Saving olives, seconds shops, stufas, sanding tubs, surprise chestnuts, St Martino, slurping with Ma & Pa, soubriqrets, sneezing, snow, snow, snow

Juliet writes:
Cari amici,

It’s been another busy few weeks in Cerignano. We’ve almost given up hope of having a civilised house in time for Christmas, but not quite yet. You just never know whether a bit of 11th-hour elbow grease and a sprinkling of reliable workmen might save the day.

Since the last blob, we’ve had our olive harvest, which is undoubtedly my favourite time in the farming year. Rummaging for little black pearls in the warm late autumn sunshine with the smell of wild mint and the sound of eagles overhead is possibly the closest thing to heaven. There was a moment of mild panic when the Squire took a stroll around the estate and informed me that there was hardly any fruit this year, but then I remembered he wasn’t wearing his glasses. As it turned out, we had a slightly bigger crop than last year (and that is with only pruning two trees – imagine if we can be bothered to do them all!). So we now have just under 20 litres of Tuscany’s finest extra-virgin. The acidity rating in our little borgo is 0.001% which, in layman’s terms, is the best you can get. Our neighbours sold some of their olio as far afield as Milan and Lake Maggiore. Of course we had no idea it was this good when we bought the house, but we feel rather smug now we do :o)

To celebrate, we did a spot of bargain shopping. P and I stumbled upon some second-hand shops in the Sarzana / La Spezia area. Think Steptoe with a bit of Italian bling thrown in. After some scouring we picked up an oriental mirror, a heavy antique bronze coat stand, a beautiful battered old low coffee table for the den, half a dozen more old lamps and lights for me to restore and some DVDs, all for under €100.

On Ebay Italia I picked up a beautiful fire guard and an antique cast iron stufa (wood-burning stove) for a snip, which I somehow managed to pay for and get delivered safely despite a distinct lack of language skills. Unfortunately the seller of the shower I’ve bought needs proof of house ownership, certificate of building works, carta d’identita, codice fiscale and the number of hairs on my left eyebrow before they will send it.

Still trying to find a wardrobe large for all our dusty clothes that doesn’t cost the equivalent of BA’s annual losses.

Another nice distraction came in the form of St Martino’s day on November 11th. Our friends in Comano have a little chapel dedicated to this patron saint of soldiers, geese, winegrowers and poverty, among other random things. We were invited to a service there conducted by the fascinating local padre (who has been around the world on various missions), said a prayer for our wine crop to be resurrected and indulged in a delicious English afternoon tea. We met some lovely locals (who looked at the cucumber sandwiches with slight mistrust) and the only other expats – she a Hollywood costume designer and he a retired shipbuilder from Glasgow. It was a really fun and interesting afternoon – grazie tanto Sue e Matteo!

Life here has picked up pace again after a long time doing bugger all. A year ago I ordered a lovely cast iron claw foot bath. Due to an ongoing legal battle between storage company and shippers, we have given up hope – at least for now – of seeing it in Italy. So a cheap and quick replacement was needed. After begging with another shipping company to give us a good price, it arrived on Thursday. It’s not as nice as the original one, but with the drop in temperature and the increase in jobs that make us ache all over, we just don’t care anymore. And yesterday, after a few hours of sanding, cleaning and painting plus some ageing of the claw feet, it does actually look quite passable. Now all we need to do is pray to St Bartholomew (patron saint of plumbers).

Meanwhile, two of the four bedroom floors have been laid in Peter’s terracotta and chestnut design. As with everything the Staveleys turn out, they look beautiful but are not exactly high-scoring in the practical department. Dust and rubble have already collected in all the gaps. But at least the chestnut bit is easy to clean :o)

Talking of chestnuts, we went gathering in our local woods a few days ago. In the late afternoon sunshine, our hands became red raw from prizing open the spikey cases. We collected a large basket and were about to cook some when we realised with disappointment (and a smattering of disgust), that maggots had made homes in some of our bounty, although the locals assured us that they roast well too. Hmmmm – not sure that is particularly vegetarian but I refuse to let two hours of my time go to waste!

My birthday was a rather strange event. It started off with a lovely breakfast cooked by the resident chef while I opened my gorgeous cards and presents from said chef/friends/family but then we had to don our work clothes and shift furniture for the flooring to be laid. That said, my favourite builder Ivan (Vanya in Ukranian) flung his tools down, sang ‘Tanti auguri’ and gave me a big hug and, thanks to P, I did manage to quaff a good amount of prosecco in between painting walls, so I can think of worst ways to commiserate being old :o)

Work has also started on the cantina (cellars), which means there is now 3 inches of dust on every surface and in literally every crevice. We sneeze hundreds of times a day between us. This is quite depressing considering the amount of hours P and I have previously spent on our love affair with Mr Sheen. However, on the bright side, we do now almost have a Persian den of iniquity, the walls of our shower room are up and the curved corridor ceiling has been built. I’ve sourced a gorgeous hand-painted Persian tile mural for the shower (cheaply from a Tunisian artisan based in Atlanta – confused?), plus an antique English tap and a great local stone sink. The tile man might even be able to custom make the dining room floor quicker and for less money than the company in Sicily who already has them in stock (but are yet to send me a payment order despite 9 months of phone calls and emails). The builders are back on Monday to just finish off the vitals but then will leave us in peace until the new year as we have so much to do before Christmas.

Sometimes it feels like all we do is get up early to greet builders, work hard all day, get mucky and collect splinters and bruises, but I am being unfair and too complaining. We do manage to squeeze some fun in between the chores, reminding ourselves why we passionately love this country. Our local mercatino natale (Christmas market) provided such a cue – old fashioned carousels, a little train running through the cobbled streets, some gorgeous hand-crafted gifts and two hours sitting with locals drinking a mandarin punch that dissolved the tongue. Then, a couple of days ago we found ourselves in a car park on a freezing cold day meeting up with Ma and Pa – the names we have given to Jennie and Alan, an English couple who have run a local B&B here for years. Thanks to a day out in Lucca, several lunches and dinners and much laughter, they have become very dear friends. Our mission for the day was to storm the large market in Forte dei Marmi – Italy’s 3rd most expensive resort (after Portofino and Capri). After Santa’s elves purloined a few stocking fillers, we had a gorgeous and very alcoholic lunch outdoors in the sunshine (not bad for December) and inevitably the party got slightly lairy. Pursuant to some rude jokes (during which Peter acquired the soubriquet Stiffy Staveley), some loud cackles, a convincing Welsh accent and various strange looks from the other diners, we skipped off to Camaiore to pick up our original mullion and chat to the workers. By which point we had disappointingly sobered up, so Ma and Pa – who know this part of Italy so well – suggested we dabble in a wine-tasting at a local agriturismo. They produce some of the best wine in the region so of course we took great delight in trying every bottle and slurring our way through a conversation with the staff. We bought a case of exceptionally smooth 2006 Lunae for next to nothing, which should see us through Christmas day.

Talking of which, we – rather prematurely – ordered a large turkey and invited Ma, Pa and carpenter round for Christmas Day. Luckily they are all lovely so hopefully they wont mind the dust and mayhem too much. But I can’t begin to tell you how much I have to do before they arrive. I am writing this blob now in a futile attempt to delay the 24-hour painting, dusting, cleaning, moving of furniture, moving furniture again once floors are laid, making mince pies, wrapping presents, decorating trees, pleading with plumbers, creating a princess bedroom, food shopping, harvesting veg and all the other bits that will inevitably follow.

Today is glorious – a foot of snow (the heaviest for years in the borgo, which has played havoc with our water pipes but at least the roads are clear thanks to three snow ploughs working busily this morning) coupled with blinding sunshine – and I just can’t seem to get motivated to paint anything. But needs must… we have our favourite family coming to stay three days after Christmas and we have been excited about it for 9 months (since they booked their flights!) so we have every reason to make the house safe, clean and Christmassy. Clare, Asi, Ella and Maia – I only hope you know what you’re letting yourselves in for!

If I don’t get the chance to write another blob before Christmas, Peter and I wish you all a wonderful festive time and a very, very happy and healthy New Year.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you in January, if they let me back into Blighty with nibbled passport!

Take care and wrap up warm.

Lots and lots of love from me and Stiffy XXXX

Two Blobs for the Price of One. First up: Organ stops, slugs, fires and murders, hospitals, family and a distinct lack of 2009 vintage

Juliet writes:

As Dame Shirley Bassey once sang: ‘Where do I begin?’ To which a rather smug Austrian nun disguised as Julie Andrews already knew the answer. I wont allude to any more cheesy songs, or go back that far in our adventures, but I’ll do my best to fill you in on the Tuscan grapevine.

If I remember rightly, last time I scribbled something down we were surrounded by packing boxes and traumatised cats. Ah, how little changes. In fairness, we have been exhausted. Totally stanco, distrutto and in pezze, as the locals say. So we’ve undertaken impressive amounts mooching about, eating cheese, watching films and half-heartedly cleaning the odd bit of stone or wood. I probably do us a disservice as I know that we haven’t really sat on our proverbials the whole time – it just feels like we are doing nothing compared to the frenetic pace of the last 18 months.

As I write, I have cotton buds jammed in my ears... not just the result of a nasty ear infection that has been bothering me for days, but also because – full trumpet fanfare and dancing girls with feathers and sparkly bits please – at last we have the plumbers in to install our radiators and there is much drilling/hammering (of previously smooth, lovely, painted walls, naturally). Although it’s still gloriously warm here in the sunshine during the day, the mornings and evenings in October onwards are decidedly crisp. Add to that the enormous holes/gaps in all our windows and doors and you have a very draughty cold house. Frankly, certain parts of my anatomy have been sticking out like organ stops for several weeks now. And I have become rather fed up with retiring to bed wearing thick pyjamas, two jumpers, long woolly socks, at least one cat and sometimes gloves and hat, while tightly grasping our impressive collection of hot water bottles (4) and trying to forget the cold by stringing them all together and pretending they are Matthew McFadden.

I digress. Anyway, I am delighted to report that – breaking news – the radiators are leaking cold water through our dining room ceiling on their first test. Hopefully by tonight we will have progressed to leaking hot water. That would be lovely.

