Welcome to Cath's Cache, a treasure box of writing...

Playing with fire

2011-03-07T08:44:00.000-08:00

Our life here often reminds Stu of his scouting days. He frequently tells me success stories about how he used to light a campfire with only one match, cook a full meal for the scout master and build a bivvy for protection in bad weather.

Well, something happened last week that may put an end to his proud posturing.

He set himself on fire.

It was late winter and we'd already started to think about the jobs outside that needed to be done before the onset of spring. We'd decided that burning the 6-8 piles of weeds and prunings that we'd left to dry over autumn and winter was right up there on the list of priorities.

So last week, on a reasonably clear morning we set off to the bottom paddock, which contained 4 of the said piles. The temperature was still hovering around zero so we were dressed in all our warm gear, including scarves and gloves. We were also armed with the chainsaw and fuel (to cut a few of the larger pieces of wood into firewood), firelighters and matches and a shovel and rake should our bonfire get out of control.

Our first, second and third attempts to light two of the piles resulted in very little flame and much smouldering. In our great disappointment, we convinced ourselves that the piles just needed a bit more sun and then consoled each other by quickly identifying an alternative job closer to the house.

As I was gathering the tools for our return to the house, the aforementioned individual thought he'd give the bonfire one more chance. Unbeknowns to me, he had opened the fuel can and poured fuel on the old oil rag that he used for the chainsaw. He'd then inserted this rag into the middle of one of the piles and set a match to it. All of this careful activity had been conducted with his woollen gloves on.

Suddenly I heard a sort of trembling warble coming from the direction of the said individual. When I looked over at him, I saw that this ex-scout was wildly shaking a flaming glove in a rather panicked way and saying 'oooh, oooh' in a rather understated way. I figured immediately that he didn't want to draw attention to himself lest I realise the stupidity of his actions. But, being a generally insensitive sort of person, I panicked and ran over to him anyway. I couldn't pull the burning glove off his hand because he was waving it around in such an aggressive way that I couldn't get close enough to it. Instead, I did what all good ex-brownies would do. I told him to roll on the grass to smother it.

The individual ignored me. Clearly he thought that my suggestion would extract some unwanted and hysterical laughter from me. With growing alarm, I looked at the flames leaping from his hand. I watched the whites of his eyes as they grew larger and larger. Stu was watching his burning appendage as if it didn't belong to him.

Finally, he managed to wave it around and hit it with the other glove enough to put it out. Then he glanced over at me and I caught an expression which contained horror, relief and pride. I was wondering how he was able to feel any amount of pride at all, when suddenly I saw the other glove on fire! There ensued much the same sequence of events already outlined until he was eventually able to put that one out too.

No more has been said about this incident since it occurred, although I have noticed a distinct absence of scouting stories...

Still obsessed...

2011-03-05T09:11:00.000-08:00

We're still obsessed with our septic system...

We've been uncovering it, opening it, peering into it, testing it, emptying it, poking it, prodding it, stirring it and smelling it ever since we moved here.

Lately, we've become aware of a rather distasteful stench hanging around the house.

Because it smelled strangely like decomposing excrement and old grey water, we quickly suspected that our septic wasn't 'balanced'.

When we did our usual thing and surfed the internet for a solution, we found that we needed to re-balance the bacteria which breaks down the 'horribles'.

So now we're 'feeding' our septic system!

Yes, we regularly feed it with a lovely concoction of full cream milk and vinegar. This unusual combination is left in a bowl for about ten minutes to 'mature'. Once the mixture assumes the appearance of a congealed sort of curdled yoghurt, it's ready!

Then we tip it down the sink.

And we wait.

A few hours later this beautiful mix of healthy bacteria has commenced its work on our 'contributions' to the septic system and the air around the house smells like roses again (sort of...).

Our solution certainly beats dropping a newly killed chicken head into the septic...apparently the old Italian remedy...

Stripping, filling & painting

2011-02-05T07:11:00.000-08:00

Stu and I work well as a team. Well, most of the time.

One of my major jobs this year has been to restore our internal doors.

When we arrived here, all of the upstairs internal doors were painted black.

I have trouble with black doors. I think they look depressing and uninviting.

So I determined to re-create them...

My first attempt to strip, sand, fill and stain a door was a nightmare. I tried to do it without the assistance of stripper and it was only when I realised that there were multiple layers of lead-based paint on the door that I realised chemical assistance was absolutely necessary.

Then, once I'd stripped the old layers of brown, olive green and black paint off as much as I could, I realised that it was always going to remain patchy and wouldn't take an even stain.

So I stripped it as evenly as I could, filled the many cracks and holes that punctured its surface, then painted it a warm cream water-based colour!

Since that first door, I've done three more. They are all matching and the same cream colour. They make me want to walk into the rooms that hide behind them.

Stu and I make a good 'door team'. Stu removes them, I restore them and Stu re-hangs them.

The only time he has become frustrated with me was when, in my enthusiasm, I filled some bolt holes that he'd painstakingly measured for re-hanging!

Nonno and nonna are with us...

2011-01-31T07:30:00.000-08:00

I like old things. They remind me of times gone by. Our 200 year old house allows me to share my life with those from the past. I dream of the people who have lived here before us. I feel their spirits as they waft throughout the rooms. I hear the sound of their arguments and laughter in the stone walls.

When we finally finished renovating our bedroom, it was only fitting that my spirit friends should be surrounded by old bedroom furniture.

So on a clear blue sky day in mid September we found ourselves driving to Torino.

While local farmers were busy amidst the vines and driving tractors pulling trailers laden with grapes to cantinas, we were going to collect an armadio for our bedroom.

As we approached Torino we were rewarded with beautiful views of the alps that surround the city. Torino was shining in the brisk late summer morning as if to show off its royal past.

The purchasing process for our armadio had been a simply wonderful experience, right from finding it on ebay italia, communicating with its owner, then finally driving to 'meet' it for the first time on that fresh morning.

The lady who sold the armadio to us, Daniela, is slim, has short grey hair, beautiful clear olive skin and is in her 50's. She met us at the gates of her apartment building in the centre of Torino and took us upstairs to her apartment. While she prepared coffee for us we inspected the armadio. It stood in her wide hallway amidst boxes and mess because she was in the process of moving. A glance around the apartment told us that Daniela was an artist and a musician (pianist) and perhaps a little eccentric. After coffee we asked her to play us something on the piano and were stunned when she rewarded us with several bars of clear and confident classical music.

It was love at first sight. Our new armadio was old. It is an antique from the 1850's and made of solid walnut. It has all sorts of cracks, marks and damage on its lovely patina and these give it heaps of character. It also has a legend.

Daniela explained to us that it had belonged to her grandfather who had come to Italy from Germany where he lived near the border with Holland. He was apparently a very intelligent man and a brilliant photographer and he used to develop his photos in the armadio, hanging them on the rail to dry in the dark depths of the cupboard!!! He eventually gave up the art of photography at the age of 90 and died shortly afterwards.

