Otto Mese (8 months): Building site, bureaucracy, blisters, baskets, ball games, baritones, burning midnight oil, bizarre house guests, bloody cat...

Juliet writes:

Sono stanco! (I’m knackered)

I am typing this while sitting on newspaper, to protect the chair from the dust that has accumulated on my bottom. We spend each day on our dusty, rubble-filled building site. Officially, however, it isn’t a building site (shhh – don’t tell anyone), because at last we now have all our permissions. This means that, apart from ourselves, no-one is allowed on site that isn’t registered and contracted via the geometra. We were planning on hiding Jim in a cupboard when the authorities come round to check, but we don’t actually have a cupboard. And the implications if we are caught are pretty scary: Fines, imprisonment and worst still, closing down any works on site for an indefinite period. So, we are hanging tight and have asked Jim to take work home with him instead. Poor man – it’s harder than it looks trying to smuggle bits of banister and shutters into a car when no-one’s looking.

Anyway, hopefully this shady activity will only be transient - we are having a second meeting with a promising builder on Wednesday and it’s a toss-up between him (Guiseppe) and a pair of brothers (Stepan and Ivan). We should know for definite by Friday and then we can ask Christian to draw up the contracts and get the health and safety sorted, including the erecting of the obligatory signs and bright orange fencing all around Lecci. I am so excited about the prospect of official rubble and dust. I wonder if one can buy pretty hard hats on Ebay?

Well anyway, it all sounds simple doesn’t it? Just a few more forms, some contracts and at least 1,000 signatures stand between us and the beginnings of our dream home. Have I told you before just how much we love bureaucracy?

As we are relatively guest-free and builder-free now, we have been whiling away the days knocking the poor house apart, continuing to sort out the garden and sourcing baths, wood, marble, stoves, tiles etc for the time when it is civilised enough to fit them.

We now have the dining room flooring design sorted and the marble factory to make it up for us (we are even allowed to watch it being made, within metres of where the marble for Michangelo’s David was hewn)

We are also pretty damn near to getting a plumber. Only 8 months to source one aint bad. We should be getting the final quote this week (allegedly) and they can start at the beginning of next month. We are not sure if we can afford underfloor heating, but we would love this – especially in a country with no carpets – tiles can be pretty chilly at this time of year!

Just as we managed to scrub the grape stains off our hands and clothes (the wine will be ready in about a month – whoopee), we are now covered in blisters, scratches, splinters and twigs from the olive picking. It is a slow job (isn’t everything here?!), as each little extra-virgin olive is so precious, but we have been thoroughly enjoying our very first harvest. We only have 5 really fruitful trees out of 20, but it takes forever to shake, poke, pluck, prod, climb, fall off, swear and climb up again. Peter has taken great delight in making long poles to whack the branches with and persuade the stubborn little buggers to jump while I scrabble about on hands and knees with nets and baskets and climb the trees to handpick the most clingy stragglers. We have spent an entire day, done 2 big trees and 4 small ones and only filled one little wicker basket. Hrumppfh. Rain (yes, it does rain here!) has stopped play for the time being but we are hopeful that we will fill at least one more basket before skipping off to the cooperativo and persuading them to process our meager wares. While P can normally be found with heavy and noisy equipment in some dark corner of the house, I keep my distance with sandpaper and chisels in another corner, so it’s been lovely just spending time alone together in the peace and quiet of the garden, sharing the same job and having a laugh along the way.

We have managed to have a few ‘posh’ days recently (ie dust and twig-free). First up was the arrival of Charlie and Jen for 5 days. We all wanted to take it very easy, which involved lying in most days, fondling yet more strange-looking vegetables (see pics) and the consumption of a scary amount of wine and cheese. They were kind enough to insist that if we did anything at all, it should be in places we haven’t yet been to ourselves. So we had our first experience of Palma beyond the airport, taking in a very posh antiques exhibition (including an original Picasso, artifacts from the far east and some beautiful 3,000 year old Persian glassware), lunch in a great wine bar and a bit of window shopping. All very elegant and picturesque, although the heavens opened and Jen and I spent the trip back with our socks on the car heater vents! A couple of days later, we ventured into Forte di Marmi - 45 minutes from our house and the third most expensive seaside resort in Italy (after Capri and Portofino). Pretty tree-lined avenues with Georgian and Edwardian houses, piazzas with fountains edged by eateries and hideously expensive designer shops and a relaxing, if slightly snotty atmosphere. Again, not great weather, but we did manage to walk along the old pier right into the sea, visit a stove shop to source our oven, and spend some time in the marble factory mentioned above.

Next up was the ruggers match between England and South Africa last weekend. We were kindly invited around to Matt and Sue’s palatial priory with Simon and Sarah to watch it on Sky. It was heaven to sit on heated cotto in a beautiful clean house, eating Sue’s delicious home-made samosas, sipping vino and trying not to laugh at all the swearing and yelling from the men.

We also got the chance to admire their tiny little chapel, which they have now renovated sympathetically. You can see the original murals and Sue has put candles and flowers in it. I may just use it to pray for salvation when Lecci becomes an even worse dust pit!

