Un rapporto speciale: Fuoco, fuoco, fxxx! (A special report: Fire, fire, fxxx!) Exclusive, with pictures!

The Staveleys reveal how their Italian dream nearly went up in smoke.

We had spent a lovely morning at the house, clearing more sheds, pruning, quietly going about our business in the glorious sunshine accompanied by a nice breeze. Then Nino, Big Mo’s associate, turned up to get rid of the grass cuttings. Hurrah, we thought. In Tuscany, the usual method involves the creation of small bonfires carefully stacked in clearings and watched over vigilantly.

Obviously Nino – an old nutter with three teeth - is not familiar with such methods. He built a haystack not dissimilar to the leaning tower of Pisa, only with very dry grass and twigs, right next to some flammable trees only three feet away from a strimmer with a full tank of petrol.

You do not need to be a Mensa member to work out what happened next.

As we were blissfully ignorant with our shears on the other side of the tall leylandii, pandemonium was breaking out everywhere else. Peter panicked slightly when he thought he saw some trees going up in flames but I shamefully told him to stop worrying and trust the local man. More fool me :o) Anyway, we were finally alerted to the crisis by the terrific banging noises of our bamboo forest burning to stumps within a few seconds.

We spent the next hour (well it seemed that long anyway) trying to keep the roaring flames away from our (currently uninsured) house and fruit orchard. This task was made trickier by the facts that (a) the wind acted as a very effective bellows and (b) we do not yet know how to operate the pump that feeds the hosepipe with streamwater. So we improvised with wine buckets and baby baths salvaged from the cantina.

A comedy classic if ever there was one… but at the time we were not feeling very humerous!

Meanwhile Nino – AKA The Italian Pimpernel – had disappeared (how convenient), but we were blessed with the help of a much more talented fire-stopping neighbour, Gian-Paulo who had seen the flames from his house up the mountain. While he forked up as much fire as possible into contained heaps, Peter ran off to phone the fire brigade while I continued getting smoke inhalation with my baby bath method of extinction. It was a very close call – at one point the flames were literally five feet from the house.

By the time the cavalry arrived (in the form of six deliciously hunky firemen – ah, my Number One Fantasy fulfilled), the wind had died down and mercifully the fire with it.

While I rested, coughed, spluttered and filled out the obligatory forms (vainly hoping that the firemen didn’t notice that I was covered in soot, mud and water and had lost half my hair in the flames), my dear hubby surveyed the damage. As far as we could gather, half our olive trees are damaged, two rows of vines are frazzled (complete with the baby grapes), the previously healthy bamboo is now just a few pathetic burnt stumps, the pines have perished, the oaks look very unhappy, three fruit tress are singed beyond redemption, most of the grass is now a black blob and we smell strongly of barbecue.

However, mercifully no-one was hurt (even the Italian Pimpernel turned up, with no apology, just a sheepish display of gums), the house has suffered nothing more than the pong of smoke, our three specimen trees are ok, the main vineyard is still standing and my lovely little orchard remains unblemished. And as my optimistic friend Clare assures me, most of the other bits will grow back next year.

While we will have less wine this year (*sob*) and our plot of land looks pretty ugly, we are fairly upbeat about it all..

As of tomorrow, we will get house insurance, although I worry that AXA may put a huge premium on the place once they assess the charred remains! Furthermore, Peter will now be in charge of all pyromania activities (the irony is, he is actually rather good with bonfires, but got help in because there was so much to burn).

That’s all for now folks. As it has been our most eventful day so far, we are in need a stiff drink and some very effective soap.

Take care of yourselves and remember the moral of this story… never trust a man with the same number of teeth as brain cells.

Tre Mesi (3 Months): Lots going on (but no builders)

Juliet writes:

Cara amici,

Well, it’s been a busy few weeks, hence the silence (also, because we are now fully immersed in Italian culture and ‘domani’ always seems to be a good excuse not to do anything)

As realisation dawned that we actually now own the house, we have been trying to procure some workmen for Lecci. The geometra submits his plans in a few days, so we really should have a full, professional team just itching to start knocking things down and putting in pipes. Sadly, we are yet to even shake hands with the local electrician. It’s a much more informal, lengthy process here. We have two marvellous sets of neighbours who have done up a 200 year old farmhouse and an 800 year old Carmine nunnery respectively. They have all the best local carpenters, plumbers, metalworkers etc that we could dream of but they have kindly insisted on us meeting them at the same time as the relevant craftsmen to explain ‘how they work’ and to translate our needs. Unfortunately, as one family lives mainly in Milan and the other is very busy organising weddings etc at his nunnery, this is tricky. And of course, no two workmen can meet on the same day, so this is all taking time.