Unfortunately, the armadio was much bigger than we had imagined. We realised fairly quickly that it would be impossible to travel back to Canelli with this precious antique sliding around on top of our little 1.5mt x 1.5mt trailer. We told Daniela that we thought it was too big for us to take. She looked upset for us but then went over to the armadio with a small screwdriver and proceeded to undo several tiny screws as well as some larger bolts that we'd never seen the like of before. She told us the armadio broke down into 12 pieces! We were wrapt!

Just as we were starting to dismantle it, I noticed a small antique desk on the opposite wall. It was made of beautiful wood and had a smooth marble top. Daniela said it was her most treasured possession.

After a few minutes, we had dismantled the armadio to the stage of having to lift the top off it. Just as Stu lifted the top off, there was a sudden slip and a crash. The two doors of the armadio had crashed to the floor, smashing into the marble desk on their way. We were horrified. Amidst profuse apologies, we dropped to our knees to check the desk. Thankfully there was no damage. We then checked the armadio doors. Again, no damage. Both pieces of furniture were aged and well-preserved; their materials hardened and their construction stern stuff! We learned quickly that the doors of our armadio are held on by a link into the top.

Daniela was very emotional as we prepared to take the armadio away. She helped us carry every piece into the lift and out to the trailer. She even got involved in the loading and helped us to squeeze cushions between various pieces to protect them. The loading took a full hour and she was clearly thrilled that we had taken so much care with it.

Just as we were finishing the tying down, I noticed Daniela walking around the trailer with her arms crossed and her head bent. She seemed to be meditating. Suddenly she looked up at me and said 'Mio nonno e molte contento' ('my grandfather is very happy'). She was absolutely beaming. It was as if she'd got a message from beyond. When she grasped my hand for a photo beside the trailer, I felt strangely connected to this woman.

Later, when the armadio had been re-erected in our bedroom, I had stood back and welcomed nonno to the house.

A few weeks later, we returned to Daniela's apartment, this time to buy the matching cassettiere (set of drawers) which belonged to 'nonna'.

Now, when I look at our old furniture, I imagine the sound of nonno's voice in the waxed walnut wood of the armadio and see the stretch of nonna's smile in the polished cracks of the cassettiere...

I love the way I can be childish...

2011-01-30T07:36:00.000-08:00

It was when the wheels on the elegant white car in front of me started to spin that I started to panic.

I was driving our Suzuki Grand Vitara in a snow storm for the first time in my life.

I was 45 years old.

I could have panicked and, as a much younger person, I probably would have.

But last night I didn't. I now have a mature mind.

I slipped the car into 4WD and confidently passed the other car, which was now painfully zig-zagging towards the peak of the range just outside Canelli.

A few minutes later I was at home and dressed in my pink and brown flannelette pyjamas. Within seconds I was tucked up in bed enjoying the warm heat of the electric blanket on my back. The snow was long forgotten.

A few hours later I was awake and dressed in my 'round the house' winter garb. I was looking out of the bedroom window at a valley that lay thick and heavy with snow. I was challenging the clods of snow on the trees, teasing each of them, hoping that I'd be watching the unlucky one when it finally fell silently to the ground. I laughed and clapped my hands when I won.

I love my mind. I love the way it alternates between maturity and childishness.

Always check one's most vital winter equipment BEFORE winter...

2011-01-28T09:13:00.000-08:00

Most of you will have the good sense to know that one should check one's most vital winter equipment BEFORE winter.

The ignorant amongst you will understand that we had so much else to do just to get INTO the house for winter that we assumed the fire burning happily away in the kitchen would last us throughout the cold season...

Alas, this was not to be the case.

Last week we had a chimney fire. Our most precious fire, the one in the kitchen that also breathes warm air into our bedroom, started spewing noxious gases into our bedroom. At the time, Stu suspected a chimney fire because of the heat in the stones behind the fire and the colour of the smoke coming out of the chimney. But neither of us realised the danger associated with breathing in the smoke. The fumes were shocking but we went to bed anyway in our poisonous room and woke up with rasping throats. In hindsight, it's amazing we didn't die in our sleep (the gases coming off a carbon build-up in a chimney can be equivalent to carbon monoxide poisoning!)

Anyway, we immediately phoned the muratore (wall, roof and chimney expert). Aldo is our favourite tradesperson because he is patient, reliable and honest. He said he would come. We didn't push the 'when' because we were already aware of the dangers of getting on a roof during winter and even suspected that he might not be able to help us until Spring! Instead, we waited for a phone call from him to confirm his visit. It didn't come while my sister Joanne and two young nephews Nic and Sam were here but it did come the day we dropped them off at Malpensa for their return trip to Australia (2 days ago).

I was in a rather emotional state after realising how empty and quiet the house was, when Aldo phoned and said he would arrive immediately!

Despite my red eyes, we showed him our problem and he said he would come the next day with a cherry picker. He demonstrated some concern about the muddy state of our driveway in terms of manoevring the cherry picker but it didn't last long once he remembered that very cold temperatures were forecast for the following morning so any mud would be frozen anyway.

So this morning at 9am, Aldo, two young men and a cherry picker drove up our driveway. It was particularly frosty at minus 5, perhaps the worst we've had yet. There was ice everywhere: the grass, the trees and the roof where all frozen. And of course the mud.

As I watched them stabilise the cherry picker, I felt sad that my nephews had missed this 'event' by only days.

However, the grown up Italian men were like boys anyway, as they 'played' with the cherry picker. They argued over who should use it and laughed at each other's lack of ability to move it smoothly and in the right direction.

Two of them went onto the roof while the other managed the engine of the truck which was connected to the power source for the extendable arm. The two on the roof looked long and hard at the chimney, then decided to cold chisel off the brick top so that they could see inside the cavity all the way down to the kitchen. Aldo had a very small torch to assist their viewing so I wasn't surprised when he asked me if I had a stronger torch. Of course, to collect my torch, he needed to come back down via the cherry picker. Cynically, I wondered if this wasn't just an excuse to have another 'ride'. There was quite a bit of hidden laughter as the other two men watched Aldo negotiate the arm down without breaking all the tiles on our roof in the process.

Once back on the roof, he yelled down that the chimney was clean and that a stainless steel chimney flue had already been installed in the brick cavity! We felt embarrassed but he explained that if the stench had been so bad it might have completely burned off the offending layer of carbon. We were also wrapt to hear about the flue because this seems to be a priority for everyone who restores houses and we weren't sure if ours had been done or not.

It was at this point that Stu's life turned to crap. Aldo invited him to come up in the cherry picker to have a look down the chimney himself. Aware of Stu's fear of heights, I quickly volunteered him and in no time at all Stu found himself in a very wobbly cherry picker with a very dodgey driver.

