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.