only trimmed flight feathers twice. It worked OK, we didn’t hurt them, at least not physically, I don’t know about mentally, and the birds stopped eggscaping so we guessed we did the right thing. We liked our friends’ blind faith. What’s that saying, “The one-eyed man is king in the land of the blind.” A bit like that really.

So we went round last Tuesday armed with our trimming machine – an old pair of kitchen scissors. We sat outside and had a great natter and enjoyed a lovely coffee and some cake (it’s alright, it was a diabetic cake, honest. I know for sure because one of our friends is diabetic too!!) These friends are the ones who took one of the kittens the community cats had last year. A little silver queen. She has grown into a very pretty cat and looks as though she rules the roost over the other three that they have.
Then we were down to action.

I did the showing of getting the wing stretched out whilst they held the first hen and La D did the snipping. Then they did the second one as we watched on shouting encouragement. The birds didn’t bat an eyelid. Once they were put back onto the ground, they just went on with their lovely gentle clucking and pecking about our feet as though we weren’t even there.

A very pleasant Tuesday morning.

On the way home, La D suggested that I could market myself as a “pollo parrucchiere” – chicken hairdresser – to royalty as I look after our chickens and La D, by way of her title, is nobility. I had to point out to La D that her title is one that she conferred upon herself and that in fact she is not a real Duchessa. “Oh stop splitting hairs L’uomo chi fa”

Lordy, lordy.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-03-17T17:24:00.003+01:00

Emergency Announcement.

It has come to our attention that the paparazzi is about to release an unauthorised picture of La D and myself. In order to spike their guns, we are publishing the following picture showing La D doing what she likes to do on a sunny afternoon and myself, L'uomo chi fa, doing what he has been told to do.

(Special thanks to La D's sister. The Wokingham One as she is called by the Special Forces.)

2010-03-17T12:24:00.004+01:00

Green Day ..no, not the group, it’s St Patrick’s day!

“Top of the morning to you” to which you should reply “And the rest of the day to yourself.”

I remember a great tale somebody told on the radio many years ago. There was a large lorry travelling behind a learner driver in the middle of Dublin. They came up to some traffic lights just as they turned red, so the traffic stopped. When the lights went green, the car didn’t move. The lights went back to red. When they went to green, the same thing happened. This went on a couple more times. When the lights were on red yet again, the driver of the lorry got down from his cab and went up to the car and tapped on the driver’s window. The poor harassed driver wound down her window and the lorry driver with a big smile on his face asked her, “Are yis waiting for any particular shade of green?”

Spring has sprung, the grass is riz, I wonder where the birdies iz?

(or something like that)

Well it certainly seems as though Spring is here. Last Saturday we were freezing our bits off in zero temperatures and cold, grey skies. Yesterday I had to go and do a drug deal in the local town (monthly visit to the docs for my diabetic medicines) and stopped off to get la D and myself an extraordinarily delicious pastry from the local patisserie. I came back, about 10:30, made some coffee and La D and I sat outside and drank the coffee and ate the pastries in the blazing sunshine. It’s glorious. We wonder if it is going to be similar to last year when it almost seemed that we went from Winter straight into Summer. We’ll have to see.

What’s this?

Well done. Good to see you are on the ball. Yes it’s a fire engine. La D asked me to put a picture in of one as it is now early year bonfire season. I’ve had a couple of crackers already this week and probably a couple more tomorrow and Friday. Although I think la D has something else in mind.

I have been very good. Checking the wind strength. Trying to gauge whether it might pick up by studying the weather over the mountains. Using little petrol. No, no ignore that. Forget I ever mentioned the awful spirit. If La D sees this she’ll rip my head off and stick it on a spike outside the front door. – I think I have been reading too many books about Vlad.

But they have been most satisfying although I am again missing my Firestarter Secondo Classe, the DIL. He’s such a help at keeping the fire going. In fact I think he has a nagging ambition to becoma a Prima Classe. It’s his enthusiasm that does it. If you watch him closely as he looks at the flames erupting from the bonfire, his eyes are dancing and you get the distinct feeling that in his mind he is doing some sort of primitive fire dance round the bonfire. It’s very good to sense such a thrill in another. Maybe we could start a society like the Masons or the Buffs (Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes). Maybe.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-03-10T11:55:00.004+01:00

Oh what night ……..

No, not the Four Seasons classic, just a really disturbed night.

We had a load of snow from midday yesterday through to about 04:00 today. Quite a lot fell, and somewhere up the power lines there must have been a gremlin or two.

There had been a bit if flickering in the evening, but no actual cuts, until we were just about to go to bed, around 22:15. So we got out some candles and a torch and abluted by candlelight – quite romantic in a way. I certainly look more like George Clooney in extremely subdued lighting than I do in the full glare of the sun, that’s for sure. Ahm.

So to bed. Power back on. Excellent. Read for a bit. I was just reaching the denouement of Stieg Larrson’s first book The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo; throughly recommend it. Brilliant. Can’t wait to get hold of the next one. We had turned our bed-side lights out at about 22:30 and fell asleep …….. then it started.