Once Stu had been returned safely to ground, Aldo announced that he would 'go and get the stone'. 'The stone' was to replace the bricks that had formed the top of the chimney. During the Autumn rains, we'd been plagued by a leaking chimney and he had explained to us then that it was normal Piemontese practice to replace weak brick chimney tops with a single piece of stone.

When he returned half an hour later, he had a beautiful piece of grey granite with him. Once up on the roof, he positioned the granite perfectly, finally cementing it into place. I noted the pride he took in ensuring that his cement mix was right. When he built the stone wall in the kitchen for us a few months ago, he was very fussy about his mix. A real craftsperson.

While he was doing this, he asked us to light the kitchen fire so that he could see if the smoke was still coming into our bedroom.

A few minutes later, we had all three men in our kitchen. Aldo's two young helpers looked and behaved like they'd never seen a fire before. Within seconds, Stu's humble fire which was focused on maximum efficiency in terms of wood usage, had been fed like never before! It was a veritable bonfire as it roared away in its confined space! Then they sat back and marvelled at how much heat came out of the fire and how far into the room the heat extended. It was really quite hilarious.

But once the initial excitement was over, they all looked at the flue and the fan and decided that not enough air was getting through the fire and that this was causing the build up of carbon inside the chimney. To avoid future chimney fires, Aldo told us we should run the fire fast and hard (a bonfire) every few weeks. 'Make it eat the wood!' he exclaimed.

So we are warm again, albeit because of a very attentive Italian tradesperson rather than any great pre-winter planning on our part...

Addendum to previous posting

2010-12-13T12:10:00.001-08:00

This is to advise that a down and feather doona was purchased today...

There is hope...

Sex has left the building

2010-12-10T08:17:00.000-08:00

Our sex life has taken a dive...

It's decreased like the plummeting temperatures and almost disappeared like our flowering plants in the frost and snow...

It all started when I tossed and turned in bed one night because I was cold.

It didn't take me long to go looking for the cardboard storage box that contained 'bedding'. I pulled out a woollen blanket which I draped over our supposedly already warm woollen doona.

A few days later I found myself again tossing and turning.

I went back to the box and dragged out another woollen blanket and draped this one on top of the supposedly warm woollen doona and the other woollen blanket.

We were now weighed down by bedding and could barely turn in bed.

A few days later I reached into the never-opened 'third drawer'of my bedside cabinet and pulled out a set of old pyjamas. They were faded, stretched and buttoned to the neck.

Another few days and I had fluffy pink socks on.

Another few days and I'd stooped as low as I could get.

I went to the hat and scarf drawer and pulled out a beanie.

Yes, I'm embarrassed to say that I now wear a beanie in bed.

Any hopes of a recovery in our sex life were dashed this week when Stu told me he felt like he was sleeping with 'Dicky Knee'...

(For the non-Australians who read this Blog, Dicky Knee was a character on an Australian comedy show called Hey Hey it's Saturday which was broadcast during the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. Dicky Knee was simply a 'head on a stick' that wore a cap. He would appear suddenly throughout the show to hassle the compere. I guess when Stu looks at me in bed these days all he sees is a head with a beanie that may as well be attached to a stick under the sheets... ;-(

I've done it again...

2010-12-10T08:10:00.000-08:00

I've done it again...

I told the curtain man who came to measure our windows that he shouldn't come in his truck because the road was 'not good'.

'Not good' was the best I could do because I didn't know the Italian words for 'cut up', 'ruined', 'stuffed' or 'muddy mess'.

Anyway, when he looked at me I saw the usual confused expression so I felt compelled to try to explain.

Unfortunately I got the words for 'truck' and 'chimney' confused and told him 'a chimney had driven up our road and made it not good'.

He still looked confused but at least I learned the word for mud out of this exchange (I spied a muddy puddle outside his shop and asked him what it was...)

How to create panic in Italy...

2010-11-22T11:31:00.000-08:00

I mentioned a while ago that I occasionally make mistakes in terms of my Italian.

My last reported mistake was getting the words for hornet (calabrone) and samples (cambione) confused and telling everyone that we had lots of samples at home.

Well, today I did it again.

For some time, we've been purchasing boxes of 'accendifuoco' for our fires. These are little tablets which are available in either a petrochemical or a natural form. We use the natural form which is made up of compressed sawdust. We use them to light our fires because paper burns too quickly. We put a tablet in the middle of the fireplace, build a little kindling tee-pee over the top of it and wait until the fire is strong enough to tackle wood.

Now, any half intelligent person learning Italian would observe that the word 'accendifuoco' is made up of two words: accendi (light) and fuoco (fire).

For months, I've been talking about cutting wood for our 'fuoco', lighting our 'fuoco', wanting a 'fuoco', etc.

Well, tonight when we arrived at our Italian lesson, our teachers asked us what we've been doing lately.

I proudly announced that we had installed a fire in our lounge.

They looked at each other and smiled, then one of them waved her arms in a rather erratic manner above her head and ran around in circles yelling 'Panico! Un fuoco!'

I looked at Stu. Stu looked at me. Clearly our teachers needed a break. We wondered when the next school holidays were.

After a few minutes, they'd calmed down enough to tell us that 'fuoco' was used in a panic situation when a fire had broken out. One of the teachers went over to the blackboard and drew a picture of a fireplace and called it a 'camino'.

So now I know.

I also know that it's far worse to be telling people you're responsible for a fire outbreak than telling them you've got lots of samples at home...

Have basket, have mushrooms...

2010-11-21T10:31:00.000-08:00

While other worlds are concerned about nothing but global warming, our Piemonte world also worries about the continuity of its funghi supply...

At all of the local markets in Autumn, there are bountiful supplies of wicker baskets for sale. I thought the locals were using them to decorate their homes for winter but I've since been told otherwise.

Apparently, in Piemonte it is illegal to collect mushrooms in anything other than wicker baskets.

The gaps in wicker baskets allow funghi spores from the mushrooms that have been collected to fall out and thus ensure regermination the following year.

It's a wonderful sight seeing the locals wandering about the fields in their autumn woollens, caps and gumboots and carrying wicker baskets.

It looks so pure and traditional...and somehow tied up in that purity and tradition is a deep respect for nature...

The things some people will do for peace

2010-11-13T09:23:00.000-08:00

We have a neighbour who lives about 500 metres from us.

We very infrequently come across him. In Spring, he tends to walk up the valley with an old camera to take photos of new growth but in the other seasons we don't see him at all.

During summer this year, we were driving up our driveway after a morning at the market.

We rounded a bend near our neighbour's house and were suddenly forced to brake in order to avoid hitting a naked man!

There was a difficult silence in the car as Stu wondered how to proceed and I 'took in the sights'.

Within seconds, the vision had smiled widely at us and was approaching the car.