Talking of water, we had another mild aqua crisis a few days ago. One morning I went to fill the morning coffee pot and something strangely brown came dribbling sorrowfully out of our lovely copper tap. Funny, I thought, must be local waterworks – it’s often brown-ish when it first comes back on again. So I made the espresso and life continued as normally as the Staveleys’ lives ever do for the rest of the day. We then watched the water supply slow to less than a few drips of gunk. Nevermind. It’ll be back on properly in the morning, she mused hopefully while brushing her teeth for the night. After a whole day of scooping water out of our dip pool for household use, P went to check on our neighbours supplies. All fine and watery there. Hmmmm. Our plumber Andrea was on holiday, of course. So we called up Gaia – the Italian equivalent of Thames Water, only a lot more complicated. Another day of pool water and sponge baths ensued, before a charming engineer arrived. After tinkering with the valves and pipes outside, he located the source of the problem with much glee. At which point it all goes a little blurry because my husband let out a soprano scream and I did a squeamish dance around the garden yelping in a shamefully girly way. If you are eating while reading this, I suggest you finish up or walk away from your plate now. The cause of the blockage was an enormous slug stuck in the valve, or more accurately by the time the engineer had finished, half a slug and lots of slimey bits of organ (do slugs even have organs?). Suffice to say, Peter and I had no dinner that evening and washed our teeth about 15 times. In bottled water.

As with everything in life, monumental cock-ups come in threes. Our internet has been playing further havoc, going AWOL more times than it’s been behaving. It is certainly a nuisance as far as trying to get anything productive done or make calls to our loved ones, but it has been nice in the evenings. We sit huddled by our almost working log fire (another story too boring to elaborate on) and think of ways to entertain ourselves... steady on, the filthy-minded among you! Some nights, it is board or card games. Sometimes just chatting about what we have done and what we still have to do. Sometimes we watch a film. But nicest of all is when my hubby – who has always had a velvety voice, sits and reads to me. Our book of the month is an old one of mine – The Fifty Most Amazing Crimes of The Last 100 Years, by Parrish & Crossland. As it’s antique, it covers the contemporary likes of Dr Crippen and Jack the Ripper with wonderfully entitled chapters such as The Green Bicycle Mystery and The Terrible Fate of Mrs Staunton. Oh, the stories of cads, swindlers, imposters, vagabonds and thieves. We are usually so engrossed in tales of treachery that we forget everything that is malfunctioning in our lives.

Which brings me – with a joyful liver and a tear in my eye – to the sorrowful Murder of The Tuscan Vineyard by Mr and Mrs P H Staveley. As you know, I spent several weeks in spring and some summer days fighting with the vines, hacking back the branches and tying it all up with wire, bits of string and prayers to Bacchus. Then, one is supposed to sit back and let nature take its course until the new leaves and baby grapes appear, when they need a good, regular drowning in organic copper sulphate to ward off all beasties. As we were somewhat distracted by kitchen unit assembly and haggling with builders, P didn’t get the chance to spray them more than once. So, two bugs later, our 2009 vintage consists of the finest Tuscan raisin juice. Still, at least we still have enough of the 08 to keep us dancing merrily until we can persuade someone local to help us clueless foreigners out next year.

Talking of clueless and foreign, my dear husband is now proud to claim he is on first name terms with the entire staff of Fivizzano Hospital. After getting a foreign body stuck in his thumb (probably a piece of splintered wood) that then turned septic, he has officially made it into double figures for hospital visits since our arrival 19 months ago. A quick slice of the knife helped no end, and best of all he promised the doctors something that I have been imploring him to do for over a year - to wear gardening gloves as soon as he steps outside.

Onto happier stuff, I feel. And family provided it in spades. The visit of P’s youngest son Ben and partner Di turned out to be the nicest 4 days we have spent for a long time. After a hellish journey getting here (10 feet off the runway at Pisa, diverted to Genoa and coach back to Pisa), they managed to unwind courtesy of a long and liquid dinner at Spino’s. As always, alcohol loosens people up and Peter and Ben had a heart-to-heart that was long overdue. This was promptly followed by lots of hugs, an amusing father-and-son duet on the bongos and far too much Phil Collins to be beneficial to anyone’s health. As a result, I think it’s fair to say that they are closer now than they have been in years and I am so happy for them both. And as I’ve known Ben since he was 11 and grew to love him fiercely, I have missed him tremendously these last few months, so I’m happy for me too! Di’s positive outlook, love, support and determination has turned Ben’s life around – they are very much in love despite 4 years of every type of challenge being thrown their way and we are so pleased and grateful that Ben has found someone so special. We spent a super few days doing the usual coast and city trips, although Lucca was particularly poignant for Di with her Italian grandmother, as her youngest son is named after the city. They are generous, fun, relaxed, enthusiastic, helpful and very easy company and we cannot wait for them to visit again xxx Even better, Di is a practical country girl, her eldest son is a landscape gardener, while Ben is skillful at everything from computers to painting, so we have an ulterior motive in getting them back here as soon as possible!

Extending the family visitations, P’s eldest (and wisest!) cousin Rosalyn and husband David happened to be holidaying nearby and popped to see us for a long lunch last week. It was a first for us to pick up guests from our local train station with no luggage! And what a lovely 4 hours we had together in the autumn sunshine, talking about family, life, love, opera, jewellery making (Rosalyn is a very talented silversmith) and alternative energy sources (David has written a paper on wave power). They are super company and we look forward to them returning for a longer visit, perhaps for the Puccini festival next year?

And on the subject of visits, I am hoping to return to Blighty to see my mum (long overdue) and catch up with friends next month. As many of you may have heard, the only snag (of course there is one, I’m Juliet Staveley!) is that my passport was nibbled by my friend’s puppy last time I returned and it’s no longer in an acceptable state. So, after realising that the Italian Consulate has stopped its passport services, followed by several long conversations with the UK Passport and Identity Service and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, I have established three things: (1) I could never be an international jet-setting spy (2) I always look like a criminal with a serious skin problem in passport photographs (3) the only ways I can get a replacement passport are to stuff lots of euros in an envelope addressed to Paris or do a dodgy postal application to the UK. I’ve opted for the latter, because I can only remember three words of French. And they are not printable.

Ciao per ora, cari amici XXXX

Oh, a quick wildlife report before we rush off to tend to a friend who had a bad car accident recently… P spotted a deer bounding in our garden yesterday afternoon, which was terribly exciting (although I fear it may have been frightened out of its natural territory by the hunting season – guns going off day and night here now!), our bats continue to do their nightly fly-past, we are being infested with pretty little bright green beetles who seem to think Villa dei Lecci is a great place to turn brown and die, and our semi-feral cats are a constant and alternating source of headache and amusement. In the chill of our radiator-free house, Stinky has curled up tight against me every night under the duvet (spoilt? Noooooo) and Weed sits on my lap by the fire as often as possible. Soppy, silly pair.

As to the global sensation '60th Birthday in Tuscany', read all about it below...

The world’s first two-week long birthday: a post-bash analysis

(TO SEE A SLIDESHOW OF THE BIG EVENT, PLEASE GO TO TOP OF THIS PAGE. CLICK ON IT FOR BIGGER PICS. OR COPY AND PASTE BELOW LINK)

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/peterstaveley/BIRTHDAYBASH#

Juliet writes:

As you may recall, it was a certain someone’s important birthday back in June when we had no loo or sanity and his official party in September marked our first big gathering at Lecci. I think that such a special marker deserves its own little (who am I kidding?) report.

Ten dear friends, for their sins, were coming all the way from Blighty to help celebrate P’s sexagenarianism. But first there was much to do before we could comfortably house this group of reprobates. Thank goodness that dear Peter and Dee Highton came a few days early and didn’t seem to mind enrolling in courses such as ‘Wardrobes of Mass Destruction’, ‘How to build an Italian electric fan with no instructions’ and ‘Just how many balloons can you blow up in one hour?’ After flapping mildly for several days, the main event was everything we had hoped for when we first talked about our Italian dream many years ago. A night under stars, candles and lanterns lighting up the table for 12 and listening to the sound of crickets, opera and each other for hours. The menu – gracefully executed by many obliging hands - was brushette with various fresh toppings, wild mushroom and saffron risotto, seabass with Mediterranean veg and rosemary potatoes and limoncello semifreddo with blueberries. Not forgetting the lashings of prosecco to wash it all down with plus a good slug of our 2008 vintage (after the nicer stuff had sufficiently furred up the tastebuds). I think the alcohol lent a light-hearted sense of danger and fun to the absence of proper lighting and only half an outdoor staircase, but others may disagree.

The present-opening ceremony was squeezed in between tripping up in the dark and the blind wine tasting (sorry Horstead!). The birthday boy was ever so lucky to receive lashings of fine champagne, some fabulous bongos from Charlie and Jen, many beautiful old books for our library collection, along with the poshest book mark we’ve ever seen and, also from the Billingtons, a gorgeous antique spirit level. It has pride of place on our not particularly level hall table. You are all very thoughtful, clever and generous… on behalf of hubby, grazie mille!

Over the weekend, we managed to relax and yet pack in quite a bit of stuff. To shake off the birthday dinner from the night before, some of us took part in a tennis tournament, organised by Rob and ably judged by anyone who got to the umpire’s chair first. Athletic ability ranged from Gina ‘The thrasher’ Billington down to Hopalong Staveley Minor (me), but we all seemed to enjoy ourselves and felt an ounce of smugness that we had burned enough calories to enjoy the evening meal. That was taken at our favourite mountain restaurant 20 mins away. The owner is rare among Italians in that he is quite the most miserable and grumpy dwarf you could meet, but the food is delicious, local, cheap and of the same proportions as a Tudor banquet. More importantly, the company was superb and I will always remember Rob’s spookily accurate Tommy Cooper impersonation, Highton’s surgical procedures with a knife and bread roll, El Reado’s memories of golfing holidays, Dee’s ventriloquist dummy act and a damp tablecloth from all the tears of laughter.