At this rate, if we are in by Christmas, it will be nothing short of a miracle.

Still, at least Mo has now strimmed all our land (so we can see just how bloomin’ enormous it all is). We still await the cutting down of the leylandii but it will probably be ‘domani’. P has broken the strimmer again, but has contented himself with the purchase of several big power tools costing the national debt of a large island in the Caribbean. As the summer has finally settled in, we spent all day yesterday being mad Englishmen and ripping out wire fencing/knocking down sheds in the midday sun. Peter could now be mistaken for a large lobster while my nickname has become ‘Strangely Brown’. We are both covered in cuts, bruises and blisters. And that’s only after one day.

Cannot grumble though. We have had three lovely breaks from quotations, weed pulling and looking for flooring. Firstly, when Sammy came for her return visit, we managed to explore some of the Garfagnana (huge protected parkland in the mountains) and had a lovely time swimming in the Med and visiting the tower at Pisa (along with obligatory cheesy tourist photos - see left). When Sam had had enough of our bickering and alcoholism, we had a 10-hour turn-around before Charlie and Jen came to stay (we were never this popular in Blighty!). The weather was variable (first sunshine, then a 5-hour, end-of-the-world thunder and lightning storm, then sunshine again), but we all managed to enjoy ourselves, eat, drink, laugh a lot, visit the seaside, try to be cultured and then give up and play with watermelons (also see left). It was a marvellous few days and we are looking forward to their next visit(s).

And as I write, we have just returned from a wonderful little holiday (mini slideshow above with proper version at http://picasaweb.google.com/julietgn/HolidayInVeronaAndLakeGarda) – three nights in Verona for P’s birthday, complete with Tosca in the most amazing open-air 2,000 year old amphitheatre and a bizarre evening in a pizzeria watching Italy lose to Spain amongst lots of burly locals all eating ice cream and looking stressed. This was followed by two nights at Lake Garda at a gorgeous family-run boutique hotel. Swam in the lake (beautiful, calm and cool) several times each day with 6 ducklings! We now feel thoroughly relaxed and ready to tackle the Lecci Jungle again. I did manage to lose my credit card somewhere in Verona, but it was worth it (although Peter may not agree as he is having to temporarily fund my Ebay purchases and awfully had to pay for his own birthday meal – I will pay him back though!).

In our serious efforts to get the house sorted (hmmmm), we have been doing lots of socialising. We spent our first full day at the beach courtesy of Donna, John and the kids (the Yankie gang). It was heaven, although swimming in the sea is not quite as civilised as the Italian lakes in my humble opinion. They are a great family and we have already hired Olivia to feed Weed in our absence and Grey to help with the garden.

Our first taste of Palazzi living came in the form of a delightful evening at Matt and Sue’s beautifully restored priory. Stepping through the inner courtyard with beautiful stone arches, gorgeous views and lots of quirky original features, the house itself is a little bit of paradise and their taste exquisite. A real inspiration. With three heart-attacks, plate throwing, a billion pounds and three years of tears, we make just be able to have our own version :o)

Our new neighbours, Leo and Helena, the Milanese couple with the renovated large farmhouse, are also set to become firm friends after a lovely evening last night. They very kindly treated us to a meal at a local argiturismo while we bored them for plumbers details etc. While Helena speaks very good English, Leo doesn’t, so we tried to practice our dodgy language skills as much as we could. Learning Italian grammar over 7 courses and 5 bottles is the most effective method we have yet found.

Ok I lied at the beginning of this entry... in by Christmas? We are never going to get the house done at this rate! That's the trouble with always choosing limoncello over quotations :o)

Hey ho.

Weed continues to enjoy hiding under the duvet and eating her way through Tuscany. When we refuse to give her more than 4 sachets a day, she graciously brings home live mice for us to rescue. We have now become an expert catching team with me locking up the cat and cornering the mouse while P gently scoops up the poor little creatures into a bucket and runs outside doing a convincing re-enactment of Born Free.

Wildlife report: We now have a new set of 5 baby birds in the window nest (still unidentified but cute). Also, we have our first close-up of a large cricket (see pic left) – a gorgeous chap. And then there are the dreaded flying stag beetles which are the size of teacups. Spotting a family of them at our new house has been the only time I have been squeamish: snakes, spiders, mice, hairy or wiggly things, no problem:- a black flapping thing with antlers nosediving into my hair is another matter. I am trying to figure out a way to capture and re-release them several miles away from Lecci, as I don’t think P can put up with my high-pitched screams each night for too much longer :o)

Ciao per ora.