It was only then that we recognised the naked man as our neighbour and saw that his most interesting parts were hidden by none other than a whipper snipper hanging diagonally across his body!

I felt like I was looking at a full size photo from a sexy men's calendar; one of those calendars that have photos of well-turned men holding various items of machinery to match their macho.

As he got closer, we saw a pair of loose and faded grey jocks behind the motor of the whipper snipper and were relieved to see that he wasn't entirely naked after all.

He explained with absolutely no embarrassment that he'd been cutting the overgrown driveway because he'd purchased a new car. Apparently the new car was fitted with instrumentation that beeped whenever anything got too close to it. It had been necessary for him to cut back any protruding and overhanging growth on the driveway in order to get his car home in silence.

When he next drove home in peace, I wondered if he would consider the disturbance his state of undress had caused us?

To dog or not to dog...

2010-11-13T09:21:00.001-08:00

About once a week, usually on a Friday morning, we find a small red Fiat parked just outside our barrier.

We usually find it when we're leaving home to drive to Acqui Terme to share a coffee with our ex-pat English-speaking friends.

An old man stands beside the car leaning on an open door or sits inside the car huddled in several layers of clothing. When he tries to move, he is slow and stiff. It's as if he's been frozen for some time and is just beginning to learn to move again. We suspect he suffers from arthritis and that his joints seize in the damp and cold of our Piemontese Autumns.

We don't know why he comes or what he is doing here.

Although we always say hello to him and sometimes even extend ourselves to commenting on the weather, we suspect he speaks Piemontese dialect because we can't understand much of what he says back to us.

One week, I asked him what he was doing here. I suspected he was collecting mushrooms.

To our surprise, he said he was collecting 'tartufo' (truffles)!

We had never suspected that our humble little valley could be a source of these precious little treasures. There is considerable income to be had from truffles. Italians all over Piemonte have dogs that are trained to help them find them. Foodies all over the world pay unreasonable amounts just to have a few meagre slices of these pungent little earthy lumps shaved over their meals.

The concept of income is interesting to us. For the following week, we find ourselves contemplating the purchase of a truffle dog. We look with uncharacteristic interest at all types of hunting dogs.

However, it only takes us a few days to realise that we don't want to be professional 'dog-poo-picker-uppers' so we decide to leave the truffle hunting in our valley to the old man.

We still wonder how his poor old body allows him to find and pick the truffles...but I guess the mysterious tradition and the immense value of a tartufo is enough inspiration for him...

It's a rather strange colour I've chosen...

2010-11-12T10:23:00.000-08:00

When we first moved here, we attempted to name each of the 14 rooms in the house and rustico.

We had several obvious bedrooms and bathrooms. We quickly identified what would logically be the kitchen and dining room. After several tours through the house, we eventually found the room that was to be the laundry. It lay in the bowels of the house, surrounded by several other rooms and several layers of stone walling.

This left only two rooms upstairs that we couldn't easily classify.

At first we called the smaller walk-through room the 'library' because we thought it would be a good location for bookcases. We called the other much larger room with a loft the 'gallery' because we thought it would offer the biggest and widest walls on which to hang artwork.

After focusing on the renovation of the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchen and dining room over summer, we'd only recently moved our focus to these two rooms. As the weather cooled and we found ourselves still watching television, talking on the phone and accessing internet in the unheated and uninsulated rustico, finding a room in the house in which to do all these things became increasingly important.

So we launched on the larger room with a loft. As we got to know this room, we realised that the inbuilt hutches with shelves that already existed on two walls would be better served as bookcases. So after Stu installed several more shelves in these spaces, we soon renamed the room the 'library'.

Since the room now had an image to uphold, I set about painting the walls.

I had visions of the 'library' being the most peaceful room in the house. I wanted it to be trendy and stylish and decided to paint two walls one colour and two walls another colour. The colours I chose had to work with the stone walls and the wooden ceiling but also create a relaxing mood.

At the hardware shop the following day, I chose a sort of tea and a sort of coffee. I bought only small tins of these specially mixed colours. With the benefit of hindsight, I now know that this was probably an indication of the confidence I had in my colour choices.

When I got home, I launched at the walls with great enthusiasm with my hairless brush and my hairy roller. My painting instruments had seen better days.

My first colour was perfect. The tea put a lovely warm tinge on the walls, blending with the grey stone walls and bringing the room together.

My second colour was horrific. I piled the coffee on the walls, hoping that with varying thicknesses it might appear less 'orange'. I even pretended I liked it for the rest of the day. When the next day proved that the colour was definitely 'orange' and didn't offer enough contrast to the other colour I decided to take remedial action.

I returned to the hardware shop, adamant that I would select a better colour to go with the perfect colour I had already bought. I was thinking 'taupe' or 'chocolate'...one of those trendy colours that other people seem to choose easily.

I bought a small tin of a brownish colour and painted a line on the wall where this colour would meet the other colour. It was perfect.

The next day I painted the remaining walls with my new colour.

While not exactly the 'taupe' or 'chocolate' I had hoped for, the strange rusty depth of this colour is tolerable...at least it will be, after we cover most of it up with paintings and artwork!

You're never really sure...

2010-10-12T13:19:00.000-07:00

During summer, I learned that Italian tradespeople are especially wary of hornets.

Having never lived with hornets, we must be rather ignorant of them because we simply do what we have to do around the place and ignore them. There are also wasps. Compared to the insects and bugs in Australia, these are almost friendly.

So, in our ignorance, we've had a blissful summer surrounded by stinging insects.

One day, after a particularly aggressive thunderstorm, we noticed that our phone and internet had died. We called Telecom Italia, who sent a man out to check our lines. He was in his 50's and loved listening to our dodgey Italian. At one stage, he got particularly animated, pointed to his arm (which appeared swollen) and hit himself with a pointed finger! He kept repeating 'Non bene!'. We had no idea what had come over him but attempted to smile and frown at the right times.

After he'd left, I launched at the dictionary to look up the word he'd used during his remonstrations: 'calabrone'.

It meant hornet.

The next Italian tradesperson who came had a similar reaction to hornets. He was the muratore and we'd called him about the leaks in the roof of the house. He'd come out to the house, taken a quick look around, pointed out several hornets nests in the eaves, told us lots of horror stories about hornets, then said that nothing could be done about the roof until the hornets breeding season had finished after September.

For the rest of summer, I proudly made conversation with all and sundry, telling them that we had lots of hornets at our house. Unfortunately, at some stage I'd forgotton the correct word for hornet and had replaced it with another word that I must have heard somewhere else: 'cambione'.

The people I talked to looked rather confused at my proud statements and I assumed this was because Italians normally wouldn't be proud of having hornets. I didn't care. I was simply proud that I knew the word for hornet. At least I thought I did.