We have a small cordless telephone. As you probably know these ‘phones are mains powered. Everytime the power goes off (we do have our fair share of niggles with the power supply here) the ‘phone bleeps once, then quickly again and after a few seconds, once more. Once the power is restored it bleeps again, this time a longer one. Don’t ask me why, as I haven’t got a clue, it just does, OK?

Being a small house with the living quarters on one level, the bleeping sound carrys to our bedroom. We keep the door open to allow the brute to come in and lie on the floor if he wants.

1:00 bleep, bleep, ………………bleep. Then a few minutes later on, bleeeeep. Oh I thought to myself, well that’s OK power all restored. Wrong.

A little later, the same thing happened. Then again and again. You know the feeling you get when you hear a noise, like a dog barking in the middle of the night. You eventually end up lying there waiting for the wretched thing to bark again. But times goes on and no bark; still more time passes and no bark. Then just as are mentally stepping down from DEFCON 1 to DEFCON 2 the bloody thing starts up again. Aagghhhh! Well it was like that.

I was thinking after the last one “That’ll be it now” but waiting for a next time. Of cousre La D was in the same boat. Finally I got up at 4:00 and went in and unplugged the thing. Of course getting up at that time meant I might as well go and have a pee. No lights. Forgot where I had put the torch. Banged into Bertie who grumbled and then I backed into a chair and banged my ankle. Oh bloody hell. I limped into the bathroom and then made my way to bed.

“Do you have to make so much noise L’uomo chi fa?” came a muffled voice from under the counterpane.

“Sorry, I just ………..”

“Enough. Get into bed and go to sleep.” Orders are orders. So I got in, sharpish.

But it wasn’t much use. Both of us tossed and turned. Bertie started to think it was breakfast time and started jumping onto the bed to get some pre-breakfast attention.

As the title says, “Oh what a night!”

Here are a couple of pics showing weather scenes. La D took the one of the lump of ice dangling at the end of a twig. Brilliant.

Do you know anyone who sheds a tear at the end of The Terminator 2 – Judgement Day?

I do.

Another La D classic

Crossword clue: What do amateur golfers have a 13000:1 chance of doing and professionals a 4000:1 chance?

La D pipes up, “I know, I know. Toad in the Hole!”

I just love her to pieces. She keeps me sane.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-03-02T12:10:00.001+01:00

We’ve been “re-chickened!”

Following on from our ghastly discovery that Signor Volpe had done for our chickens, we went to the chicken man yesterday and replaced our lovely Three Degrees with the Three Degrees II. We had considered changing the names to try and erase the memory. I had thought of Cluck, Cluck and Cluck as it would be dead easy to get them to come you as you impersonate clucking noises when you want to get their attention. However La D vetoed that one on the grounds that no-one would go round clucking to get chicken attention unless they were demented. So then I said why don’t we call them The Alans. I’ve always wanted to have a pet called Alan and this way I could have three! La D looked at me as though I had gone completely round the twist. Mind you I don’t have a very good record for suggesting names. I have just sent off some ideas for our latest granddaughter’s name – she is due mid-May. I’ve yet to hear back from my son on that. Oh dear. Enough.

Anyway our new chicks seem to be bedding down well. Bertie needless to say has shown a lot of interest, particularly when we went to collect them as he was with us - it’s a family thing.

They haven’t come out of the coop yet. We’ll keep them in until tomorrow and then just open the door and they can gently acclimatise themselves with their new surroundings as well as come to terms with a large white animal that will no doubt bark at them and wave his sail-like tail.

Of course they are quite young. Their coxcombs are very small at the moment and quite pale, but that will quickly change.

The other thing of course is that will dent the supply of fresh eggs severely. I don’t expect to have any eggs from them until the end of the month really. We’ve only got about 12 eggs left! It was very odd having an egg for breakfast on Saturday. Both L D and I felt that we shouldn’t be eating the eggs of our dearly departed feathery friends. How ridiculous is that? But there you go. We’re only stupid humans.

Some friends of ours have just decided to get some chickens and in fact we saw then yesterday on their way to the chicken man as we were leaving with our hens. We told them what had happened and we learned this morning that they have put an extra bolt on the door of their coop. So I think I had better do the same.

As Oscar Wilde once wrote, ‘To lose one parent (set of chickens) may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both (two sets) looks like carelessness.’

Sorry Oscar, I’ve taken a bit of a liberty on this one.

As usual, I’ll keep you all updated.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-02-27T16:35:00.003+01:00

Special Note - Some sad news

I Went down to feed and let the Three Degrees out this morning. Came up to the gate and noticed it was open. I went through and was surprised not to hear some gentle early morning clucking that I have been accustomed to. I noticed there were quite a few feathers blowing about. I looked into the coop and saw that the door at the back was open and there were no chickens there. I know I latched it after collecting the eggs the day before. I looked all around the garden and there was no sign of them.
I looked more closely at the feathers and there were a few with a bit of blood on.
But how could an animal get in?
The wind last night was pretty fierce and we knew from experience that if you pushed the door at the back, the bolt easily fell down and unlocked it. Because the floor is made of mesh, the coop always gets breeze coming in and with gusts of wind it must have moved the door enough to let the bolt drop.
I know I closed the gate last night after I'd locked them in. I closed it this morning and then gently pushed it a few times. Sure enough the movement was enough to dislodge the catch I have made for it. Back to the drawing board on that one.
La D and I looked all round the house and found a few blood stains, but no real sign of what happened to the poor chickens, and of course we hadn't heard a thing, probably because of the wind noise. We can only assume that it was a fox or foxes and we think they came in over the metal fence at the front.
Bertie was sniffing around for ages. So he could sense something different.
We were very subdued this morning as we cleared the coop and the pen. Bertie came in with ans was looking around for ages. I really believe he will miss them.
We will be going to get another set of Three Degrees on Monday.