And finally, yesterday when we went to Lucca for the brilliant once-a-month antique fair that winds through the narrow cobbled streets. We were hoping that we might be able to pick up a reasonable old sink for the kitchen and fireplace for the dining room. But alas, the streets were completely empty. (Typically Italian – we found out from a waiter that the stallholders just fancied a different day, so they just went ahead and changed it without notice to the weekend before). But our journey wasn’t remotely wasted. We had a lovely liquid lunch outside in the sunshine (not something you can usually do in Blighty at the end of November) and then wandered into the fantastic medieval Arts School where a local fair was taking place. In the vaulted, muralled rooms were furniture, jewellery, paintings, sculptures, wines, cheeses, meats and other local produce and crafts all for sale. But the most exciting event was a free 2-hour concert in the Great Hall with a super baritone, pianist and a choir. We closed our eyes and heard everything from Mozart arias to African lullabys. A great strategy by Peter to stop his wife spending money on strange cheeses and expensive portraits of Puccini.

Cats are fine - much more settled although still hissing at each other on a daily basis. Kitten is fast asleep and sprawled out across my hand/the keyboard as I write, so my blog is probably full of typos! Weed has obviously now developed a healthy wanderlust. Last week, Peter had to utilize ladder and bravado when she got stuck up a high pine tree for hours and then on Saturday, after we returned from the ruggers, we heard a distant meowing and located it to behind the shed door. We had to call our landlord to conduct another rescue mission, this time on a high beam in the shed. P shrugged his shoulders in defeat and got the ladder out again. We hope that she stays ground-based for a few weeks.

Which brings me to a Nature Update. We are the proud owners of Italy’s biggest mushroom (see pics above, taken in the garden just by our house). We are too scared to eat it in case our hair falls out, we grow extra limbs and our blogs make less sense than normal. But it is a wonderful sight to behold.

Also, today we spotted some strange activity in our bedroom at Lecci (steady on, all lewd readers!). Marked in the dust is a labyrinth of tiny tracks. Three different types in fact. It looks like a worm in a miniature tank, a baby bird on drugs and a caterpillar with a feather duster had a drunken race on the floor overnight. I have never seen anything like it in my life. If anyone knows any tribal trackers, please do send them on to Cerignano.

Only other things of note: P set fire to himself while cooking for some friends, proving two things: Firstly, my husband should never cook and drink at the same time, and secondly my pet name for him of 'hot stud' is now more appropriate than ever! If that wasn't enough he also managed to fudge the Shaguar security code (His excuse? “I was bored waiting for a shop to open and thought I might get lucky and put in the right code.” Only 1 million combinations – what was he thinking of?!) so his car was disabled in a car park 5 miles away overnight and his wife slapped him a couple of times as a result. Meanwhile, because the convent isn’t warm enough with just the pellet fire and I am often up late because of my tum, he is cursing me for burning enough paraffin each week to heat up Helsinki in order to stop myself from shivering. Slaps and curses…we are so romantic aren’t we?!

Ciao per ora tutti. And congratulations to Rob and Gina for starting the ball-rolling on your own Mediterranean dream home – we can’t wait to read your building blog!

XXXX

Sette Mese: Going missing, going home, getting warm, getting stung, grapes, ‘grandma’ and the gang of four, grinding, gazebo and GEORGE CLOONEY!!!

Juliet writes:

BOO!

Happy Halloween :o)

It’s certainly been a roller-coaster month since my last missive.

I’m sure that most of you are aware from my panic-stricken emails, Weed went missing for five days. Like a Wild West renegade, ‘Wanted’ posters were put up all around town, offering a small reward. In addition to the many supportive emails from friends back home (thank you xxx), our wonderful neighbours offered to keep an eye out and one lady even called with a possible sighting. In the absence of children, Weed is our furry equivalent – she is older than our marriage and her bewhiskered love has got us through many hard times. We were beside ourselves with worry. Then, as if nothing had happened, she nonchalantly turned up late one night, promptly ate four sachets of cat food and fell asleep on our bed for the whole night. We think she may have been accidentally locked up in one of the buildings at the nunnery as she was warm, dry, clean and tick-free. Anyway, much rejoicing all-round. What was so lovely was that for several weeks afterwards, many neighbours asked after her and were genuinely delighted to hear of her return.

Anyway, Weed is fully settled in again, back to hissing at the kitten (who has finally learned to wee outside and has almost stopped biting ankles) and seems fine.

During Weed’s impromptu holiday, we were nicely distracted by the ‘Vendemmia’ or grape harvest (see slideshow above). This involved P and I working flat-out in the beautiful October sunshine for one 12-hour day and one morning, filling 24 large buckets full of grapes – 16 white and 8 black. It should have been a much easier, quicker process but we were learners and the vines were very unruly. Many complicated yoga positions were assumed in order to reach the fruit and snip it off.

Then it was time to help out neighbours Leo and Elena Lanzoni with theirs, in return for them letting us borrow their pressing equipment. They ended up with 20 buckets of black and 10 of white (luckily roughly the same quantity of each colour when mixed with ours). Almost the same amount of grapes, albeit with 12 of us helping, took only 15 minutes to reap. Oh, for next Autumn when ours should be pruned, propped and promptly pickable.