When we re-commenced our Italian lessons after a very long summer school holiday period, I took the opportunity to show off my new word to our Italian teacher.

She also looked confused.

I stuck my arm out and made a buzzing sound and 'stung' my own arm with my forefinger.

She looked askance and sought the assistance of another teacher.

After a short exchange, our teacher explained that a 'cambione' was a sample. A 'calabrone' was a hornet.

I was so embarrassed.

All summer, I'd been telling anyone who'd listen that we had 'lots of samples at home'.

Goodness knows what they must have thought. At the bare minimum they must have wondered what sort of business we were in...

Poo trauma (again)...

2010-09-28T22:33:00.000-07:00

It seems that we've had some septic problems again...

As always, we try to save our septic traumas for visitors and we're proud to say that we didn't let our current visitors down!

The lucky first visitor was Maria, who arrived in October/November 2009, all smiles and joy, enthusiastic about her stay. Within a few hours, we'd realised that we had no hot water, then no water at all, then a blocked septic system (read no sink/shower/toilet)! Maria kindly braved the week with us as we made regular visits to the local shopping centre toilets with increasingly oily hair and washed ourselves in bottled water.

This month, we saved the experience for Stu's sister Cheryl and her husband Ross. Luckily, we'd at least progressed to having the rustico toilet and shower available. Unfortunately, we now sleep in the house, which meant that our nightly visits to the toilet entailed stumbling down the stairs in the house, unlocking the front door, turning on the outside light, walking across the pergola to the rustico, opening the rustico door. One eventually found oneself in a position to be relieved but substantially more awake than is normally desired at that time of night.

We'd like to ask all future visitors to let us know the dates of their stays 6-12 months ahead of time so that we can be sure to clog our septic system and/or break pipes (whatever is necessary) in order to offer them similar fun...

Tripping over each other and losing tools

2010-09-13T23:31:00.000-07:00

For the 25 years that I'd been employed, one of the key issues at work had always been 'roles and responsibilities'.

I had appreciated the need for these to be clear for the purpose of efficiency and ownership in a work environment.

However, in our new 'unemployed' existence, I had to re-learn this lesson.

We'd been restoring the house for a full six months. We had largely shared roles because we believed this would relieve one person from being stuck with an 'ugly' task and it would also give us variety.

However, we weren't terribly efficient. We would get stuck under each other's feet, we would make more mess and we would lose more tools. We would feel we had the right to comment on each other's standards (usually negative). We would have a limited sense of urgency, no flow and no ownership of any task.

So about a month ago, we settled into jobs that suited each of us. There was no formal discussion and separation of tasks. It just seemed to happen.

Stu is responsible for bricking, plastering, carpentry, electrical and plumbing.

I am responsible for pointing, grouting, restoring, painting and decorating.

Our new 'roles' have eased our communication, made us more efficient and given us a new sense of ownership in terms of the restoration.

All those years at work were not wasted after all...!

On being grateful for each other

2010-09-13T23:28:00.000-07:00

One of us (who shall remain unnamed) locked HIMself in the lower bathroom in the house this week.

While he was engaged in this pointless activity, I was cooking in the rustico. I was making two Christmas cakes and a Thai curry. Making my Christmas cake in September allows the fruit to vintage nicely before 25th December. The Thai curry was for a curry luncheon at a friend's house that day.

I had been at my cooking since 7.00am because the cake needed four hours to cook and we would need to leave at 11.30am for the luncheon.

At mid morning we had agreed to have our work finished by 11.00am to allow us to shower and prepare for the luncheon.

As usual, I was a little behind time so it wasn't until 11.15am that I looked at the clock and wondered why Stu hadn't come over from the house.

As I approached the house to investigate, I heard screams of the 'Catherine!' nature. They were pleading, desperate and very loud.

In his haste to re-hang the bathroom door which I had carefully restored, he had taken it from my 'paint workshop', secreted it to the bathroom, gently encouraged it onto its hinges and carefully closed it to check the fit to his frame.

Everything was perfect. It swung on its hinges perfectly. It closed perfectly. The room was warm and draught proof.

When he'd satisfied himself that yet another job had been done well, he had reached forward to open the door.

It was then that he'd realised the door wouldn't open.

When I finally found him in the bathroom, I received a volley of abuse because I hadn't heard him earlier through the six four-foot stone walls that separated us.

I wondered about his mental state. Surely, one should be grateful for a saviour, someone who frees one in times of entrapment. I walked away to allow him to 'get' the concept of gratitude. When I returned 3 minutes later, he was decidedly more humble.

He asked me to force the door. I felt like a cast member from a television police drama as I ran and crashed my whole body into the door.

It didn't budge.

I got a hammer from the toolbox and hammered around the lock where it seemed to be most stuck.

It didn't budge.

Eventually, we realised that the door latch had slipped into it's closed position and all we needed was the handle to open it. The handle was still in my 'paint workshop' so I dashed upstairs to get it. When I slid the smooth metal rod of the handle assembly into the hole in the door, it opened easily.

Duh...

The European summer holiday can be so annoying

2010-08-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

Scuola vacanza. Ferragosto. Call it what you will. You'd think we'd be familiar with Europe's penchant for it's summer holidays by now, after working in procurement year after year and having trouble every August because 'Europe alla vacanza!'

But we weren't ready and that's all there is to it.

At the beginning of June, we were happily attending our Italian classes when we noticed at the end of class one day that there was more joy than normal. The six students were wishing each other 'Buona Vacanza!'. Never really sure of what is going on around us, we assumed that one of the students was going on holidays. We also wished her a 'Buona Vacanza!'.

The following week, we turned up for our Italian lessons only to find that the shutters on the school windows were closed. We rang the front door bell. No answer. We loitered around for about half an hour wondering if the teachers were late. We even forced ourselves to have coffee at our favourite cafe to pass time until the teachers arrived. About an hour later, there had still been no 'movement at the station' as Banjo would say. We went home.

The next day, we lined up outside the school again at our allotted lesson time. Nothing. We went home.

Because we are commited to our Italian lessons, this went on for about 2 weeks before we decided we should be a bit more professional about this business called 'holidays'. We should find out when the Italian school holidays are and put an end to this weekly waiting outside the school like a couple of bitter parents planning to kidnap their respective children.

To our surprise, we found that the European summer school holidays are very long. Where Australians think of the long holiday as 'Christmas holidays', Europeans think of them as 'Summer holidays' and the short break at Christmas as 'Christmas holidays'. Hence our confusion. We simply didn't 'get' that it's all about Summer, not Christmas!

Our realisation about holidays occurred at the end of June. It is now mid August and the holidays aren't over until mid September...

In the meantime, work on the house is continuing but our Italian is deteriorating!

Tradespeople everywhere!

2010-08-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

Since commiting to our kitchen, we've been busy trying to get the necessary connections into the space ready for its arrival at the end of September.