On Sunday, the Dirty Dozen pootled off to the seaside. Our dear friend Alessandro owns the most stunning restaurant at Vernazza in the Cinque Terre - literally carved into the cliff side with the glistening Med, curious seagulls and a smattering of sailing boats as a view, it seemed like the perfect spot for yet another birthday feast. When I booked I mentioned in passing that it was Peter’s birthday… not only did we get the front balcony all to ourselves but he also presented P with a cake decorated with 60, which he prompted turned upside-down to reveal my dear hubby’s true mental age!

Sadly, half the gang left on the Monday morning, but we were lucky to have the Billingtons and the Endacott/Watts stay on with us. Particular credit must go to Jen, who did a sterling job of continuing the celebrations despite a stinking cold and hacking cough. The latter pair and ourselves even squeezed in a quick trip to Florence, (been there, done that, seen the duomo, smelled the drains, let’s go).

After more goodbyes on the Thursday, we spent a day or two nursing livers and stomachs before shooting off to dine with another party pairing who had gone off to galavant in Lucca and the Cinque Terre for a few days. Room 5 (we met Penny and Peter in Sri Lanka but they will be forever known by their hotel room number) showed us round their fabulous little self catering apartment before escorting us off to a gorgeous lunch by the sea and a short but very, very steep walk. It’s super having other people play the tour guides for a change!

All in all, it ended up being nearly a fortnight of laughter and alcohol poisoning. Heaven.

We await my 40th with much anticipation :o)

16 months: Settling in

Juliet writes:

Cari amici,

Hang, draw and quarter me and stick my head on a big pointy stick – I’m the world’s worst reporter of news from Tuscany!

We’ve been at Lecci for nearly 7 weeks, and all you’ve had is a few measly sentences about furniture delivery and traumatised cats.

From now on, I will try to be a better blobber.

Well, since the last scribbles, I’ve managed to unpack a few more boxes. There are now clear walkways in all rooms – that’s progress! Actually, some rooms almost look civilised – if you close one eye and squint through the other while imbibing a large quantity of martini. Some, however, are not quite so. From where I type in the future library (still lacking shelves and books so more of a ‘rary’ really), the view of the lounge is reminiscent of what you might get if you left Damien Hurst in charge of The Antiques Road Show. The bedrooms still lack flooring, but all our guests so far have been very gracious about the cracked cement. The toilets still emit a strange smell, which I tried to attribute to the cats using them as toilet trays but now realise they were innocent. The plumber has been called. Being Italian, it might be tomorrow or February next year before we can take pegs off noses.

The Damien Lounge has a little story. My first spoils on Ebay Italia – a beautiful antique bedroom suite at a bargain price – were greeted with smiles by hubby (AKA the hero of Cerignano), until he realised that he then had to hire a van and drive us north of Genova to a vast emporium full of, well, stuff. Gilded renaissance fireplaces the size of Rutland squeezed in alongside busts of Mussolini and half a lampost. You get the idea. Anyway, this might have been a fun day out if it hadn’t been for the facts that (a) it was120 degrees (b) we were taking my friend Annie and her tiny son back to Genova airport. (Hoorah for Annie – anyone else might have called child services but she impaled herself into the third van seat with smiling babe on lap and didn’t complain once.) (c) Peter and I had to unpack it all again by torchlight when we returned home and (d) we needed the International Mensa Society to work out the angles for removing the bed from the van without succumbing to the ‘oh what the hell I’ll just saw the legs off’ method.

Anyway, thanks to brute force and ignorance, we now have a beautiful wardrobe, a vast ‘letto matrimoniale’ (marital bed which actually consists of two twins pushed together - strangely common here for couples), a stunning chest of drawers and two typically Italian inlaid bedside tables… all in about 36 pieces propped up against our sofas awaiting Mr and Mrs DIY to carry them upstairs (another Mensa job) and assemble them.

Meanwhile, Mimmo, our delightful pavimentista (floor-layer) has finished off the hall and landing and put up our kitchen tiles. We have more lights up, but still another 18 to go (yes we do have a lot!). I am restoring a couple of chandeliers, which has proved great fun sourcing antique crystals, wires and wotnot. The Cararra marble worktops have been cut for the kitchen, which meant P and I putting our muscles to the test to glue them in place. The kitchen is the most completed room in the house – just needs a final coat of wall paint, the skirting to be treated and painted, the pan rack to be hung up, the tiles grouted, the chimney and wall shelves to be built, the larder sides to be painted, the sink area to be tiled and the unit lighting fitted. As I said, that’s the most completed room. Sigh.

Our builders are back today for the first time in weeks and are cracking on with the remaining work. In just one day they’ve knocked out and rebuilt the cantina stairs so they are now horizontal (how posh) and there is no kamikaze leap from the top step, finished off some plastering – inside and out – and are cracking on with the rebuild of some exterior stairs which were even wobblier than the cantina ones. We may ask them to finish off the cantina walls and ceilings, but like all things, this depends on our dwindling budget and we would really rather have a swimming pool, given the weather. I bought a thermometer last week and so far it’s been off the scale twice (120F / 49C is the max). Too hot to think about anything except going for a dip. Which is our excuse for not having done too much since we moved in, especially all outside jobs. Although P did manage to erect another marquee to replace the one that blew 100 feet away in a storm last autumn with only a little help from his assistant. This, along with some plastic chairs and a long table, are ready and waiting for the entourage of Peter’s birthday guests, who arrive in just over two weeks time to be greeted by the building site.

Other guests have been ever so polite about the mess. Peter’s first relatives came to stay within a few days of our own arrival – his middle son James and daughter-in-law Amy – a gorgeous couple, even though I may be biased! We picked them up at their friend’s palatial villa in Camaoire – a beautiful resort near Lucca – where they spent a few days with a whole gang from their Bristol Uni days. Peter was immediately challenged to a game of water volleyball. J and A – can we have Staveley Team photos please! Then I pitied them as they left such civility and had to stay at the dustpit. But they were lovely about it and we thoroughly enjoyed pottering about, catching up on news, testing the dip-pool and having funny conversations about log flumes and Star Wars.

Just before Annie and ‘my baby boyfriend’ Luka, we had a super few days with Chloe and Sal. We had not met Sal before but instantly became enamoured, not only for being such great company and making my dear friend so happy, but also because he is a plumber and he fixed our dancing toilet seat. We love him for that alone! Yet again, great fun was had in the dip pool – this time with water pistols – and despite my tummy being grotty and forcing me to miss the trip to the seaside, it was so lovely to catch up, flop, laugh and drink too much. Hmmm – I seem to say that rather a lot these days don’t I?

Between guests, P went back to spend some time with his dear Pa. They spent a super few days together, visiting and being visited by various family and friends, enjoying a day trip to see a cousin at Bircham Windmill in Norfolk, dining out in style at numerous Rutland hostelries and doing a spot of shopping. Thanks again for looking after him Poppa – he came back very happy and two belt sizes bigger!

While P was away I had a little adventure of my own. On my last night I was woken up at 1am by some coughing outside the back of the house. It sounded like an old man with a bad chest. A lost hunter maybe? I opened the bedroom window and said hello. No answer. I kept listening for about 15 minutes and it seemed to get louder. While I am really not one to panic, there was no moon, it was very dark outside, I knew that the cantina doors were only propped shut with bits of wood (awaiting proper brackets/locks) and there was no lock on our bedroom door. I rang poor ol P who was fast asleep in Blighty, hung the phone out of the window so he could hear it and asked for his advice. He told me to call the police immediately, turn all the lights on and get out of the house, making as much noise as possible. I picked up a torch and rolling pin from the kitchen en route, heart beating quite hard as I passed by the cantina stairs. After a conversation with the local Carabinieri (not knowing the Italian for cough, hear or intruder, it was tricky), I sat in the car, locked the doors, put the lights on and started chain smoking. Within 10 minutes a car pulled up with flashing blue lights and two men in full military uniform jumped out, brandishing guns. I think I was more nervous of that than the possibility of a tramp with bronchitis. After a look around the whole house and surrounding garden, I was beginning to apologise profusely as there was no sight or sound of anything awry and I am sure they took one look at me with my paint-splattered dressing gown, wellies and mad hair, thinking I might just need a different sort of help – the sort that involves padded cells. But luckily the noise started again and so they ran around the back and promptly fell in our drainage hole. I gave them the torch, along with more apologies, and they had a good look, but to no avail. They shrugged their shoulders in a way that only Italians can and told me it was an animal. What animal sounds like that, I asked? Wild boar maybe. I was not convinced. But they barricaded the doors with washing machines and wine barrels and left me feeling a little safer, although sleep was off the menu. In the morning light, things, as always, seemed better and sheepishly I discovered that one of the horses in our neighbouring field had a bad cough. Honestly, it sounded human. And I hadn’t been drinking.

Oh, talking of drinking, we have started to bottle up our wine with the expert help of Guiseppe, our stalwart neighbour who has so much weird and wonderful old wine equipment it would keep any vintner amused for a lifetime. Although, as you know by now with the Staveleys, nothing runs very smoothly. Guiseppe has recently had an operation on his eye so although he insisted on helping us with all our wine, we thought we’d start gently with just one small demijohn of red and one large one, which said ‘nero filtri’ (black – or red – filtered) on the top. After success with the little one, we had some left over so poured the remainder into the large one… only to discover the label was wrong and it was a white. So we are now the proud owners of the first ever Lecci Rosé. Hmmmm… think I’ll leave the birthday gang to try that out :o)

Mog update: The cats have settled into life here and seem much happier, although there is still the daily game of hide and pounce which I think Stinky enjoys a lot more than dear old Weed. The former has gone quite feral and disappears for hours at a time, no doubt terrorizing local lizards and eating flapping things, while Weed potters about near to us and is much more affectionate than ever before. All much appreciated unless you are trying to do something fiddly like restore a chandelier or balance on a chair with paintbrush in hand.

And I end on another wildlife note: last night one of our bat family ended up in our kitchen and had to be gently coaxed out with the help of hubby and a broom. It took several minutes and lots of laughter. Why would we need to buy a TV when that’s our evening entertainment?

Ciao per ora, carissimi amici XXXX

15 months: We're in!

Cari amici,

I can’t believe it’s been 2 months since my last blob, but then life has just been a whirlwind.