Settimana nove (Week 9): Newsflash! We are homeowners!

Juliet writes:

Cara amici,

Well, it only took 3 hours in a notary’s hot, airless office with no water, 12 people, masses of paper, 3 phone calls to the bank, some very loud debates – all in Italian over technical things like sheds and 173 signatures. In conclusion, for better or worse, we are now the proud owners of Ca’ dei Lecci… hoorah , huzzah and tiddlypom!

Thanks to our dear new American friends, Donna and John, we celebrated in great style with French champers (I am sure that it should have been Italian prosecco really, but what the hell!).

Anyway, we are now free to demolish, rebuild, paint, plant and happily cover ourselves in dust and muck for the next few months/years. Most of the junk has been cleared out of the house now, bar a nice cabinet, two chairs, a bed and about 734 empty wine bottles. I know we are bonkers, but we are loving every minute of the project and are itching to return to hard labour when the latest onslaught of guests have gone (no offence Sammy, Charlie and Jen – we love you dearly!)

Actually, I appreciate the break from lugging strange and heavy metal things out of the cantinas as I sit here typing very slowly wrapped in a blanket. I appear to have picked up a strange tetanus-type lurgy. My fault for trying to get tics out of a local stray cat’s ear that I felt sorry for (who then took a swipe at me in gratitude). I cannot open my jaw properly, I get dizzy when I am upright and my right side is stiff and achy. No, my cynical friends, this is nothing to do with alcohol. At least P now has some peace and quiet as I can’t talk much!

Along with now being proprietari', we have also applied to become official Italian residents. As you can gather from our previous blogs, nothing is too simple here, although this event ranked lower in complication than our local supermarket loyalty card. To register with the questura (the local police), you need your passport, your fiscal code, your mother’s maiden name, your father’s occupation, your university address and your pet’s sister’s tennis partner’s hair colour. Try saying all that in Italian and you get some idea of what we experienced. It was hard to keep a straight face with some of the questions posed, but they took it all so seriously (something to do with anti-terrorism, although I don’t imagine that knowing my mother’s maiden name would prevent me from strapping hand grenades to my trousers)

What other news? Well, we thoroughly enjoyed Fivizzano’s Sapori (Taste/Flavour) last week. It’s a festival that celebrates local produce and crafts, and the medieval streets were filled with stalls touting free samples of meats, cheeses, truffles, breads, olive oils, wines, limoncello and strange cake-type things. Plus, we managed to pick up a couple of handy contacts – a very talented and friendly local metalworker and a stonemason. Once our stomachs were filled, our eyes were feasted to a flag-throwing display, complete with local girls dressed up in beautiful medieval gowns and a line of impressive trumpet players blasting out a fanfare. This is what one imagines Tuscany is all about… and it is! We met up with some English friends who live in nearby Comano and happily chatted the night away over six bottles of rather delicious local vino rosso. It was a very mild evening, the stars and cicadas were out and the view of the valley below was breathtaking. We sat in part-horror, part-admiration as Matt ate a lard sandwich (local delicacy – hmmm) and got some great tips from Sue, who has restored an ancient house in the mountains (she was a senior figure in the Italian/international fashion industry for years, so I imagine it is beautifully done. We are excited as we visit them next week).

There are now three more birds eggs in our resident nest – not sure whether they will hatch or not, but I am keeping an eye on them. The fireflies are out, but not as impressive as usual as the weather has been rather erratic. It was chucking it down with rain when I started typing this and it is now beautifully sunny. Maybe this shows how slowly I am typing? Anyway, we regularly indulge our love of nature and can while away a whole afternoon watching the eagles soaring in the mountains above (or listening to our neighbours – really, they are the main source of local wildlife!).

Well, my hubby is back from the shopping and we have to buff ourselves before picking up Sam from Pisa, so I had better sign off (also, my arm is starting to spasm!)

Love you and miss you all very much. Can’t wait to hear your news and find out dates when you can come and see our Italian home!!!

Ciao per ora xxx

Almost Italian homeowners

Juliet writes: Due mesi qui (Two months in)

Cara amici,

The celebratory vintage Brunello is on standby and things are hotting up in Toscana!