There were already hot and cold water connections, waste connections and electrical outlets but they needed to be redirected into the middle of the room where the island would be. We also needed a gas connection. All of this work meant that we needed a plumber/gas fitter and an electrician.

Add to this a carpenter (because we wanted two new glass doors for the kitchen and dining room entries as well as a new window for the kitchen) and a muratore (because we needed to do some serious stone walling in order to make the space for the window) and you start to get a feel for our penchant for multiple tradespeople. By way of explanation regarding the window, previous owners had bricked in a space in the kitchen wall which was once the original front door. This bricked in wall was a blight on the beauty of the rest of the house because it was orange brick as opposed to grey stone. We'd always dreamed of correcting the brick with stone and restoring the house to its original state but thought that such a drastic change would be impossible or cost prohibitive. Faced with one last chance to make such a change, we agreed to obtain a cost for the work and make a decision based on that.

So all of this required activity and dreamed of activity meant that we needed to engage and coordinate quite a few tradespeople, including a carpenter, a muratore, a plumber and an electrician.

First to visit was the carpenter, who provided us with a quote for the new double glazed window that we hoped could go in the kitchen wall. Bepe is about 40 years old. He is short. Very short. When we first met him, he told us that he was from Calabria. Since then, he has made two external double glazed doors for us. Bepe is an artisan. He is a simply beautiful carpenter. His workshop is an artisan's dream, huge beams of old oak and walnut reach from ground to ceiling against one wall. There are several sets of old lourvres in the process of being restored in another corner. There are countless door frames and windows in various stages of production. There is also a very small dog who caused my heart to suffer irreparable damage when I walked into the workshop and surprised him on our first visit. Bepe said he would coordinate with the muratore regarding the creation of a hole in the wall for the window installation and the re-stoning afterwards.

Next to visit was the muratore. Aldo is about 60 years old. He has a bad back, probably from lugging stones around for all of his 40 years in the trade. He looked at the stone wall like only a muratore can and finally announced that it was possible to insert a window. He asked us if we had spare stones so we took him to our little stockpile of stones that we've dug up from the garden and other places. He was relieved, explaining that stones are very difficult to get these days. He even told us that building the stone shell of our house in current times would cost around EUR 200,000! He provided us with a quote for our relatively minor work (by comparison) and we gave him the go ahead, confident that he and Bepe would coordinate the work.

Next to visit was the plumber. Lilo has helped us since our early traumas with water and sewerage. He is about 35 years old and a marathon runner. Because the phone makes me nervous, I prefer to send Lilo text messages on his mobile. They usually start with 'Ciao Lilo, sono Caterina, abbiamo uno problemo...' which you might think would scare him away. Despite this method of communication being a bit too intimate, he always responds immediately so it appears to work for us. In no time at all, we hear a disturbance in the valley and seconds later see a white van speeding up the driveway and sending gravel all over our paddocks. It screeches to a halt in front of the house and Lilo dives out of it. While he gives us a broad smile and a loud 'Buon Giorno' we appreciate his perfect teeth and curly dark Roman hair. He runs into the kitchen, we explain what needs to be done and he runs back to his van. Through the window we see him stumble on a wobbly rock in our uneven path along the front of the house. We watch as he loses control of his body and flails his arms and legs in an attempt to stay upright. We wait for him to fall, perhaps even slide under his vehicle. We worry that he has spained his ankle. But he dives up, throws his body into his van and emerges seconds later with various pieces of plumbing-related paraphenalia.

A few days later, we heard vehicles making their way up the valley and dashed outside just in time to see Bepe and Aldo pull up outside the house. Bepe had the window and Aldo had the tools. We oohed and aahed over Bepe's beautiful workmanship while Aldo took a jackhammer out of his truck. We offered to act as labourers for Aldo so when it started he didn't waste time asking us to cover the stone pile with a tarp. Apparently, the stones slide off the cement if they are wet which makes wall building difficult. Once the pile was covered, we returned with a wheelbarrow and spade to collect the rubble that Aldo was creating at alarming speed from the old bricked in wall. When he'd finished the demolition, he sent us off to the stone pile to find heaps of flat stones with at least one right angle for him. We dashed off and picked over the pile until we found several stones that roughly met his criteria. Then we wire brushed the dirt and mud off them before presenting them to Aldo. While we waited for his approval or rejection, we felt like new chefs in a Michelin Star restaurant! Before long Aldo had re-stoned the base of the wall up to the window. After Bepe fitted his window, Aldo finished off the wall work with plaster to match the other windows. In the afternoon, when the sun proved too umconfortable for him we rigged up a tarp to provide some shade. We also gave him water and an icecream. He was a perfectionist and his wall was perfect and strong. He had built the external wall first, then the internal wall, then filled the gap between the two walls with cement and brutto (ugly) stones. This meant that the wall was almost three stones thick!

Next to visit was the electrician. Paolo is an enthusiastic 69 year old who is third generation Piemontese. He has an open face that draws you to him. He is a gentle and endlessly happy man who likes to talk. His patience with my Italian is momentous and he goes to great lengths to help me conjugate my verbs. He even introduced me to the Piemontese dialect which I managed to reject immediately. If I get distracted with another 'language' my 'pure' Italian (which is already horrific) will go to pot! Paolo arrived with a helper. The helper did all the work, while Paolo dashed off to buy bits and pieces, have long lunches and even attend his friend's father's funeral! The helper was the slowest worker we have ever seen. He had to run two cables across to the island, drill three holes in a stone wall for new powerpoints, pull cable to and through the holes, move a light switch and wire up the fan for the fireplace. It took him two full days.

I love these visits from tradepeople. Much talking goes on. Much more pointing and postulating goes on. There is a real feel that they want you to be happy with the job and that they want to do the right thing by our old rustic house. It is as if they feel a responsibility towards history. Italians don't preserve history in order to look at it from afar; they live in it.

Having said all that, we do try to minimise our use of tradespeople in order to keep costs down. Managing funds is a constant challenge for us and spending it when we don't have any income is even worse.

So we appreciated the electrician's view of the 'do and pay' relationship between tradesperson and customer.

When we offered to pay him immediately, he smiled and whispered 'Pagi a dopo...pagare e morire' ('pay later...to pay is to die')

What wonderful words of wisdom...but we're wondering exactly HOW MUCH later...our funds planning still needs to be done...

The 'new kitchen' experience

2010-08-15T22:45:00.001-07:00

We were at a stage in the house renovation where we needed a kitchen.

The kitchen 'space' is a square box with stone walls. However, all four stone walls are 'interrupted': a fireplace and radiator stand along one wall, two windows stand on another, there is a door on the third and another window on the fourth. As such, there is very little wall against which to actually place a kitchen.