Thus please forgive the extended silence, the relative shortness of what follows and also the fact that the editorial standards in this latest missive will slip to below cellar level as I try to blurt out the key events of late.

First things first, we’ve moved! After 15 months of blood, sweat, many insect bites, even more adventures and a few tears, we are finally ensconced in Villa dei Lecci, complete with an almost fully functioning kitchen, internet most days and 2 working loos. Well, it should be 3 loos but the one downstairs flushes a bit too dramatically and floods the floor each time. Never been scared of a toilet before. Note to self: find some suitable Italian swear words for our plumber.

We’ve been in for 10 days now and are finally getting used to walking around and seeing beautiful views from every window – not something we got in the shadowy valley of the nunnery. It’s all still a muddle: there are packing boxes touching nearly every ceiling, dust up to knee caps, no floors in the hall, landing, dining room or bedrooms and don’t even ask about the cantinas or garden, but it’s our muddle and we love it.

We wake every morning to golden sunlight trickling through our windows and a view down the valley which I still find difficult to believe isn’t the backdrop for a cheesy chiantishire film starring some bouncey-haired American actress and a modern-day Adonis who makes eating lard sandwiches look sexy.

We then potter down to our kitchen (avoiding the potholes in the floor and ignoring the lack of banister) and make a real Italian coffee on our fully-functioning hob. After a week of no water in the kitchen, we are now in heaven as we have both a tap and a dishwasher. All the little things that one takes for granted are slowly coming to life here.

Then we trundle off to our one area of the garden that doesn’t resemble the Somme and sit in the morning light listening to the birds. This beautiful moment is usually interrupted by some dusty workman turning up, demanding an espresso and making a complete mess of the house again.

It’s certainly been a journey and we are more exhausted than if we had just had triplets, but we are living on the excitement of reaching the destination that we have been dreaming about for quite a few years. We had a particularly manic few days trying to get the house to look less like a building site for our friend Sam, who has just left after a 5 night break. I seem to recall that involved hiding rubble under our bed and spending days up a ladder painting the guest bedroom with a knee bleeding from an argument with a sharp piece of stone. Some days it’s tough – I can’t tell you how much we still have to do to turn it from a house into a home and it does seem like a losing battle sometimes, especially with my illness and trying desperately not to succumb to the delights of a comfortable bed – but at least we are safe, our cats are gradually becoming less traumatised and, after an epic war that involved several thousand euros being hand-delivered by Peter to Milan in a brown envelope, our furniture has all arrived in one piece (bar our plates and bed linen, which have gone AWOL). If we need an amusing diversion, we unpack another of our food boxes (under the illusion we would only need a few months’ storage, Peter persuaded me to pack things like Knorr Chicken Casserole sauce and Budgens baked beans.)

There is so much more I could bore you with but I have to assemble one of our last kitchen drawers and unpack another few boxes before bedtime. Nessuno pace per il cattivo (no peace for the wicked).

All our love to you all. Looking forward to seeing James and Amy shortly and introducing several friends and family to Lecci in the coming months.

Next blob: lessons in how to persuade an Italian to lay a marble floor in just 24 hours without breaking anything. Plus photos of exciting things like beds and ceiling roses.

13 Months: Coffee, cats & computers, convent aflame, cooking with Fernet Branca, cantinas, comestibles, copper, colours, castration and cooling off

Juliet writes:

Cara amici,

In England, Italy and many parts of the world, 13 is an unlucky number. So please allow me to start of this 13 month blob with a small tale of woe. Our kitten, who shall remain nameless (but is often referred to as Stinky), recently decided it would be great fun to play with a cup of coffee (left to near to Apple Mac by my husband, who shall also remain nameless). As espresso, sugar and keyboards really don’t mix, we were left without any form of communication with the outside world for over a week as boffins near Genova found us new parts. Now it is new and shiny and we are considerably poorer. It was actually lovely not having anything modern to play with for a week. No emails, no Ebay deadlines, no demands or pressures. Just Peter and I making our own entertainment (steady on!). It makes you realise that without other things to distract, candlelit dinners, a spot of opera and decent conversation are the norm. Although we are usually too knackered in the evenings for any such frippery.

Meanwhile, the jinx of 13 had obviously rubbed off on our nunnery abode as the delightful Nino (remember the toothless reprobate who started our garden fire disaster last year?) was back on fine form, setting alight to Giovanni’s shed with the flick of a cigarette. Having just returned from a nice lunch with friends (the rare advent of posh clothes) and spotted the flames, I ran up to our apartment to call Giovanni while Peter ran down to the field to get a hose. Nino, as usual, had wandered off, possibly eyeing up his next victim. 15 minutes later, the Adreanni family, P and I, Iva and even Nino (who returned with a pitchfork but no apology) were all go with rakes, buckets and hoses. And this was done in heels (me) and a smart linen shirt (P). Luckily it was an old shed and there was nothing of import inside. But it made us realise just how easily fires can start here in the summer (especially with pyromaniac locals on the loose) and we really do need to organise a proper watering system at Lecci.

Anyway, enough of tragedy. Let’s talk of jollier things – like Cooking with Fernet Branca. Thanks to our dear friend Penny, who is an avid bookworm, I received this novel written by James Hamilton-Paterson. And, having no computer, it was lovely to find the time to read. It really is worth a mention for two reasons: firstly it’s set very close to where we live, and where the author has an adopted home; and secondly, it has to be one of the most hilarious books I’ve ever read. I don’t usually laugh out loud when reading but by the end of this I needed hospital treatment. Beg, borrow or steal a copy. It really is a great read.

As to the moneypit; the small, dim light at the end of the tunnel is flickering brighter. Our fireplace is as good as completed (just awaiting the stone hearth front and sides from our local mason). Haven’t dared test whether it works as yet, but will no doubt let you know. Our beautiful stone stairs and window ledges have been cemented in and my Persian window (or at least the hole for it) as been smoothed over with traditional Italian plaster. The electrics and plumbing are now in on the ground floor, with the beginnings of the same in part of the cantina. Water and electrics to the garden will follow shortly. We don’t have the budget to complete the cantina at this stage, but we do need a laundry room/general working space, so Ivan has been busy hacking off the old rendering in one room, cleaning the stone and re-rendering it so beautifully in a much lighter colour. The old stone now shows up gorgeously. We love it, but then so does Ivan, who lovingly strokes it regularly, murmuring ‘bello stasso’ at every opportunity.

Peter has managed to source some beautiful cotto (at last) for our bedrooms and some different, cheaper ones for the cantina. We will hire a van and pick those up next week, along with our wood, new window and doors, washing machine (hoorah!) and hopefully the cantina windows too. Our mullions are coming along, although there was a minor disaster because the rubber mold broke so it is now fragile and much slower to do each one than they thought it would be. Hopefully we can pick those up (or at least those the top 6 that need the scaffolding) next week too. Our wine is also on its way. I’ve cleared out a space in the back cantina (quite a task given the amount of junk we seem to have accumulated). With the warmer temperatures, it should be ready to drink in a few weeks, so the editorial standards of this blob may go further downhill.

As to our work, my veggie patch is now crammed full of small leafy green things. I’ve managed to grow most things from seed but had to admit defeat with the tomatoes and peppers and a few other bits and pieces and bought young plants from a local shop when no-one was looking. Going on the premise of being clueless and not knowing what works and what doesn’t, I have tried to grow a little bit of a lot of different things. So we are now the proud owners of:

In rows: baby sweetcorn, peas, 5 different types of tomatoes, cucumbers, English green beans and 4 types of pepper (red, yellow, green and blow your head off)

In quarters: sprouts, yellow and green courgettes, aubergines both round and long, beetroots, radishes, sunflowers, artichokes, onions, 3 different types of potato, 2 types of lettuce, leeks and – most exciting of all for me (as impossible to grow in Blighty without cover) – watermelons and honeydew melons.

Thanks to Jim’s hole-digging expertise, I have also planted a pair of baby pear trees, two cherries and a couple of plums in our little orchard.

Fingers crossed that my fingers are green enough to produce adequate comestibles for a soup and salad lunch, followed by a small fruit compote.

P has been busy strimming (as ever), rubbing down the metal shutter catches and covering the vines in copper sulphate (blue stuff approved by the Organic Society). All grapegrowers in this region (if not Italy?) do this because the leaves are very prone to disease. I spent hours plucking off all the rotten leaves last week ready for the spraying. The locals also use the spray for some veg as well and a little goes a long way, but Peter is covered in bruises as a result because the spray canister strapping was too short, the liquid too heavy and hence all too tight/brutal on the shoulders. Why can the man not survive one day on our land without some form of injury?! His whole body seems to be cut, bashed, blistered and bruised. Good inspiration for a make-up artist working on a horror film.

We are united in our latest venture – painting the outside of the house. Because we love the warm tones of the old villas in Lucca and south Tuscany, we (well, L’Artista, as P calls me) have opted for a pale yellow first coat base, a stronger yellow applied on top with a special glove, followed by highlights of ochre dabbed with a sponge. I don’t make things simple do I?! But my philosophy is do a job well, do it once. And scaffolding is very expensive so we’ve had to crack on with it. It’s been so exciting choosing colours, although tricky because each side gets a very different light throughout the day. Much as I’m not frightened by snakes, creepy crawlies or flappy flying things, I do confess to vertigo. So I’ve been trying to conquer my terrible fear of heights for this task – not easy given the 4 levels of scaffolding, but I’ve managed to complete two top levels with the help of my wonderful hubby who holds my hand on the highest parts. If the final effect is rather wobbly, I apologise :o)

Our dearly beloved felines have been having great fun in the summer weather accumulating ticks on a daily basis and catching lizards or parts thereof. In the last fortnight, we’ve had 4 tail-less lizards, 3 lizard tails and 2 dead whole ones for presents. Aren’t we lucky? Other than that, they are fine. Still sworn enemies, but well enough. I do wonder how they will cope with the move to Lecci in a few weeks’ time, especially poor Weed who will have moved 6 times (original home, Battersea, Teddington, Carreggia, Carmine and Lecci). In a quick nature report, our beautiful eagles have returned, colourful butterflies flutter by frequently, the cicadas are in full chorus every evening and, two nights ago in childlike awe, we watched our first fireflies of the year. As they are out early this year, by Peter’s birthday our back garden should look like Blackpool Illuminations.