Ciao

2010-02-24T12:33:00.007+01:00

We have a new dog

For La D's birthday, the DiL and the MiL gave her a new dog. It's very sweet. It also does not get wet, smell, poo, eat food or need exercise. It's absolutely brilliant. The only drawback that I can see at the moment, is that you wouldn't really want to cuddle it. It's a bit cold in that respect.

He's called Ozzie, after our real Springer who is living a life of luxury and Riley (if you can put these two things together) in Sussex.

Your good health

Yes it was that time again. I had my six monthly visit to the anti-diabetico clinic last Friday. My pee and blood tests and annual ECG check-up looked OK and I was fairly confident of a ‘good’ visit to the dottoressa.

I was right. She was very pleased with all my results and I was only with her for a few minutes. Phew. I am not a great fan of hospital visits, particularly mine, but if they all like that then it will be OK. Obviously it’s really down to me. La D concurs!

Mrs Malaprop plus!

I don’t know really know what to call some of the phrases that La D utters, but whatever it is, it can be remarkably funny.

The other night there was something on Italian TV about “idioms”. I hadn’t quite followed what was being said and asked La D what it was.

She said,

’It’s like those silly knock, knock jokes. You know, hmmmm like ‘Knock, knock. Who’s there? Nicholas. Nicholas who? Nicholas girls shouldn’t climb trees. Or Knock, knock. Who’s there? Isobel. Isobel who? Is a girl necessary on a stick!’ I just looked at La D and nodded sagely.

Do you understand the second one? I don’t. I haven’t got a clue.

A birthday treat

The weather has been atrocious over the last couple of months. The only really good dry and sunny day we have had recently was the day of La D’s birthday. I did ask several times if she really wanted to go out and start pruning the olives. She was adamant.

‘The weather is good L’uomo chi fa. Let’s to arms (or pruning implements anyway) and get on with it.’

We started in the morning, made good headway and stopped for lunch. As it was a special day, we had a birthday snifter at lunchtime to celebrate the day.

‘Right,’ La D suddenly said, ‘Onwards and upwards.’ She managed to get her outdoor shoes again and we started to wander back down the olive grove.

‘Darling,’ I said, ‘Are you going to leave your wine glass here?’

‘No. I’ll just take it down with me and finish it off gradually.’

‘OK darling.’

So on we went pruning away. La D suddenly announced she was going to go into one of the bigger trees to get rid of the suckers growing there. I continued to prune the next tree along.

After a little while, I heard a short, sharp screech and a small thump. La D had fallen out of the tree and banged her leg on one of the lower branches, giving her a nasty bruise.

‘Are you OK La D?’ I said as I hurried over to her sitting on the grass under the olive.

‘Yes, yes. Don’t fuss man. I’m fine. I’m fine. Can you give me a hand up?’

‘You’re not gong to go up again are you? I said.

‘Of course. A little scratch like that won’t stop me.’

With that she launched herself up the tree again and started snipping away at the unwanted foliage. I returned to my tree. A few seconds later there was another screech and another thump, plus a lot of expletives.

I turned and saw La D once again on the grass, but this time holding her arm.

‘Right,’ I said, attempting to be authoritative, ‘No more climbing trees for you la D.’

‘Oh OK darling. Help me up will you? My arm is really sore.’

I’m sure it is. Now why don’t you just stick to pruning at ground level?’

‘OK. But you know the amazing thing L’uomo chi fa?’ she said.

‘No. What?’ I asked, nervously.

She held up her wine glass, ‘I’ve fallen out of the tree twice and haven’t broken the glass! Isn’t that incredible?’ Doh.

La D says that I have to point out my use of considerable literary licence here, mainly in reference to wine and glasses!

PS He he.

A passenger in a taxi tapped the driver on the shoulder because he wanted to ask him a question. The driver screamed, lost control of the cab, nearly hit a bus, drove up over the curb and stopped just inches from a large plate glass window.

For a few moments everything was silent in the cab, then the driver said, "Please, don't ever do that again. You scared the daylights out of me!"

The passenger, who was also frightened, apologized and said he didn't realize that just a tap on the shoulder could frighten him so much, to which the driver replied, "I'm sorry, it's really not your fault at all."

"Today is my first day driving a cab. I have been driving a hearse for the last 25 years."

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-02-10T11:51:00.002+01:00

An Idyllic Moment

Have you ever had a moment, just a split second, when you have this incredibly strong sense that everything in you and around you is in perfect equilibrium? In other words everything is right in your world. There is probably a scientific or medical word or phrase for it. It’s a wonderful feeling.
I had one of those last week.