Confident in the knowledge that kitchen shops are experts in such problems, we've been stalking several kitchen shops in the area over the last few months. This usually involves finding them, getting the gumption to stop outside then actually entering them, viewing the sample kitchens, then leaving before anyone can ask us questions. We'd done relatively well using this approach until we discovered the kitchen shop at Canelli. We were finally 'caught' at this shop. It happened too quickly for us; we hadn't even made it into the shop!

Fabrizio met us at the doorway with a loud 'Buongiorno!' and the smoke of his cigarette. He was in his 20's with very dark hair and very dark skin. He was very tall, very thin and very distracted. He lurched inside, turned the lights on in the showroom and watched our faces as we took in the initial view of several gleaming kitchens. Then he physically pulled us inside and started to demonstrate their features like a model on a game show. He opened every cupboard, moving it carefully and watching the hinges as they swung silently. Then he opened every drawer and turned to look at us to ensure that we noticed the smoothness of the runners. Then he played with every tap, turning them left and right. He even pulled one out of its casing so that we could fully appreciate its flexible hose. He ran his fingers along the stainless steel utensil rails revelling in the quality. Our smiles and our many 'Molto benes' caused him to beam with joy. I'm actually not sure who was more excited about the kitchens, the person selling them or the people buying them. Later we were to find out that his primary interest lay in details and beauty rather than the overall layout and other practicalities.

Then he waved his arms wildly which apparently meant that we should follow him. We soon found ourselves in his office. His gangly legs seemed to wave around dangerously as they lurched him towards the air conditioner which he turned on, and then the window which he closed. He then fell into his chair where we were relieved to see his appendages finally stilled. Not knowing exactly what we were getting ourselves in for, we watched him, perched on the edges of our fluorescent orange chairs. He opened his computer and waited. There was an awkward silence. Without enough Italian to make small talk, it was a very uncomfortably long wait. Was he opening his emails? Should we leave? Suddenly he burst into action and demanded measurements. A bit shocked, we told him we didn't have measurements; at this stage we just wanted to know about quality and approximate cost.

He sprung out of his chair and fell onto the door, opening it and again beckoning us outside with arms that looked like they would flail by themselves were they not attached to a body. Back in the showroom he walked us around the various kitchens again, this time providing approximate prices. I noticed his very long fingers lingered on certain elements of the kitchens, obviously his favourite pieces. We thanked him and told him we would think about the kitchens. On our way out he thrust a small piece of cardboard at us. 'Vieni!', he pleaded. The cardboard was an invitation to a special event that was to be held the following week. The business was launching a new cooker range. Guests would enjoy free wine from the region and free food cooked by a local Michelin Star chef.

Back in the car, we agreed that the kitchen prices were attractive. We also agreed that the event was attractive.

A few days later we found ourselves outside the showroom again, this time with a list of 'nice to haves' and several hand-drawn plans of our kitchen. I'd translated the 'nice to haves' into bad Italian. They included an island, a pull-out pantry and cupboards with wire shelving. The plans showed various views of the room: the first showed the walls, the second the arched ceilings and the third the wooden beams. Fabrizio's arms and legs were still worryingly active as he ushered us into his office. He took copies of the drawings, sat down, settled his limbs around his chair and opened his computer. Again, he waited for software to open, then he started to input all the dimensions on my plans. Slowly. Very slowly. After ten minutes, we realised that he intended to enter all of the dimensioms into his program then and there. Since he'd only got as far as half a wall in ten minutes we started to worry about the deep hole of silence and patience that stretched out in front of us. We suggested that we leave him to it and return that afternoon to see his design suggestions.

Five hours later we were sitting in Fabrizio's office, waiting for him to reveal his initial design.

We knew there was a problem because his arms and legs were considerably less animated.

'La cucina e molte difficile!', he announced, 'Molto problemo!'

'Si', we agreed.

We sat there, watching his face keenly for signs that something might be possible. Our faces must have inspired him to take further action because he suddenly beamed again, leaped out of his chair and bounded through the door. He returned with a short man in his 50's. This was apparently Giovanni, who we later discovered was Fabrizio's father. We watched Giovanni dither around the office for a while before he picked up my drawings and beckoned us to follow him. Like father, like son. We followed him out to the showroom but then found ourselves alone again except for a jittery Fabrizio who hovered around us playing with taps and cupboards. Eventually, Giovanni burst through the back of the building (via a door of course) with another man who we later discovered was his other son Luca. Giovanni beamed into our faces as the two of them walked past us and jumped into a car, where they started the engine and waited. We saw them peering into the showroom at us. We looked back at them, wondering where they were going. When Fabrizio mentioned that they were going to our place to measure our kitchen space, we realised that they were waiting to follow us home!

Aghast at the speed at which things were moving but feeling almost as enthusiastic as the locals we said goodbye to Fabrizio, who yelled 'Buongiornata!' at us through a fog of smoke, and jumped into our car.

There started a journey of two cars towards one home. The conversation in our car went something like 'How did this happen?' and 'Are we sure we're ready?' and 'How do we know they're the best/cheapest?'. The conversation in the other car probably went something like 'I hope they don't want it before the summer holidays' or 'Siesta's only an hour away' or 'Mama's made pasta for lunch'.

A few short minutes later, Giovanni was in our kitchen almost before we could open the door. Within minutes, Giovanni and Luca were deep in discussion regarding design alternatives and there were scotch tape lines all over our kitchen floor. I wondered how the tape was sticking to our dusty tiles and how long it would stay there. Then he grasped our wrists and took us for a journey around the imaginary pieces of kitchen. We liked it. Somehow, amidst many smiles, nods and grazies, we understood that Giovanni would give the design to Fabrizio who would enter it into his software and that we should return to the showroom to view the design within a few days.

We spent the next few days wandering around our scotch tape kitchen, considering possible enhancements. We also attended the special event, where we met two people who have since become our close friends (but that's another story...).

A few days later, we were in Fabrizio's office looking at our new kitchen in 3D. He had already built our enhancements into the design and we were in the process of signing a contract. We were immensely happy with the family and their business. We loved Fabrizio's enthusiasm, appreciated Giovanni's capability and felt secure in Luca's seriousness. We'd even met and adored Fabrizio's mother Philomena and we'd enjoyed the special event immensely.

We have a kitchen. Well, almost...

Things are not always as they seem

2010-07-18T11:49:00.000-07:00

Some people take their toilets for granted.

We've learned the hard way that one should never take for granted the fact that their excess waste can be swooshed away in one easy push of a button.

During some trauma with our sewerage system in December last year, we were obliged to get very close to the toilet in our Rustico. Now every time we flush we sing the praises of this toilet.

The renovation of the Main House is now at a stage where we needed to finish the bathrooms.