It’s certainly been amazing weather. 90 degrees or so most days. We have been pining for the grand pool, but it may take years to materialise at this rate. So our best buy of the year has been a rather large paddling pool (or dip pool as they, rather pretentiously, call it on the box and we have, rather pretentiously, adopted). I put it up the other day after some initial help from our builders (as always, taking great interest in everything we do) who advised us to put down a sand base to prevent tears. It has been a joy these last three days to hose down after a hot day of hard labour and jump in to watch the sunset with prosecco in hand. What are these accusations of a permanent holiday and luxury retirement? Ah, I think you may be right.

Baci ed abbracci (kisses and hugs), Juls XXX

Un anno, un mese: Timing, Tuscan plaster, Thumbs, Tasting, Tiles, Trimmings, Tree therapy, Ticks, Totally Tangoed

Juliet scribbles in haste:

Tanto lavoro. There really is. Just too much work. I should learn how to use my feet skilfully so I can paint or sand something with my toes while I type this.

After taking a week off (unannounced of course), Stepan, Vanya, Yuri and seemingly the entire national Ukranian workforce are now back with a vengeance and slogging away at Lecci. Maybe they have another job to go to, maybe they are fed up with looking at the view (or the owners), or maybe they now realise (after we have told them at least 100 times) that we really do have to move in on 1st June. Honestly, we are not particularly bothered about the reasoning behind the drive to finish it, just delighted that everything is moving apace.

We are now the proud owners of another two arches (one in the hallway and one on the landing), the smooth plaster is finished upstairs and nearly complete downstairs. At last, after a month of drawings, head-scratchings and master direction from a local English builder called Alan, we have the beginnings of a grand fireplace in the dining room. The interior stairs have been removed, making it tricky to carry heavy buckets of paint upstairs (especially after a liquid lunch). The new stone ones should be installed in the next week or so, as should the matching window ledges that have now arrived on site. P and I have set to work putting a coat of white paint on everything inside, to protect the plaster and give a better surface for the prettier colours. Poor hubby is in charge of the ceilings as I am too dwarf-like and so he has spent the last three days looking like a ghost. Many of the windows have been primed and the soon-to-be laundry room floor has been leveled ready for the boiler and other bits and pieces. We may even soon have a washing machine at Lecci – how posh is that?! We have told (ah but do we believe it?!) that our plumber and electrician return next week to continue with pipe laying and wiring. That really will be progress.

Outside, the naff old plasterwork has been chipped off, the stone cleaned and prepped and the new first layer of plaster applied (quite a task given the size of the house). I have spent a few happy hours in a local paint shop deciding which Tuscan yellows would work best. Got some cheap tester pots so will crack on with that anon. In fact I’ve got so many testers I could probably do the whole house in patchwork for a lot less money. Elsewhere, the patio area is half-leveled, awaiting Alan’s fractured wrist (another story) to heal before it is built. And – joy of joys – at last I have completed the pruning of the vineyard. I think even Hercules would have needed a holiday after that task. Meanwhile, P managed to carve a Dali-esque pattern in his thumb while attempting to cut some dead vine branches. Refuses to have stitches as I think he wants a big manly scar.

We had our first Lecci wine tasting last week with Leo and Elena. Very exciting! It still tastes young but the theory is that their cantina is too cold to mellow it further so we are going to put it all in demijohns and cart it off to our warmer cantina in the next week or so. 1,000 litres of Cerignano’s finest should fit in rather snugly between our kitchen units, all the window shutters and three pairs of wellies. How we are going to find the time, space or money to filter it, bottle it all up, stick on my labels and source enough cheap shelves to store them properly is anyone’s guess. Maybe intravenous drip is the best option.

Other recent challenges have included floor tiles. I had no idea that sourcing traditional, old-looking but not hideously expensive cotto tiles in the country that created cotto would be such a headache. We think we are finally getting there, but it involves two trips to Siena (what a tragedy!) Also, my dining room floor design is proving a bit tricky, as I don’t understand the strong Sicilian dialect and this is seemingly the only place that still does hand painting tiles in Liberty villa style that won’t cost the same as our actual house price. However, we do now have our lovely Carrara marble white and grey tiles for the hall and landing, the wood for the bedrooms (just need to stain 1,000 pieces - sigh) and the slate for the ensuite. So I think that’s pretty much all the flooring sorted, apart from the Siena and Sicilian jobs.

One of the most exciting things for me (I know, I need to get out more) is that we have managed to source some window mullions. Again, in a nation of skilled craftsmen with a history of beautiful, classical architecture you would think it easy. Ah, you mad fool for thinking that! We have been looking and enquiring for a year now and it has been a fruitless search. The making of ‘cornici’ has become a dying trade as Italians turn to more modern houses. So imagine my delight when Peter went out for some milk and came back with the name of a man who knew another man whose brother knew a workshop in Camaiore, near to Pietrasanta. After 4 phone calls, one house visit, much detective work and 35 trips along the same road, including going the wrong way up a one-way street, we found the workshop. It was shut up and overgrown. After chatting to a neighbour we realised that the old owner had sadly died last year. But all was not lost. Much of his equipment had been sold to a nearby workshop, so off we went, again the wrong way. Eventually we met Mauro, the lovely brother of the man who makes them, who informed us that they have just one salvaged mould. And what a beauty it is. It was taken from an old palazzo in Lucca so comes with history. And better still, it wont cost the earth to have 10 replicas made up. I can’t wait for those to arrive. Lecci will once again start to look like the grand old house it was.

Needless to say, because we want to get it right, every detail of our Italian restoration seems to be taking time and energy (I wont even mention the money!). Last week we realised we needed a break when we got strange looks in the supermarket for arguing loudly over which onions to buy, so we headed off to our local palazzo – Pescigola (see pics). This beautiful 400 year old villa is fast-becoming our sanctuary and inspiration when things get stressful. It is a perfect time of year to visit as the 100,000 daffodil bulbs were blooming and the peacocks, swans and other birdlife were wandering about. Peter got some therapy by hugging an enormous tree (see pic), while I managed to lower my stress-levels by studying the 16th century irrigation system in great detail. As we were about to leave, we bumped into the owner. Andrea is a delightful American lady from Boston (near where Peter’s brother and sis-in-law used to live). Her Italian husband Pasquale used to play at Pescigola when he was a child. It came up for sale about 5 years ago so he bought it (how nice!). They have sympathetically restored the magnificent gardens and courtyard and are now tackling the original kitchens. Makes Lecci look like a doll’s house and our troubles seem miniscule in comparison. We had a lovely chat with Andrea and it transpires that all three of their children have been/are currently attending Rugby school, P’s old haunt. Un piccolo mondo (small world) indeed. What with that, and a shared love of Puccini and all things arty, we may just end up firm friends.

In a quick wildlife report, I am pleased to report that our pair of eagles has returned now the sunshine is out. Our two bats continue to circle every night (they are very cute compared to the one that scraped my ear as I opened a door in an old ruined house we were nosying around the other day). Alan’s dog Ellie has become our new best friend, rivalled only by Iva’s three beautiful horses. I give them breakfast most mornings and I helped Iva to groom Lela ready for a show the other day. While I was having a girlie moment and plaiting her mane, he said I was welcome to ride her anytime. What a dream for me, if only I can remember how to get in the saddle! And finally, our delightful duo continue to fight with each other like cat and, well cat. We spend most evenings keeping them apart and throwing the little one into the ‘naughty room’ (guest bed) whenever she leaps on Weed or eats a whole roll of toilet paper. They manage to get a tick or two most weeks now, so I have become adept at tweezering the little buggers out. And how generous of my cats that they even gave one to me. Last week, in mortification, I found one in my leg, but luckily it was only small so a quick squeal and my fingernails saw the end to that little critter. It’s my only un-Buddhist moment when I dance around in my wellies squashing them to oblivion.

Talking of dancing, I end this blob with a little note about our first Italian lesson. No, sadly not verb declensions nor mastering Conversation Skills Level 3. But a belated birthday promise from a hubby 4 years ago… Argentinian tango lessons. Up a mountain in the middle of the back of beyond, there is a dance hall that could rival the set of Strictly Come Dancing. Why they built it, I have no idea, I’m just glad they did. So last Thursday, we met Andrea (not our plumber, thankfully!) and his partner Veronica, who whirled gracefully around to the seductive strains of violin for 10 minutes before instructing three very advanced couples on leg flicks and lift techniques, then turning his help to a clueless English couple. He is a very patient teacher, thank goodness, and we thoroughly enjoyed our induction into the Latin dance of passion. Peter did a great job in leading and only stepped on my bare feet once. Meanwhile, I had to do everything backwards and on tiptoe. Talking of which, it is our second lesson tonight, so I had better go and polish those killer heels.

Trina and Andrew – we can't wait to see you at Pisa tomorrow!

Ciao per ora, carissimi amici XXX

ONE YEAR (and a bit)!

Juliet writes:

Cara amici,

Is Stephan Hawking living next door and experimenting with time travel and worm holes? Can you believe it’s been a whole year? 12 months have passed since we crammed the cat and all our belongings into the Shaguar and drove to our dream home. How much has changed – just in that last sentence – we now have two cats, no Jag, have lost half our belongings and our dream home has become an inhabitable dustpit! Ah, progress.

Being the Staveleys, nothing seems to run very smoothly, including cars. Since my last blob, Lulu (remember Lulu? The old LH-drive car we bought from our friend in the UK), died outside the ferry terminal in Dover. In the rain. Complete with all the plumbing equipment, two doors, 6 tins of paint, an entire bathroom floor and a very unhappy husband. Can’t say I blame the ol’ gal – I think we knew deep down that it was just one toilet too many. Anyway, some hasty quotes from removals companies coupled with the cost of a flight proved just too expensive. As luck would have it, Lulu had conked out next to a van hire company. So my poor damp husband transferred everything that he had so carefully placed in the 20 year old VW Golf that very morning. I am sad to say that Lulu went to scrapheap heaven. At least we got £30 for her, so that’s about 5 minutes’ worth of workman at Lecci.

