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 UK.

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.

U2

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