In three days’ time (Wednesday 4th June at 4pm Italian time), we will travel to the Notaio (Notary) in La Spezia, after possibly the most expensive visit to the bank in our lives en route. There we will witness the transfer of Ca’ dei Lecci from six quite mad old buffers to two quite mad ones. In the office will be all six owners, P and I, the Notaio, a translator, a lawyer (power of attorney is needed by law here, as we are not Italian speakers, so sadly I do not get to use my lucky pen on the house deeds) and no doubt several other office staff. I hope it is a big office, or at least that everyone is friendly! We can hardly contain our excitement – we have been waiting since we first fell in love with the house back in January (well, actually, since we first fell in love with Italy years ago) for this dream of ours to materialise and it is finally happening. Big whoops of joy from Careggia!

So from Wednesday evening, as we become ‘Proprietari’ (Italian homeowners), our blogs may become a little less frequent for a while as we happily involve ourselves in ripping down sheds and ripping up flooring. It may sound strange, but P and I are just itching to get covered in dust and mud after weeks of pottering about politely and gently pruning the odd tree. P has even threatened me with the purchase of a chainsaw that he has been talking about for weeks, along with a diamond grinder for the interior walls, while I muse on how to compassionately move the stray cats and hire a plough for my herb and vegetable garden. (Mum, Aunty M, Helen et al keen gardeners – if you need a free place to stay in Italy in exchange for some gardening advice and one hour’s weeding a day, please let me know!) Yesterday, we discovered the best, most reasonable and biggest garden centre I’ve ever seen and I just cannot wait to spend all my euros on strange looking palms and beautiful lemon and orange trees.

And best of all, the garden centre had proper prices on most things. This may sound like an odd thing to mention, but when it comes to shopping, one little Italian quirk that never fails to annoy my dear husband is the general lack of pricing. Yesterday, for example, we went into a flooring shop and spent a good 40 minutes with three staff, two calculators, five brochures and a whole pad of paper (not to mention the obligatory one-sided conversations in very loud, fast Italian)… just to work out the cost of one type of wood per square metre. Not a single price tag on anything. Humfph.

Onto nicer things, we had our third set of guests over last weekend – my bridesmaid Annie, 8 year old daughter Rebekah (Bex) and new man Phil. And what fun we had. We adored Phil and are so happy to see one of our closest friends find someone she deserves (at long bloody last Annie!). The weather was perfect for sightseeing, not that it made much difference as we seemed to spend nearly three solid days in various bars, cafes and restaurants! We had our first trip to the Cinque Terre – and it was every bit as beautifully breathtakingly dramatic as I imagined it would be. A boat trip in the sunshine took us from Porto Venere in the south to the penultimate of the five towns – Vernazza (see photo, left). Annie then very kindly treated us to a posh meal in a restaurant carved right into the cliff edge where we sat overlooking the Med and mused on life, the universe and everything while the world’s biggest seagull settled on the rocks by our table listening in. It was pure heaven.

After we said our goodbyes at Genova airport, P and I went to Portofino (daaarhling!) and sat in the harbour amongst the designer shops trying to celeb spot. The best we could muster was Rob Brydon (comedian and impressionist of Little Britain, Keith Barret et al). I am sure that I would be a huge disappointment to all my fashionista girlfriends, but was all a bit bling for us country folk so we left early.

Far more exciting to us, the four baby birds nesting on our window ledge have already grown and flown. Since the last wildlife report, we have now seen fireflies (always an amazing sight for two cityslickers), a jellyfish and a hedgehog, and fall asleep to a chorus of cicadas most evenings, which conveniently drown out the loud TV from our neighbours. I was also very, very tempted to catnap two adorable kittens from Michelle’s house (see below).

On Friday, while P and neighbour John talked about plumbing systems, wife Donna invited me to my first girlie night here… although not one Italian was present (my language skills need to pick up a lot first). As I miss my girls back home so much, it was lovely to get out and spend a few hours over pizza and limoncello in the delightful company of two Americans, two Kiwis and one Aussie. Fluent in Italian, as they are, with the exception of my neighbour, married to Italian chaps, Donna, Michelle, Melissa, Rita and Tina proved great company – warm, interesting, friendly and fun – and I hope that we meet up again many times.

Well folks, I had better sign off. As it is the Italian bank holiday this weekend (yes, pretty much everything is behind Blighty), there is a Sapori (Tasting) in our medieval town square, where local products – food, wine and crafts – are set out proudly for the good folk of Fivizzano to try. Yum. From what we can make out in the poster, there is also live music and inevitably a flag-throwing contest (our first one!). The sun is shining, the birds are singing and our tummies are rumbling. We can’t wait!

I will ask Roving Reporter and Toscana Gastronomio Pietro Stavelli to file his experiences later…

Ciao per ora

XX