And as more luck would have it, while P was waiting for a later ferry, I did an internet search for reclamation yards in the Dover area and sent a very obliging husband off for a closer look at my bargain web treasures. With more room in the van, he was able to do a deal on some antique lighting, 2 cast iron door mats, a pagoda (I know, it’s not essential but very beautiful!) and a marble fireplace, ironically from Carrara, 20 minutes away from where we live in Italia but at a quarter of the price. Hopefully these savings almost counteract the cost of the van.

It was lovely to see P again, back home safe and sound, after a whole week apart. We spent the evening flopping, hugging, eating and snoozing before unloading the van the following morning. It was like Christmas – all these things I had sourced, ordered, chased up etc were finally in Italy… balanced rather precariously on the dining room table to avoid Destruction By Kitten.

Of course, we then had a mad scramble to try to find a replacement car in Italy in time for our guests’ arrival, as the van only held 2 adults and a dwarf. In the end we fell for a little blue 5-year-old Peugot 106 from a local dealer in immaculate condition. She comes with air-con (essential for the hot Tuscan summers), incredibly low mileage, a CD player and minimal scratches… a minor miracle knowing Italian drivers. Because she is small and her first proper trip was to the birthplace of Puccini (Lucca), I have christened her Mimi. She will eventually be my little run-about when P can afford something altogether bigger, shinier and with more buttons.

We picked her up the morning that Lorna (aka Nursey) and Mark flew in. And what a fun three days we had together! The prosecco flowed as we celebrated everything from our first Italian anniversary and their 30th year together, to the house, the sun, the aubergines and each other. Can you tell we had rather a lot to drink?! We spent a delightful day in Lucca (my favourite place) – with P and M hiring bikes and cycling the city walls while Nursey and I had a stroll and got distracted by a weird art exhibition and some very expensive shops (windows only!) We also bumped into Mario – one of the old owners of Lecci (the one that looks like a hobbit) – what are the chances of that?! In slightly better Italian than the last time he saw us, we happily informed him that there was still much work to do but that we loved the house and he and his family must come round for a meal when it is done. He seemed delighted. Or maybe it was just trapped wind? As to the rest of our mini-holiday, we were all quite pooped so we just pottered about locally, ate ice-cream and listened to lots of music (Mark being a guru of all things audible). Despite the fact that we have so much to do on Lecci, it was heaven to take time off from it all and rest our achy, scratched, bruised bodies. I haven’t slept so well for months, although my waistline has expanded again.

As I write this, P is back in England just for tonight as he returns the van and catches a flight back. Mimi and I will pick him up from Pisa tomorrow and before the poor man has a chance to recuperate, we need to whisk him off to a fireplace surround shop and the marble flooring factory.

As for Villa dei Lecci, the installation of the corner fireplace is proving more difficult than cracking the Enigma machine. The plasterboard is on the ceilings and smooth walls now abound in the lounge and library. My beautiful Persian window (well, the hole for it) has been built on the landing, the old lounge and kitchen windows have magically become doorways and the arches for the hallway ceiling and lounge niche are underway. The scaffolding is up and the two sides/back of the house have had all their old crumbly plaster removed. Jim is cracking on with levelling the patio area and I’ve done another row of vines (I feel as if we’ve got hundreds but there are only 10!) and been pottering about the veg patch.

As for the plumber, I’m sure he knew we have been here for a year, because he started today. Pipes have been laid, folks! We spent a good hour trying to work out how to fit the waste pipe around the imaginary clawfoot bath and a further hour discussing the fireplace and what else is to be done this week. This is all quite a challenge first thing in the morning in Italian (four of them, chatting away as if I understood every word), so I had to call the gorgeous Sue at one point and beg for her language skills as I really didn’t know what U-bend was in Italian.

Talking of which, I will end this blob with a nice little story about the positive side of being linguistically clueless. Believe it or not, the Italians are sticklers for timing etiquette. You never have a cappuccino after 11am, you never, ever interrupt a man during his siesta and – above all – you never say ‘Buon giorno’ after midday (it then becomes ‘Buona sera’, followed by ‘Buona notte/serata’ after 6pm) A few weeks ago, P and I spent a jovial evening with our friends Jenny and Alan near Bagnone. Jenny is a professional cook so it is always quite an occasion with a variety of delicious dishes and wine flowing in quantities that would rival a Greek wedding. We finally departed at 11:30pm and, as P always insists he is sober enough to drive, he leapt into the driver’s seat with aplomb. Halfway home, we were waved over by the military police (they do that a lot here, mainly as a way of making money from people who do not have road tax, insurance or sanity). I was panicking – what if my darling husband had to spend the night in a prison cell for being drunk and not very orderly? Anyway, bless him, without thinking, Peter – doing his very best Trevor Howard impression – said ‘Buon giorno officer’. Obvious to the caribinieri that we were pazzo stranieri (mad foreigners) he resignedly pointed to our headlights (which were on full beam in a town), waved his hand down, shrugged his shoulders in a way that only Italians can, and let us go. After months of trying to convince my hubby to study his verb declensions, maybe I should hide the language tapes from him afterall…

Buona sera tutti XXXX

11 mesi: Primavera, progress, propping, pink privy, perfect peas, posh signs, parting, pretending to be Arthur Daley, practising vows of silence

Juliet writes:

Cara amici,

Well, I’ve hardly had time to sneeze since my last blob. It’s all go at Villa dei Lecci!

The building site is coming along nicely, although we have had two unexpected delays (and, ergo, bills). Firstly, a super engineer friend of Giovanni’s came round to appraise the wonkiness of our walls and floors after we had expressed some concern that walking around the kitchen, lounge and back bedrooms felt like being drunk. On a boat. In a storm. We were worried that we would have to underpin the whole back of the house, which we really can’t afford to do. Anyway, he thought of a much cheaper, faster and hopefully just as secure alternative: we would need to lay and weld thick metal mesh under all floors, then lay steel rods over the top and attach them to the back and front of the house with large chain bolts (which you do see everywhere around here as it is an earthquake zone. They are actually quite pretty and rustic.) All that has taken a week to do (and a large chunk of our budget). But better to be safe and we certainly can’t do it later once we’ve laid the floors.

In addition, due to our geometra being rather useless, he hadn’t drafted permission for our scaffolding in time, so while we waited for him to get his finger out of his proverbial our order went to another client. We have had to wait for someone to return more scaffolding to the yard before we had enough.

I still want to adopt the builders though – they are conscientious, hardworking, fast, fastidious, funny and very sweet (they have refused to charge for certain things because they know we are paupers!). All the channeling has been done for electrics and waste pipes and then covered over again, every wall in the house has been repaired and covered in a rough cement, the floor and wall-strengthening chains done, the floors have had their first coat of cement and the en suite and two arches and two front bedrooms have had their finishing plasterwork, with the rest to be completed this week. It is so thrilling being able to run one’s fingers over the walls and not get blisters, electric shocks or white dust everywhere. In fact in places, if you use all your imagination, it is almost starting to look like a house.

In the garden, primavera has most definitely arrived, with its full bird chorus, beautiful blossoms breaking out on the trees, bees humming, bluebells sprouting and much warmer days – see pics. Our large mimosa has the most stunning yellow springtime display. Well I say large, it has diminished somewhat this month… let me explain. A couple of weeks ago it was La Festa della Donna. Basically this is a Europe-wide day of celebration for all ladies, of any age. It is traditional for men to give mimosa to their mothers, daughters, wives etc. As the local florist was selling them for around E4 a stem, we were very popular that weekend with all the builders, neighbours etc coming round to lop a few branches off! Still, it will grow back and it was lovely to give something to our neighbours/workmen after all they have done for us.

We have been enjoying the extended hours of sunshine that March has brought for our garden work, although darling hub is slumped into a depression because his best friend (the chainsaw) has died again. As a distraction, I asked him to clear out the cluttered shed to temporarily house our chopped wood. We had a surprise when he unearthed an outdoor loo, complete with bright pink walls. P gave me a look of disgust when I suggested that it might be useful and, despite my protestations, hastily filled it in with rubble. I love Lecci – we are always uncovering strange and wonderful things. The other day when I was weeding the veg patch, I found a 1 Lira coin from 1917. I think it might be lucky because my peas have already come up! Two rows of strong, shiny, bright green saplings. I am so excited I am already looking into how many uses I can find for peas: so far I’ve got three – in soups, on salads, as weapons of mass destruction - all other ideas welcomed.

For a break away from the dust, we had our first day out in weeks – to the marble capital Pietrasanta. We love the place – elegant, historic and full of busy workshops and talented craftsmen. We put a deposit down on our hall floors (pavimenti), had a spot of lunch, looked for a fireplace (all too expensive for us) and picked up some bargain Calla lilies. Earlier in the week, I had rummaged in a huge pile of marble offcuts trying to find the right shape and size for a new house sign (I have no pride or shame when it comes to freebies!). We decided that ‘Villa dei Lecci’, as it is now known, should have a sign to match its soon-to-be noble appearance. So we took the piece of Carrara’s finest to a little family workshop just outside Pietrasanta and the lovely Massimo carved our request in classical Roman/trajan lettering (see pics above). And all for E20 and a bit of cheekiness! Not bad considering the only other quote I’d had was over E200 :o) The sign will be put up the day we move in… watch this space.

On Saturday we went from smiles to tears, as P and I said our goodbyes and he took his beloved Jag back to its spiritual home. With seven nights away, it was a heart-wrencher for both of us, as we have not spent more than 3 nights apart in 10 years. We have been pining for each other like demented werewolves, calling every few hours and blowing kisses on Skype. Current news is that he arrived in very good time and fine health on Sunday night. So far he has met up with James and Amy, chatted to Ben and been spoilt by Anya, who made him a full Sunday roast on arrival. He is pleased to report that all plumbing and miscellaneous items have been picked up and the new car (well, a 20 year old VW golf, but new to us) is sturdy and strong enough for the exceptionally heavy shopping list it will be couriering back to Tuscany.