La D and I discussed whether we needed yet another orto (we have four already).. After a very brief but quite robust discussion – my arm’s fine now thank you, I had the plaster off two weeks ago – it was decided that we really did need another one.
We knew were we wanted it ages ago but the weather has not been on our side for some time until last week. We had a run of dry days and the ground was not too frosty.
I got my strings out – these are lines for marking out, not skimpy underwear you naughty reader – and marked out the orto.
Although it was chilly I had soon stripped down to just a shirt (I did have lower garments on too of course) and perspiration beaded my brow.
The Three Degrees wandered over and started to scratch around in the freshly turned soil looking for things to eat. Whenever I came across a nice juicy worm I plopped it down in front of one them who greedily gobbled it up. They love worms.
Bertie also sauntered across and lay on the turned over earth. It made quite a sight his white coat contrasting beautifully with the freshly tilled brown soil.

I took a little time to cogitate. So there we were, L’uomo chi fa, leaning on the fork with a huge inner smile, the chickens happily scratching around and softly clucking to themselves, big Bert just chilling, lying out full stretch with his great head resting on his front paws and the bright sun in a beautiful clear blue sky. Idyllic.
I thought to myself, “This is one of those moments.” Just as that thought came into my head, it was snatched away.
One of the chickens had obviously scratched a little to close to Bert and he leapt up and pounced on it. All the hens flapped their wings and scattered with Bertie gallomping after them and me shouting obscenities at him to leave the hens alone.
So, as I said, these moments are only fleeting, but wonderful when they do happen.
I suppose I should be thankful that Bert didn’t pounce a second before he did.

Weather

Crap

A little humour

When Madonna moved to England, she said she wanted to feel English.
She is now a single mother with three children from different fathers. Job done.

Regarding MPs expenses.
All MPs should be entitled to a fair hearing, then they should all be shot.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

WRITERS ABROAD GOES LIVE

2010-02-04T12:18:00.002+01:00

*Stop Press Announcement*

Hi there this is La Duchessa speaking... L'uomo Chi Fa has kindly allowed me to hijack his blog to make an announcement about the new website for my writing community, Writers Abroad. We launched the site on February 1st and have had over 150 visits so far. I shan't say any more - he's only allowed me five lines - but follow the link below to find out more...

Visit Writers Abroad

2010-02-03T12:47:00.004+01:00

Digging For Victory? No, Moles

At the beginning of last year we put up a fence for two reasons.

The first was that as we had acquired the mutt aka Bertie, we wanted to give him a good large space to run about in but also needed to contain him.

The other reason was to keep out the pigs which have really gored up the land, especially under the olive trees.

This is where we ended the fence, after the olive trees, well apart from one little tiddly tree.

So far this seems to have worked. Bertie will often sit at the end of the fence and bark at the pigs he can hear chomping on something further down the garden. We have not had a pig invasion since (not yet, anyway).

Honestly the garden round the trees was devastated. The pigs are very destructive.

So, we have the dog in and the pigs out. The ground is saved. Not quite. Let us now bring in a third party to this, namely Maurizio the Mole or Talpa in Italian.

Maurizio himself is not too bad. Just a few mole heaves around the place. No, the real problem is Bertie.

I’ve lost count of the number of heaves he has stuck his nose into and started to dig, following the scent. Being a fairly large dog, the holes he digs are fairly large too. I suppose that’s how it is.

The top garden is looking more lunar-like than ever, with all these craters everywhere, and Bertie has a constant soil covered nose.

Doh!!

However the cold weather has helped a little as the ground is currently so hard that he hasn’t dug up much recently.

Utopia or Myopia?

One of the problems of becoming short or long sighted is having glasses. The main problem here is you can mislay them – this is the word La D uses when she can’t find them. When I can’t find mine, they are lost. Slightly different perspective.

However there are other problems with them. Let’s face it, a pair of glasses in the wrong hands can almost be a WMD. Well ,close.

Take the other day. La D has one of those strings that you attach to the arms of glasses that allow you to hang them round your neck when you are not wearing them, but allow them to be close to hand when they are needed. La D was not wearing her glasses at the time but suddenly needed them to read something very important. She grabbed them and the string bit got twisted. Trying to untwist the string she actually went the wrong way again and entangled it even more. Once again trying to correct the situation, she went the wrong way. By this time her neck was becoming constricted and her face and the air was turning blue.

‘Help me L’uomo chi fa. Don’t just sit there with that inane smile on your face!’ she croaked at me.

With a little patience I got them untangled.

‘Thank you,’ she said to me, grudgingly. She then proceeded to stick one of the arms up her nose when she tried to put them on. Having composed herself once more, she tried again to put the spectacles on . One of the arms went into her right eye.

At this I just had to leave the room. Some seconds later I heard La D say’, ‘It’s OK you can come back in now. My glasses are properly on and secured.

Phew!

It’s Quiz Time

What is the world’s largest mammal?

I expect your answer would be a …. Whale. Well done. Correct.

What do you think La D’s answer was?

A Mammoth.

Terramoti

Have had a few last couple of days. Slight but still a little unnerving

Before I go ……..

Just remember. Try not to find your self in a queue at the Post Office behind Satan. You will discover that the Devil takes many forms!

