Brrrrr. Bit nippy.

I haven’t had to say that for months. But it is true, there is a definite nip in the air.
La Duchessa and I are made differently – apart from the obvious of course. When the temperature goes down, my extremities are nearly always warm enough. La Duchessa’s extremities are nearly always cold. This may stem from the fact that she is a Pisces. Some problems can be encountered. I might be sitting working away in a shirt and jumper, whilst she looks like Nanook of the North. She did say something about whale blubber yesterday, but I am thankful I missed most of what she said about it. She had so many layers on that I could hardly make out any of her features. She has a writer’s blog that she updates regularly and she mentioned it yesterday but the word came out as “blob” as she said she was so cold she couldn’t pronounce her words properly – that is why I mentioned blubber before, goodness knows what she meant to say. I pointed out to her “nobleness” that it was still autumn and there is almost another month to go before winter starts. At this rate, I can see I will be having to decipher more and more incoherent blabbering until some form of human hibernation takes place.
Meanwhile ……………………

Big Bertie

I sent an e-mail to my sister recently and made a typing error and called the dog “Bib” Bertie. My sister obviously thought that this was his real name and whilst she said she could cope with Bertie she was unsure of coping with the name Bib. Perhaps she thought it was a strange Italian nomenclature, rather than just a spelling mistake. Mmmmm. She’s retired you know. Never mind.

The big lad is getting bigger. We take him around the estate now a couple of times a day but have ventured no further as he is having his second inoculation in a couple of days, and then, Le Marche beware, Berties’s about.
He’s really great. He is just so pleased to see us in the morning. He nearly bites your hand off mind, but you have to keep telling yourself that it’s only love. Sometimes that’s a bit hard to take as you run your bleeding wrist under the cold water.
Anyway, when he does out for a bit of a wander and, hopefully, to do his business, although the nerve endings haven’t quite joined together on that front yet, the cats and he still just sniff each other and pass on. Excellent. We obviously hope that that continues and they all get on well together.
Actually, we think he has found a little spot where, if he were a man, he would probably have a copy of Maremma Monthly on hand to read. It was, or rather still is, named Angolo di Roberto (Bob’s corner) after the D-I-L lovingly unearthed a small wall around our biggest olive tree. But, depending on the Bert, we may have to re-name it something like Poo(h) Corner. Here is picture of Bertie with his very good furry friend Pooh.


He has taken to the notion that there is another dog in the house that looks just like him but who lives in the oven, and never comes out. He sits in front of the oven’s glass door and peers at, scrabbles at it and then barks. Funnily enough the other dog sees precisely the same thing, at the same time. Isn’t that extraordinary?

Another of his favourite spots is now on the settee where he tries to lord it over us, with Pooh at his side as an advisor, usually quite successfully. Come to think of it, Pooh could probably get a job as a financial whizzo advisor in London or New York. He’d be good at it, judging from the catastrophic mess the current people have made of things. I think I’ve lost it here. I was talking about a dog and now I have got onto the world’s financial crisis. I think I’ll stick to dogs, and stuffed furry animals of course.
I think La Duchessa and I should start plotting a coup soon, before he gets too much power for our own good. We demand our sofa back.

Food Parcels

A great big thanks to la Duchessa’s son who sent us a Cadbury’s chocolate and Tesco’s jumbo peanuts parcel. It was yummy with a capital Y. Of course I didn’t eat any of it because, you see, I am a diabetic. But not the only diabetic in the village, Guiseppe up the road is too. I’m fibbing, not about Guiseppe though.
Friends and family – apart from you D&M-I-L whose contributions both written and visual keep us from going totally Italiano – all contributions of things naughty and nice to eat always very gratefully accepted.

News from another son - Congratulations

This has nothing to do with us in Italy, but it is a very newsworthy item. One of my sons got married last week. Little Miss Sunshine’s mum and dad took themselves off to York registry office and did the decent thing. Well, she made a decent man out of him. Just the two of them with Miss Sunshine acting as the bridesmaid and the best man.
We are thrilled and delighted for all three of them. Great stuff.

Ciao, mantenere de fede