Unfortunately the Shaguar didn’t have such a promising start. Mr Staveley – prize-winning buffoon that he is – forgot to check the MOT date and, as it expired a couple of weeks ago, he was unable to flog it in the auction. A mad panic ensued to get the checks done, but it overheated and failed before it had even finished. P resigned himself to leaving it off-road where it would eventually go to scrapheap heaven. However, as unbelievable luck would have it, he was in a B&Q car park and a nice chap spotted the advert we had written for the auction. As a Jag lover who has always wanted one but could never afford one, he convinced Peter to join him in a nearby coffee shop and work out a fair price. All faintly reminiscent of Arthur Daley methinks. So P got his money (not as much as he wanted but a hell of a lot better than nothing), the chap got his dream car (he is going to overhaul it himself) and the Jag goes to a very loving home… Incidentally the new owner just happens to be Iranian – his father was over from Tehran and helped him to inspect the Jag! Ah, Persians have such good taste :o)

So tomorrow (Thursday) morning, Mr S will be making his merry way back to Lecci in a downgraded model, at about 80 miles an hour slower than the outbound journey. Thanks to Chris, whose military experience meant he could tie the best knots to hold the car and its load together, P should be ok. I believe the glove compartment is full of Marmite, there is Branston pickle in the exhaust pipe and no room for a mouse to fart inside. Poor little Golfie (or Lulu as I have now christened her as she is carrying so many toilets)! Unless the suspension waves the white flag, he should be arriving late on Friday, or sometime on Saturday. Needless to say, I can’t wait.

Meanwhile, I have been coping with the deafening silence of the nunnery by pretending I am a nun. But it’s not all prayers and dirty habits – I have been extremely busy! At the weekend, with glorious sunshine to help me, I pruned another 2 rows of vineyard. It took me 3 hours just to do one particularly tricky half a row. You need patience and sheer bloody-mindedness to be a vintner. In between this, I sanded down and painted a salvaged mirror for our bathroom and rubbed down and undercoated one pair of interior shutters. Only another 10 pairs to go, and then there are the 11 exterior pairs, the 9 large interior doors, the 9 door frames, the 14 window and exterior door frames… *sigh*

On Monday I spent the morning stuck at the nunnery trying to locate our furniture. As you probably know, everything arrived by mistake back in June last year. We were then assured it was safely returned to Blighty, so we added a clawfoot bath to it. An email came through to tell us it had arrived and would be put with the rest of our stuff. Imagine our surprise a few weeks ago when we received an email from a chap in Milan asking when we wanted our furniture delivered and could we pay him for storage since June! After 100 unanswered calls our UK removals company, I finally got through to the boss, to be appeased by the fact that they are still afloat, the bath is safe and sound (albeit lonely) and they will pay the Milan storage depot when they bring round our stuff. Let’s hope they stick to that or we will live like hobos for the rest of our lives.

Our first visitors in five months arrive next Wednesday, so I have cleaned the nunnery up as it has been sorely neglected since the building work started. We can’t wait to see you Nursey and Mark! They will be with us to celebrate a whole year of living in Italy. Where has it gone? Who knows, but bring on the prosecco anyway!

As for the rest of this week, the scaffolding (ponteggio) arrives tomorrow – hoorah! This means Stepan and Ivan can finish the metal bolts, reshape the landing window and also start on the exterior plasterwork, while I follow behind (not looking down as I am a chicken for heights) with my paintbrush. I am hoping for signs of Andrea our plumber – he has promised to start tomorrow (sound familiar?). My broken bathroom sink is being replaced by another – to arrive shortly. Also, our lovely neighbour Ivan (not to be confused with builder Ivan) – the owner of many large pieces of machinery – is coming tomorrow morning to dig out the hole and channel for our gas tank. I will collar him to do some terrace levelling, tree trunk removing and kitchen garden plotting. Oh, for the sight of a neat box hedge amid the chaos!

So all is moving, although admittedly in fits and starts… not unlike someone I know on the channel ferry tomorrow…

Ciao per ora, bellisimi amici XXX

10 months: Beautiful bricks, amazing arches, brauny builders, verdant veggies… and one completely contented couple (well almost)

Juliet writes:

Cara amici,

Evviva!!! Blow your trumpets, knit some pompoms, hug random strangers and open that bottle of 1973 Chateaux De Hoorah, building work has started at Ca’ dei Lecci!!!

After fraught negotiations with the geometra on the morning of Monday 23rd we were finally given permission to turn the dust pit into a rubble pit. Building signs were quickly purchased, filled in and hung up (obligatory here). The bricks, cement and sand (oh what a beautiful sight) arrived in the afternoon and the builders began at the crack of dawn on Tuesday. Finally, after a mere ten months of waiting, we are beginning to realise our dream. And we are just staggered as to how much they have achieved in only 10 days.

Ukranian brothers Stepan and Ivan (who I want to adopt because they are so lovely) must be the fastest builders in Italia. They work from 7am until 5pm, including Saturdays, with a few minutes break for lunch. Although they have been here for 15 years and speak Italian flawlessly, they are teaching us a few Ukranian words… in Italy with an Irishman for back-up. Just one of the many surprises in the last few days.

As you can see from the above pics, so far we are the proud owners of two new archways (from lounge to library and kitchen to dining room, well, dusty space to dusty space), a new en suite bathroom in one of the bedrooms, a larger landing window, a straighter cantina door, a new cloakroom loo and a lot of rubble. We have also lost 2 and a half walls, a chimney breast (to be replaced with a larger one), a casing full of asbestos, the remains of the old bathroom, many euros and some marbles.

I cannot begin to express how excited we are about all the activity after so much stagnation. Take this afternoon for example. We had an appointment at the house with our plumber Andrea. Prior to his arrival, we were chatting with Stepan about reinforcing the foundations at the back of the house, which is worth a little diversionary sentence. We didn’t know how to describe underpinning (apparently there isn’t a word for it in Italian) so P proudly announced in his best accent: ‘Sottopene’ – which I promptly informed him meant under-willy! Anyway, I digress. While we were sniggering, the electrician turned up with his nephew Stefano. As I vaguely remembered the Italian words for socket and ceiling, I took them around and set about marking the various plugs and points (I got some odd looks for wanting light switches inside rooms rather than outside and had a 15 minute heated discussion about the new Italian law which makes it compulsory to have alarm bells in every bathroom). Within a few minutes, the carpenter turned up with his assistant, shortly followed by Jim. I shoved them in the direction of Peter only to see Andrea walking up the garden path. And so it went on. At one point there were 10 men in our house (steady on girls!). The only one with an actual appointment had to wait an hour to have a proper conversation about waste pipes. He didn’t seem to mind too much, in fact worryingly he seemed to know more about electrics than the electrician. In Italy, everyone loves to dispense with advice. At one point 6 people were in our bedroom all loudly projecting their opinions on where we should put our ‘matrimonial’ bed, in order to fit it around the electrics. I don’t believe we had a say :o)

Like anywhere in the world, you always have to wait a long time for decent plumbers, but the highly recommended Andrea, much to our relief, will start laying pipes next week. I suppose that shows the downturn in the building industry as part of the global economic collapse. Or maybe just that he is keen to start as we are paying him the equivalent of the national debt of Iceland. Anyway, we like him, he is less than all the other quotes, is local and understands modern systems and newfangled things like solar panels (strangely a rarity here).

At this rate, we may even have a proper house (or, dare I say ‘villa’) in a month or two. Good job, as our first 2009 visitors are due in April and we are getting a bit fed up with the psychopathic shower, leaky taps, temperamental stufa and furry damp walls (really, they are actually furry) in the nunnery.

To save money and keep out of the way of drillbits and concussion-inducing bricks, P and I have been doing yet more gardening. Hubby had quite a scare last week when he was tidying up under a tree and saw a human hand poking out from the soil. He had visions of sordid murder mysteries and Hercule Poirot turning up at the door. Luckily, upon tentatively prodding it with a rake, he discovered it was plastic. We have absolutely no idea why, but the previous owners obviously thought it was a good idea to bury a female mannequin there, all chopped up into pieces. A traditional Italian ritual that we do not know about? A celebration of the patron saint of serial killers? Or just the work of a complete nutter? It will remain a mystery, but at least P has now uncovered and disposed of most of it. Further limbs to be revealed when we dig for the swimming pool.

Back to comparative normality, P helped me to turn over our veggie patch, complete with furrows. The earth is beautiful – just crammed with nutrients so no need for my compost heap afterall. Better still, my waistline is returning after hours of digging out pathways and laying bricks. I have even managed to sow a few seeds due to the glorious weather we had last week. First off, the taller, hardier stuff - tomatoes, peas, peppers and aubergines. Carrots, parsnips, radishes and shorter veg to follow next week, and then more in April. The Italians swear by lunar planting – for example, all the local seeds I’ve bought have symbols of half moons or waxing crescent moons on them under sowing instructions. Apparently this encourages growth and strength. I am a complete amateur in such a large and slightly wacky undertaking so if I manage to get one sprout I will be delighted.

I’ve also done about 150 cuttings for my box hedging to outline the kitchen garden. Need another 150 and the help of neighbour Ivan’s digger next week and then I can get cracking. Can’t wait as it will be the first formal area of the garden and I will almost be able to believe we live in a civilised palazzo, if I close one eye and drink enough wine.

We’ve also bought some bargain fruit trees from a local nursery to replace the old and rotten ones in the orchard. Two pears (William and Kaiser), a cherry and a plum with more to follow when we can afford it and when our backs can cope with yet more digging.

Meanwhile in the vineyard, thanks to the indispensable advice of neighbours Franco and Guiseppe, I’ve been pruning back hard and tying up the shoots for this year’s crop. Hard to do with only 5 rotten posts and just enough wire to knit a tetanus jumper. But that’s a project for next year. P got his chainsaw back and has spent a couple of days happily massacring the olive trees (apparently necessary for better fruit), while I’ve helped to de-ivy them – a mammoth task after years of neglect. At least Tumble, who walks with us to the house some days, thoroughly enjoys running up the trees between pruning shears and saws. She makes Weed look like a University Challenge champion.