This is from a book of unpublished letters sent to the Daily Telegraph. My eldest son sent it to us for a Christmas present. There are some real classics in it that I will share with you over the coming weeks.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-01-27T10:30:00.005+01:00

A real classic

First of all I have to tell you that the mis-sayings of La Duchessa are real. They actually happen.
The other night she came out with a stupendous offering.
We were watching Above Suspicion, The Red Dahlia, a Lynda la Plante cops and baddies (sometimes it’s difficult to tell them apart!). It was a very watchable drama, but a bit gory.
Anyway there was a part in the story when it was discovered that all this particular family desported themselves at a naughty - nudge, nudge, wink, wink – party where they were wearing, what in the trade is called, sadomasochistic gear (please don’t ask how I know as I will not divulge a thing).
La D turned to me and said, wait for it, ‘I really don’t see why they like to dress up in all that SMS stuff.’
I almost couldn’t stay in the room. I was fit to burst.
‘Darling, I think you mean S&M stuff. SMS means Short Message Service that you use on mobile ‘phones to send a text message’
‘Oh yes. Silly me,’ she said, and then we both dissolved in a fit of the giggles. Fantastic.

Chicken wings

One of the Three Degrees has a genetic malfunction. I think she must have seen Chicken Run. She is a serial escaper. No matter what we seem to do to pen them in, this one always finds ways to get over the fences. We want them to come out now and again but not all the time as they do a lot of scratching around and they make quite a mess of the ground particular now at this time of year.
La D and I had a discussion and agreed. The scissors had to come out. But before we started slashing at the hen’s wings, we thought it prudent to find out exactly what we had to do. As usual we turned to the Internet and found an excellent video on YouTube that showed precisely what we had to do to clip the chickens’ wings. You only clip one wing as that unbalances them when trying to launch themselves so they don’t bother. That’s the theory.
We thought we would do all the hens and gave them all a treat.
It was fairly easy task. I held the bird whilst La D did the deed. The hens were very calm and seemed completely unaffected. There is no feeling in the feathers so it’s a bit like cutting hair.
Very satisfied with our work we repaired to the house for a coffee. About 10 minutes later, La D happened to look out of the window.
‘L’uomo chi fa, that little bitch is out again!’ she exclaimed. After coffee we went out and this time picked up the rogue chick and trimmed her wing a little bit more.
Yes, that’s right, we found her outside the pen again later that day.
I think we are going to cut her wings off completely …………… only joking, but I think we are going to trim her other wing.
Will keep you informed.

Christmas gifts

Just a quickie on this. Last Wednesday we received a Christmas present from my eldest boy that was posted on 16th December. Terrible. I have thanked him and I hope he got our present to him.
But, hold on. On Friday we received a present from one of La D’s brothers that had been posted on 8th December!!
I don’t think we are expecting anymore present s from last year. I did ask my youngest son on Christmas Day where was my present, to which his answer was in a rather questioning voice ‘Er, it’s in the post?’ He didn’t really expect me to believe him. Children. Don’t you just love them? Best keep your answer to yourself.

Weather?

Oh yes. Quite a bit. White and cold, and we are off the hospital this afternoon for a regular eye-test for my diabetical condition. Oh joy.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-01-22T12:47:00.003+01:00

It’s been a funny old week

Well, where do I start?

La D and I take it in turn to get up and feed the animals and make the other a cup of tea first thing. When it’s my turn I usually just get up, leave my sleep-T shirt on and just don a pair of boxers to go out to the hens
The weather has been decidedly nippy of late. However I find that if I am just going out for no more than five minutes, I don’t really get cold.
Well the other morning we were about 15 minutes later in waking up – Bertie usually bounces on the bed at about 7:00 but that day it was nearer to 7:20. It was my turn so I got up to do the hens in my usual attire.
I popped on my trusty wellies and sleepily wandered round the house to the shed where we keep the chicken food and went down to the coop and fed the birds. On the way back I heard our neighbour’s front door open and shut and I glanced over and saw the neighbour’s daughter starting to walk from her house up the lane on the way to get the school bus. You could hardly make out her shape or features as she was enveloped in as much winter clothing as you could imagine. I could hardly see her legs, it was though she was gliding up the lane.
She saw me and I obviously acknowledged her. "Ciao," I said. She stopped and had a second glance at this odd English person, semi-naked in old welly boots, very bad bed-hair (well, what’s left of it) in temperatures trying to nudge above freezing. After a very short few seconds, her gliding suddenly sped up and she disappeared towards the main road.
Oh dear. I think I might have been a talking point over the neighbour’s dinner table that night.

La D’s impression of Count Arthur Strong

I don’t know whether you have come across Count Arthur Strong’s Radio Show on BBC Radio 4, but it is quite amusing. He is an elderly thespian, but not a very good one. He also seems to suffer from a form of Malapropism. Definitely worth a listen.

La D came up with another cracker. We were playing cards the other night, a game called Spite and Malice which is good fun. We were matching other in winning hands and La D suddenly smiled and said, “Well, L’uomo chi fa, we’re equals equals, aren’t we?”
“What?” I replied.
“You know, we‘ve won the same number of hands!”
“Ahh. I think you mean we are “Even Stevens.”
“Stop spitting heirs,” she said
“Darling, I think you mean Splitting Hairs”
“Do I? Can you read my mind? Anyway, it’s not up to you have due restriction on all the sayings there are, is it? “ she said, getting slightly spiky.
I looked at her and thought “now do I want to say that I think she means jurisdiction rather than due restriction, or do I want a quiet end to the night?”
“No. You’re right.” I said.
“Of course I am. I’ve been telling you that for years.”
I grinned, got up, gave her a big hug and said, “I love you La D.” She has this effect on me.