That evening, we had a wonderful vendemmia dinner hosted by the Lanzoni’s with 12 friends and neighbours – all Italian. We managed to converse, mainly with gestures and imagination, over a few glasses of Guiseppe’s local rosso – not barollo or brunello but surprisingly good – very smooth and velvety.

Peter and I had great fun learning about the processing, which all took place in Leo’s garage complete with spangly new equipment. Did you know that the processing for white is utterly different from the black? (If you did, is your name Oz Clarke?) For example, while the white is left to rest after just three days, the daily processing for the red has only just finished (3 weeks later). As you can imagine, P thoroughly enjoyed tinkering with tanks, valves and sieves, while I cleaned up and helped with the pumping. It should all be ready to drink early in the New Year and the total crop works out at 800 litres – that’s 400 litres each (200 red, 200 white), which should last us a week or two, hopefully :o)

The day after the vendemmia, there was no time to flop as mum (AKA the cats’ grandma) arrived on her very first visit to Italy, along with my Aunty Anne . Thank you for persuading mum to get on the plane, aunty. We gave them the usual tour of the house and grounds, plus a day pottering locally and a trip to Portovenere, which mum absolutely adored. We then plonked them rather rudely on the train for a 4-day trip to Florence that I had organised. I think mum was smitten with La Dolce Vita, despite having a craving for egg and chips after 4 days of pasta and risotto! Due to a diary balls-up on my behalf, we then had a morning of manic cleaning, washing and ironing before the Gang of Four arrived in the form of Penny, Peter H, El Reado and Sue. Despite the lack of sun on some days and the erratic shower, much merriment, cheese and wine was had by all. You were all the perfect guests – positive, generous and helpful. And you wouldn’t even let us do the washing up! The most memorable moment came in the form of a sunny boat trip around the islands near the Cinque Terre. Pure heaven.

On the fourth day, we met up with mum and aunty again in Pisa, showed them the tower, had a lovely sunny lunch and drove them back to the airport for them to catch the same flight back with Penny and Peter H. Time to flop yet? Ah no. We had to zoom back to the nunnery to annoy El Reado and Sue who were staying an extra night.

Very sadly, the week beforehand, my dear friend Natalie’s lovely mum Ann lost her valiant battle with cancer. So after our guests had left, I had one day to organise things before flying back to Blighty myself to offer what support I could to Natters and her sister. It was a terribly sad reason to be back in the UK, but I was very glad I was there. And on the positive side, it was lovely to spend time playing with daughter Caitlin and her cousins, hug Natters as much as possible, have a chat with hubby Matt and meet the Irish family.

While I was away, P managed – for the third time in 7 months – to have a bad reaction to a sting from a large, nasty Italian waspy thing. When I saw his hand at the airport, I thought it was a marigold glove blown up. Poor man. I need to prod him into going to the GP here and getting an adrenalin epi-pen, as his reactions get worse each time and it has taken longer for it finally to look normal again.

You need some jolly news now, right? Well, at last we have a stufo and a heater at the nunnery so our noses have defrosted in time for winter – hoorah! Ok, that’s not exactly mind-blowingly exciting stuff, but I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to be warm again.

As to Lecci, I have sourced and ordered a cheap claw-foot bath and some original 1920s door handles, while P has managed to secure some compensation for the missing bits of our kitchen. He and Jim have been cracking on with the wall grinding, although it’s a slow business. I am trying to sand down the doors, also a slow business. But at least we are keeping out of mischief and keeping out of the storms that have plagued us for the last few days. The high winds even ripped up our gazebo and threw it, in a mangled mess, into a ditch 200 feet away from its original position. Oops.

You will be amazed to hear (not) that we still have no definite builder. Ennio – our first choice – cannot start until February and we have to be out of the nunnery by the end of March so we have had to turn him down. 8 weeks – even by UK standards, wouldn’t be enough to make our dust pit habitable! However, while I was away, P was introduced to Marco. A lovely-sounding professional builder with a whole team of experts just itching to make Lecci nice again. It depends on his quote, but he sounds great. Will keep you posted.

And the most exciting news in the last 7 months? Marco’s wife (an ex-Miss Italia contender… steady on chaps!) is a friend of a friend of George Clooney! AND he is house hunting in our valley!!! Last year – so the rumour goes - he was travelling around here on his bike and broke down up a mountain nearby. Some locals, who had no idea who he was, took him in, cooked him a typical Lunigianese feast and put him up for the night for free. Ever since, he has been enamoured with the beauty of the area and the kindness of the people (we can certainly relate to that, Mr Clooney). On the plus side, we could be neighbours with one of the world’s biggest sex symbols, plus all his celeb friends including Brad and Angelina. On the downside, every woman in the universe will want to move here, including my mother, and I am not sure that our marriage could withstand a visit from Brad (yum) or Angelina (P says yum)!

Will write a new gossip column in the next blog :o)

Ciao per ora. Hope you are all keeping warm and surviving the snow. XXXX