Talking of olive trees, we are delighted to hear the latest news from Rob and Gina Billington that they have purchased their own sunny plot in Andalucia. It comes with over 5,000m2 of mountainside with olive grove and sounds gorgeous. We look forward to hearing of their progress in the coming months and showing them our pruning scars. Many congrats Mr and Mrs B :o)

Aside from all the lavoro, we have been having fun with our Italian amici. We cooked a roast lunch for Leo and Elena (a long-overdue thank you for all their lovely meals) and then the following Sunday again for Giovanni, Giovanna, her lovely mum Marina and their two children. It was amusing to note the surprised expression on their faces when we served them gravy, stuffing, cauliflower cheese and roast potatoes (they don’t have such) and told them to eat everything together at the same time (they don’t do such). But it went down really well, especially P’s famous roasties. We were invited back to our landlords’ house a few days later for a veritable feast. The Staveleys are not known for their impeccable time-keeping skills so P rang and told Giovanni ‘Cinque minuto’, which means ‘five minute’ instead of the plural. 20 minutes later when we turned up, Giovanni seemed to think this slight grammatical error was hilarious. So Peter has gone from City Boy to Five Minute Man… not sure which is worse?!

But Five Minute Man is rather wonderful. The day before San Valentino (9 years since I said ‘yes’), hubby treated me to a gorgeous massage… at only E20 for over an hour I may forgo a few things in the house for some follow-ups! This was followed by a meal in a restaurant we haven’t yet tried in Fivi. Alessio, the Milanese owner-chef was delightful, cooked the most delicious risotto I’ve ever had and better still, is a keen sailor so has offered to take us out on a 40-footer in the Cinque Terre in Spring/Summer. How lucky are we?!

Although even paradise has a few problems… the weather has now taken a turn for the worst. Yesterday and today is has been chucking it down and as I type there is the most dramatic thunder and lightening outside (hence wide awake and writing at 6am). Our local florist Maria joked with us that she has mushrooms growing all over her because she is so damp. So tomorrow it’s on with the galoshes for more gardening/swimming and a prayer to the patron saint of dryness.

Ciao per ora, carissimi amici
XXXXXXXXX

Our small pledge for Zimbabwe

Apologies to those looking for a Staveley update but today I am passing up on my usual Italian-themed trifles to write about something important...

Kumi Naidoo, Honorary President of Civicus and the Global Call to Action Against Poverty, has embarked on a 21 day hunger strike to highlight the plight of ordinary Zimbabweans as they suffer a passive genocide through mass starvation.

As we sit here in a beautiful nunnery in Tuscany, warm and safe, we are reminded just how truly privileged we are to have freedom, rights and a plentiful supply of food. So many in Zimbabwe are deprived of those basic rights and are suffering untold poverty, loss of liberty and starvation at the hands of an evil man. 11 million (I repeat, 11 million) people in Zim eat only one meal a day or less. 5 million are starving. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians, children included, are being forced to go without any food for 10 days or more.

Enough is enough. Like countless others around the globe, we are pledging to fast for at least one day in a show of solidarity. I know we are late in doing this (the official day of fasting was last Sunday) but until Zimbabwe is peaceful and plentiful once more, we need to keep up the pressure.

While one voice may be small, many voices together are like thunder. If you would like to join Kumi and others and be a part of something bigger, please go to http://www.savezimbabwenow.com/ and http://www.avaaz.org/en/fast_for_zimbabwe and pledge to give up one day's food, or even just one meal. Because you have that choice and others don't.

Thank you.

Juliet and Peter XXX
The mother-hen in me urges you to read the health advice on the weblink above before undertaking this fast.
If you are doing it, or have already done it, please let us know in the comments section!

9 and a half months: Silence, squirrels, snow, stufa, scolds, sanitaryware, stories and slee…

Juliet writes:

I have been delaying this blog entry in the hope of having something interesting and newsworthy to write, but I have now given up. Apologies in advance for the tedium.

Well, we’ve been in bella Italia for about the same length of time as the average pregnancy and we still don’t have a habitable house or even a functioning loo. Slow aren’t we?!

Oh, how we long for the faint whiff of cement, the harmonious sounds of hammer and angle grinder, or the sight of the hideous yet obligatory orange fencing, but alas, not a sausage. Our lovely builders, electrician and carpenter (don’t mention the plumber) are itching to start. We have our permissions. We have even purchased some hobnail boots. However, our little team has been told by our geometra that they cannot use so much as toothpick on our premises until they provide him with more documents than the High Court archives. The law changed in July, apparently. We are baffled as to why their school teacher’s certificate, mother’s maiden name or waist size would actually help to rebuild our beloved dustpit, but we wait patiently as we are law abiding citizens (or at least not quite stupid enough not to mention any of our minor indiscretions on the web).

So, here we are… forced indoors as the rain and wind swirl about outside (yes, British weather has finally come to Tuscany!) while we wait for the go-ahead. There is no denying the fact that the last few weeks have been tough. Obviously not on the same scale of difficulties being experienced by victims of the economic collapse, civil war or famine, but do you know how tricky it is to keep yourself entertained with only 32 books, a pack of cards with the 4 of spades missing and a demented kitten for amusement? Ok, we do have the computer as well, but our internet connection is, well, unconnected, most days so communication with friends and family is often sporadic. However we Staveleys are not quitters, so in typical Blitz spirit (*cue music from The Dambusters*) we are putting smiles on our faces, dusting off our aprons and making the best of what we’ve got… I am now proficient in the ancient art of origami (27 swans today!) and Peter is about to enter the Lunigianese Whittling Competition 2009. I am so pleased that our rotten window frames have come in handy.

As you can see, imagination tends to run a bit haywire when you’re house-bound due to weather and bureaucracy :o)

On a genuine note, we have invented a game called “Furry or Flappy”, which involves nature spotting in the 35 acres surrounding the nunnery and getting the other one to guess what it is by description. So far, we have seen 15 different birds, none of which we can identify, three cats, two dogs and, most excitingly, 15 red squirrels. To be honest, it might have been the same squirrel each time but it’s hard to establish distinguishing marks in torrential rain from 50 feet away.

Despite the incessant wet weather, I believe that Cerignano sits in some sort of bizarre microclimate and is protected from the worst. People say that you can get really bad weather in Lunigiana – for example our dear friends up in Pontremoli (30 mins north of here) have been snowed in several times and there has been flooding in our local valley on such a scale that it made the national press. As you can see by the pics above, Peter recently braved our local ski resort Cerreto (also just 30 mins away), to find cars and phone boxes completed buried by the white stuff, yet we haven’t even had a sprinkle here.

However, it is getting rather nippy. At least our stufa has been fixed, so we do have less ice on the inside of the nunnery now. Despite the cost of the pellets it gets through, it is a good thing overall because I have dark red griddle burns on my legs (really, I do) due to 4 weeks of sitting too close to the paraffin heater every evening.

Now we are warm again, it’s easier to focus the mind a bit. So we have been scouring the internet for wastepipes and toilets (as one does on a Saturday night). On Monday we visited the biggest bathroom shop in Aulla and spotted a nice high-level loo for our cloakroom. I think I have mentioned before that the Italians don’t do anything simple like price tags, so we asked for a quote and sat down to marvel over just how many pieces of paper, staff and calculators it takes. I have never seen the colour in P’s face drain quite so quickly… E2,500 – just for a bog! So our challenge for the week was to source our entire sanitaryware needs for less than the cost of this pricey privy. Much as we want to support the local trade, we just do not have the budget and thus have had to turn to trusty Blighty. So far, so good, thanks to my beloved Ebay (for 1920s cisterns and bargain basins) and P’s probing around the BathStore sale for slightly more modern conveniences. The only snag? Well of course it involves a little story…

Mercifully, P has decided that it’s just too dangerous to drive a right-hand car with no snow chains, reliable steering, MOT, tax or anti-mad-Italian-driver safety devises on these roads, so our comfortable yet erratic Jaguar is coming back to its spiritual home in March to be flogged in an auction. In its place, thanks to our dear friend Dave, we are inheriting his old left-hand-drive VW Golf for less than the cost of a BA flight to Pisa. Maths problem for the week: how do you fit 4 toilets, a 1400mm shower door, a shower riser, 3 basins, 2 pedestals, 2 shower valves and heads, 7 tap sets, all bathroom accessories and associated plumbing kits in the back of a 15 year old German hatchback? Answers on a postcode by the end of February please. Prize: an original, signed photograph of Peter pushing the bogmobile through France.

Talking of stories, I have taken up another hobby to pass the time. Due to my current increased need for painkillers to tackle my tum, this is, alas, nothing practical like door-striping or pruning olive trees. I am doing what many of my friends with misplaced belief and alcohol have urged me to do over the years… I am writing a book. Fundamentally it is a children’s book comprising a collection of short stories within a larger story. On the lines of Kitt Williams Masquerade, it is also to have a treasure hunt built in. I’m having such fun thinking of cryptic clues and short stories (especially fun when on morphine!) that I have almost forgotten my frustration at our lack of plumbers. If that doesn’t work or if I can’t persuade Tiffany’s to give me a huge diamond ring that I can bury somewhere, then I might just serialise this blog… or more precisely ‘blob’, as our landlord endearing calls it and we have readily adopted.

For now though, it is 3am and, as visions of giant rabbits and Bletchley Park codes dance through my mind, I really think I should crawl to bed. Thanks Morpheus, but I don’t think my dreams could be any more vivid than my imagination…

Ciao per ora, carissimi amici.

Felice Nuovo Anno!

Dear all,

A very Happy New Year (and Happy Hogmanay to those of you with Celtic roots) :o)

As T S Eliot said (in Little Gidding):

'For last year's words belong to last year's language,
And next year's words await another voice.
And to make an end is to make a beginning.'

After the terrible times that many of us experienced in 2008, we hope that your 2009 is filled with love, laughter, fine health, job security, less stress, better finances/lower mortgage rates, several trips to Italy and generous lashings of vino e felice.

It's beautiful here today - snow on mountains and sun in the garden. However, my dearest hubby is missing it all as he's currently in bed nursing a bruised rib (never, ever mix fireworks, rain, prosecco and steep hills - absolutely no sympathy)

Keep us posted re your news - always great to hear from you. Take care and wrap up warm. Lots of love to you and yours.

Grande baci e amore,
Juliet and Peter XXXXXXX
PS News just in.... the builders are starting in 1-2 weeks - hoo-bloomin-rah!