Gardening update

Nothing to report. Too b****y wet and cold.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-01-13T10:45:00.001+01:00

Terremoti - Scary Stuff

Yesterday we felt 6 earth tremors. We have had a couple before now, but not six in a few hours. Although “small”, the epicentre is only a few kilometres from us. It really is quite unnerving. Nothing of course like the awful one in Haiti yesterday nor of course in Aquila last year.

They were between 2 and 4.1. Big enough to make the National TV and radio news and also big enough to make you feel very disorientated and unbalanced for several seconds. We are clearly hoping that they do not presage anything worse. Enough now, thanks very much.

Good old Bertie does give us some warning, albeit only a few seconds. His ears prick up and he starts barking and running around looking to see what he should be barking at! Daft dog.

Here is a link you can click on to see recorded tremors. Although it only shows a map of Italy, the right hand list of quakes are world-wide, it shows the 7 that hit Haiti yesterday.

http://cnt.rm.ingv.it/earthquakes_map.php?lang=eng

Here’s a great blooper!

La D and I were watching the TV news last night to see if we could learn anymore about the earth tremors. One of the first topics was on immigration and the problems it seems to cause in Italy. It is a subject which is continually in the news on the TV and the press.
Whilst watching, La D turned to me and said, “L’uomo chi fa, are all Italians homophobic?”
At the time I was eating a small piece of cheese and a large piece of a Ryvita- type biscuit. which were just going down my throat. I wish it hadn’t been. My throat gave an involuntary spasm as it constricted against a laugh that was suddenly coming. A shard of Ryvita shot out of my mouth and hit the TV presenter right on his nose. Not in person of course, but on the screen.
La D looked aghast and then suddenly realised what she had said and nearly collapsed on top of me. We were both helpless with laughter.
“I should have said Xenophobic, shouldn’t I?’ la D said to me.
“Yes my darling, you should have done, but it wouldn’t have been half as funny,” I replied, my cheese and biscuit having finally been digested. I got up and cleaned the TV screen.

Ohh, that La D. She is a one.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2010-01-07T10:42:00.003+01:00

Felice Nuovo Anno 2010!

We hear it’s a crisp start to the New Year in the UK.
Pretty cold here, but no snow at the moment, plenty on top of the mountains though. In fact it has been foggy and rainy.

Hope you all had a New Year see-in that suited you. I know we did. A cosy evening “a due”, soft lights, music and then at midnight, Whoooosh! Kerpow! Bang! Fizzle! Pop! Crackle! We have never seen fireworks like the Italians send up. They really are superb.
We went outside, a small glass of Prosecco in hand and just listened to the low bellowing roar of the fireworks going off all around us for kilometres and kilometres in every direction. The sky kept lighting up with enormous rockets, exploding into bright coloured stars. Some of our neighbours had some great displays that we could see quite closely. It was a fantastic half an hour.
Bertie was sort of unsure. He wasn’t exactly frightened by them, but he just kept barking as though saying, ‘I don’t who or what you are, but don’t come any closer or I might have to bark really loudly. So keep your distance’
You can probably tell I am a keen fan of fireworks.
A couple of years ago I insisted that we had some of our own fireworks in the garden. I duly went out and purchased about €25,00s worth for our New Year entertainment. Big mistake.
They were truly awful. Variations on a Roman Candle, and you know how boring they are. I think I had bought about six. Well, after the third, La D turned and said to me, ‘L’uomo Chi Fa, are they all like this?’
‘I’m afraid they are your Duchessness,’ I replied.
‘It’s cold out here, I’m going in and will watch the remainder from the window.’ With that she turned on her heel and went inside. The funny thing was she never appeared at the window. I really couldn’t blame her.
No, if you can’t afford proper fireworks, then don’t buy any, just enjoy the sight and sound of someone else’s very expensive display. The only thing you will miss of course is that lovely aroma that fireworks give off. I admit it is an acquired taste, but €200,00 for twenty minutes of sulphurous smoke is not in the budget.

Presepo or Presepio

Presepo or Presepio literally mean “crib” in English, but here at Christmas time you will signs all over the place for them.
They are actually nativity scenes that local schools, groups or communities put on. Some are simply a room with table upon which sits a nativity model. But some others are enormous outside live events.
We went to one of the best ones around last Sunday. They are usually held around Boxing day, but because the weather was very wet, this one had been postponed. Sunday evening was very cold but clear.
It was set in and around the old amphitheatre or Teatro Romano in Piane di Falerone. We’ve never seen anything like it, fabulous.
There was a walkway past all these scenes with actors of daily life in the time of Jesus’ birth. They used the ruins as well as tents to house people and show the scenes. The event started at 5:30 so it was dark and the whole way was lit with candles and torches. It was quite magical.
There were Roman soldiers and cavalry and even a few charioteers as well with squeaky wheels. The Romans were all in tunic uniforms. We couldn’t see if they had tights on, but if they hadn’t they would have been freezing.
There were “prisoners” locked up and shouting abuse at their gaolers. Some were chipping small mosaic chips off big stones. There were working blacksmiths, making horse shoes; people hand grinding corn into flour; bread makers; basket weavers. Someone had even dammed a small stream and made a temporary fishing pond. Some tents had people sorting wool, others were teaching children, some had fires going and were spit roasting meat. One of the ruins held a religious service, whilst another reproduced the scene of the tax collection – the reason J and M went to Bethlehem in the first place.
The final scene was the actual nativity with J and M and baby Jesus set into a small stone croft. Inside there was also a cow tied up and outside a small donkey was tethered.
Just to put your mind at rest, a real baby was not used, although one of the people we went with told us that last year they went to one where Mary did have a baby with her, but this baby looked alarmingly big to be newborn. In fact if the child was newborn, it was probably going to turn out to be a Goliath character.
It took about an hour and a half to go round. It was extremely well attended particularly with younger people. Brilliant.
Afterwards we retired to a great restaurant nearby and warmed up whilst eating a rather tasty pizza. Yum.

A helping hand.

Just a little thing. This morning I got up at some ridiculous hour to take a friend to Porto san Giorgio railway station. He has bought a car on E-bay but it is down in Cassino, some way south of Naples, and he was training down to collect it and drive it back.
We got to the station and he asked if I would like a coffee. He really didn’t need to ask.
It is a nice station bar. I was looking around and noticed above the bar that there were about 8 clocks all showing the time in places round the world such as new York, London, Moscow, etc., and of course Rome. Guess which clock had stopped? That’s right, Rome! Great coffee though.

Ciao, mantenere la fede

2009-12-31T10:40:00.004+01:00

The last blog of 2009

Wow. Here we are at the end of the first decade of the 21st century.
Can you remember what was happening at the end of the last decade? The thing that remains in my mind is that we were being told that “We’re all doomed” – to borrow a saying from Fraser in Dad’s Army. All the computers in the world were going to stop at one second past midnight because computers couldn’t cope with the two digit date structure going from 99 to 00, as 00 is earlier than 99 not later, and the world would be plunged back into the dark ages. Unless, that is, you employed lots of freelance IT “experts”, whose rates had suddenly increased. Ahem.Still, poor loves, I bet they had some super holidays and even new homes in 2000.
Anyway, surprise, surprise the world was not plunged into the abyss, which was just as well as I had a thumping hangover the on the 1st January 2000, in common with lots of other people. I don't think I could have faced global meltdown as well.

Christmas

I did think of doing a Christmas entry and calling it a Yule Blog. I’m glad I didn’t now as I can hear your groans from here!
La D and I had a lovely time. I have probably mentioned it before but we have set up some video call links with some of the family and did a lot of video calling. It really is very good. As long you have a web camera and download the same software, which is free, you can talk to and see each other for as long as you like. The call is also free which of course is a great benefit.
However there is a downside. The microphones are very sensitive and if for example I wanted to say to La D that uncle Rodney was wearing a hideous shirt/jumper I couldn’t just blurt it out without causing some embarrassment, particularly to La D as Rodney is her uncle and I don’t like him anyway. Still you soon learn the little dos and don’ts of video calling. Uncle Rodney’s still not speaking to either of us. But his shirt was appalling.

We had a good call with the DiL and MiL and assorted brothers and sisters several times over the period. In fact we had one yesterday.
Now in La D’s family, as it is rather large, they operate a sort of Family Secret Santa. You know where from a group, one person buys a present for someone else on behalf of the whole group. It works well. I was down to buy the DiL Christmas present. He’s a bit of a gadget man, a bit like myself. He was very interested in a little weather station that La D bought me for my last birthday so I thought I would get one for him as I knew he would love to get it set up straight away and start to measure temperatures around the house. Right up his street.
I wouldn’t say I was appalled, merely saddened, when he said yesterday that he hadn’t got round to getting two batteries required for setting up the outside sensor as he had been, and these are his exact words, “That busy”.
A fellow gadget man, unable to install a fully functioning gadget because he had been too busy to nip into town and get two small batteries. What is the world coming to?
As we ended the call, a small tear welled up in my right eye, no left, or was it my right? Well it doesn’t matter. Oh dear.

Bertie’s sister Jess was really good. We got out for some good walks and tried to tire them out, not with any great success, but they certainly enjoyed them.

The weather was quite weird. About 5 or 6 days before Christmas it was absolutely bitter. The temperatures never rose above 0° at all. On Christmas day at lunchtime we had a temperature of 21° outside with a slight balmy breeze. Very strange and not very Christmassy at all.

La Marchesa, one of La D’s sisters, sent us a box of goodies and in it was a present for Bertie. He loves it.

Yes, Mrs Malaprop is here again.

We were doing a crossword the other night and one of the clues was, “someone who receives stolen goods”.
La D piped up almost immediately and very brightly, 110% certain, “A hedge”.
I really couldn’t contain myself and just roared with laughter. If it hadn’t been the season of goodwill to all people, I fear I wouldn’t be sitting here typing up the blog.
“No darling” I said, still chortling. “It’s a fence”.
“Don’t darling me, you patronising little man. Hedge, fence what’s the difference? Bit like Smith and Smythe isn’t it?”
There really was only one option open to me; that was to agree

New Year – a few funnies

New Year's Day Quotes

New Year's Day: Now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.
Mark Twain
One resolution I have made, and try always to keep, is this: To rise above the little things.
John Burroughs
Good resolutions are simply checks that men draw on a bank where they have no account.
Oscar Wilde

A New Year's Wish

On New Year's Eve, Marilyn stood up in the local pub and said that it was time to get ready. At the stroke of midnight, she wanted every husband to be standing next to the one person who made his life worth living.

Well, it was kind of embarrassing. As the clock struck - the barman was almost crushed to death.

One last one for those of you who are religious in nature, a New Year's Day Prayer:

Dear Lord.
So far this year I've done well.
I haven't gossiped, I haven't lost my temper, I haven't been greedy, grumpy, nasty, selfish, or overindulgent. I'm very thankful for that. But in a few minutes, Lord, I'm going to get out of bed, and from then on I'm probably going to need a lot more help.
Amen

All the very best to everyone for 2010. Felice anno nuovo.
May you be healthier, wealthier and wiser. Just remember if you are thinking of embarking on yet another failed diet, that “stressed” is dessert spelt backwards!

Ciao, mantenere la fede. Vi vedo anno prossima

2009-12-15T10:47:00.002+01:00

Apologies

Sorry for non-blogging in the last couple of weeks. Nothing was very forthcoming.

Autumn fires

Oh yes. I have had a couple of beauties. The heat has been enough to vaporise the mist that we have had whilst the beautiful, dense billowy smoke has enveloped the entire hamlet – by the way what’s the difference between a village and hamlet? One is where people live and the other is a play by Shakespeare.
Yes, there has been loads to burn already and with the pruning under way there will be a lot more.
We had also cut down some of our bamboo a. because it just grows like
billy-o and in fact some had totally obscured an olive tree, and b. because we will be needing some new canes for next years vegetables.
Now you may not know this but small sections of bamboo make the most fabulous bangers. If you get a length of bamboo and cut a piece off just below a knuckle and then above the next knuckle, so you have a complete piece of bamboo between two knuckles, you’ve got a cracker – literally. It must have sounded like an arsenal had caught fire here. The bangs were echoing all round the valley as the fire consumed all the old bamboo stuff we didn’t need.
So, flames, delicious heat, billowy smoke and big bangs. I mean, what more could you ask of your humble garden bonfire?

Mrs Malaprop rides again, and again

La D has been at it again. Using correct words and sayings incorrectly. Mind you, it gives us a laugh. I even caught a glimpse of a smirk on Bertie’s face but he soon switched back to his inscrutable doggy features when he saw me glancing at him.
Here’s three of note:

We were walking up the hill in the garden after a walk when we went past the vines which were due to be pruned.
“I’ve had a pre-cursory glance at the book on pruning L’uomo chi fa .. …Why are giggling, you silly man?”

One night we were listening to the new Foo Fighters single (at least it’s new over here). There’s a very good guitar solo in it.
“What a great skiff” La D said.

The other night we were playing Bezique and in the middle of one of the games I had to keep getting up to tend the fire, get more wine for La D (and myself of course), let Bertie out, let Bertie in, etc., etc.. As it was difficult to maintain a good flow of card playing, La D said exasperatedly, “Oh for goodness sake L’uomo chi fa, you are up and down like a fiddler’s elbow. Sit down. What have I said now? Oh alright, like a tart’s drawers then. Satisfied? Now can we please get on with the game. I’m just about to lay down a royal marriage, a sequence and double-Bezique, so just you dot your “I”s and cross your “T”s!
There are more, but I am saving those for later.

The Orti and Galline

Not much to report at the moment. The weather has turned almost wintry with cold rain and mists. November was lovely. So it has been too damp to do much turning over, but it will be done when it is able to be done.
The Three Degrees are still popping out three eggs a day, which considering the lack of light and the temperature is pretty good going. And of course the eggs are just fantastic. I worked it out the other day. If you discount the costs of setting up a run and coop and buying the birds, we have been getting 90 eggs a month for €5,00’s worth of feed. The shop price for 90 organic eggs is about €40,00. That is not too bad, I think you will agree.
The other thing they do of course is help fertilise the orti, either directly, by scratching and picking it over and pooping on it, and non-directly by us composting their bedding and poo to use on the orti later on. Brilliant.
We have had a lovely cauliflower last week and we have a few more almost ready along with some fennel. The peas and beans and onions that we have planted are all doing nicely.

Christmas

Very organised this year. We have got all the presents sent off in very good time – we were worried about the postal strikes in the UK, but I think that has all been sorted now.
We were looking forward to a relatively peaceful time, until…………..
Bertie asked if his sister could come to stay. Well something like that.
They are a bit like children. They are quite manageable, most times, on their own, but when they are together, it’s a different story. It’s like having two giant Mexican jumping beans constantly on the go. Going this way, that way, some other way least expected. At first we probably won’t have to take them out much because they just chase each other round and round and round until they are knackered and, with this weather, disgustingly filthy. I think I’ll get the hose out again and set it up. We’ll probably need it.
I’ll report back next week.

Ciao, mantenere la fede