When we purchased the property, these bathrooms had all their fittings, including a clawfoot bath, sinks, showerheads and taps. Some of them were in their original cartons but all had been opened and there was evidence that they'd been the subject of some rummaging. We'd had a cursory glance in the cartons and were confident that all the main parts were there. We also logically assumed that all the preparation work for installation of these parts had been completed because the previous owners had been at a stage where they were purchasing such extravagant fittings (the taps were EUR 600 each!)

What we discovered was something quite different.

The opened cartons did not contain all the necessary parts and some of the parts that they did contain were broken. The benchtop of the huge wooden handmade cabinet in the upstairs bathroom was not actually attached to the rest of the cabinet. The wooden character framework that sits on top of the bench and extends up to the ceiling was not joined to the cabinet but simply balancing on top of it. No holes had been cut in the benchtop for electrical cables or taps. The shower had not been tightened properly so leaked in several places. The toilet had an old-fashioned ceramic water tank that was positioned on a lacework frame at the top of the wall behind the toilet. It had a chain pull that had a ceramic bulb on the end of it but it had no water cock to control the level of water in the tank and therefore the tank overflowed when the toilet was flushed. The pipe bringing clean water to the tank leaked in several places. The pipe taking water from the tank to the toilet leaked at the base of the tank as well as where it entered the toilet bowl.

I had the good fortune to peek into the bathroom at the exact time that my very frustrated handyman (Stu) was being sprayed with water from all directions.

I tried to withdraw immediately in order to avoid both the water and Stu's swearing but I was too slow.

He spat his frustration at me, showing me how poorly every connection fitted. Ignorant though I am, I could fully appreciate that a 20mm chrome pipe could not be adequately connected to a 1 inch ceramic pipe with silicon alone. I saw the magnitude of the problem immediately and, fearful that I might never get out of the bathroom, I suggested a trip to the local plumbing shop.

Completely conquered by the mess that he had to fix, Stu gathered all of the problem bits and pieces while I reversed the car out of the driveway.

We pulled up at FARS and cringed at the number of tradesman vehicles in the carpark. We'd been there once before and experienced total humiliation in the presence of several wizened and wrinkled Italian plumbers. Nevertheless we were desperate.

While Stu got his goodies out of the back of the car, I scanned the English/Italian dictionary for a word necessary for the sentence I was preparing. Leak. Fuga.

Our confidence level dropped as soon as we entered the shop and saw the main man behind the counter snigger just before he dumped us on his junior. The man who had dumped us was one who we'd dealt with before. Perhaps he remembered that we were foreigners who didn't have any idea of plumbing? I glanced at Stu and we shared an 'I want to run away' grin. Several plumbers were already being served so we waited. We felt like two convicts at a military event.

When we finally approached the counter, Stu took great pains to set his bits and pieces up in a manner that might appear logical. I told the junior that we 'had a problem, we had leaks in lots of places and we wanted a solution'. He immediately grasped our problem but not the solution. Instead he called one of the plumbers over to inspect our embarrassing connections. My Italian didn't extend to explaining that we weren't responsible for the chaos that lay on the bench in front of us. As the plumber fingered our connections, I concentrated on the five black stitches that tied together the skin at the tip of his thumb. He kept putting one pipe into the other to demonstrate that they didn't fit, then promptly lost interest. We cringed again. Another plumber came over. I looked at his fingers. He suggested a seal and the junior brought out several, none of which fitted. After that plumber lost interest, the junior told us that it 'wasn't possible'. He gave us a price for a whole new assembly but also suggested that we also try his competition closer to town.

Stu gathered his embarrassing bits and pieces and we skulked out of the shop, vowing never to return no matter how bad our plumbing situation got.

We drove to the competition and found a carpark devoid of tradesman's vehicles. Acting quickly lest tradesmen come, Stu gathered his bits and we entered the shop to find a woman behind the counter. Stu let out a quiet groan, unfairly assuming that the cleavage wouldn't be able to offer a solution. She immediately looked at our pipes, measured everything with a vernier and proffered a correctly sized seal and a little concertina gadget. Although she was worried that one of her solutions may not work, we were more than happy to pay the EUR 2 for the parts and her positive attitude.

One should never take for granted the fact that their toilet refills with water without leaking all over the floor. Buyer beware.

Summer evenings in the valley

2010-07-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

Summer evenings in the valley are simply exquisite. They bring welcome respite from the heat and silent salvation to the soul.

After long uncomfortable days, we usually sit outside for a few precious minutes before we go to bed.

At first the stillness makes us wonder where the air has gone. Then a gentle breeze meanders down the valley. It makes a fluttering sound which changes volume as it works its way through the leaves towards us; if the leaves were metal they would sound like chimes. Then the breeze moves around our pergola like a ghost as it chases the heat of the day away.

My pride and joy, a beautiful climbing rose, seems to stretch wider and higher in the cool night air after it's long drink of blood and bone that I annointed it with at dusk.

There is an occasional distant bark from dogs on the surrounding farms.

The sky is a dark midnight blue and there is a line where the tops of the even darker blue hills meet it. The stars are strong and scattered, their distance from one another making them shine even brighter.

At 10pm, I can hear a farmer still working on a tractor in his paddock at the top of one of the hills. I imagine the dust gently rolling behind his tractor wheels. I imagine the peace that working amidst the grapevines at night might bring him, rows of healthy vines promising fruit his only company.

The birds are silent. They've been replaced by the squirrels, tapping and scratching on the roof. Occasionally one of their stolen nocciole is dropped and it rolls and bounces down the terracotta tiles of the roof into the copper gutter.

Then there is silence. Songs of silence sing. There is also peace. Perfect peace.

The unknown creatures of the creek are squeaking and croaking but when the beetles start their whistling, we realise that they give us the single strongest sound of summer.

I AM artistic...I think...

2010-07-17T12:04:00.000-07:00

Stu has such blind faith in me. He believes in my artistic ability, even after I tried to copy Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' and ended up with a canvas full of conflicting colours of a palette that might be called 'babies excrement'.

Since he believes in me, I have no choice but to believe in myself.

For our 200 year old stone house, I have visions of painting our walls with a rustic effect. Stu agreed, saying that I would do a 'beautiful job' of the painting.

It would be easy. After all, I'd watched a video tape on creating textures at the hardware shop.

So I purchased a natural sponge at great expense (EUR 15!) and prepared the walls in the library with the 'white paint for interior walls' that was already in our stock at home.

Since I was eager to create my artistic effect, I was dipping my dampened sponge into the coloured paint almost before the walls had dried.

My colour had come from my artist's box that I normally use for canvases. Unfortunately, my stocks are a little low so I only have the primary colours. However, I was blindly confident in my ability to mix colours so I sat down at the kitchen table with a plastic lid from a container and my five primary colours and set about mixing.

My first colour was along the lines of my 'Sunflowers' attempt. My second colour was a pink that might be appropriate for a 5 year old girl's bedroom. My third colour might be useful during times of war as it was somewhere between khaki and purple.

After spending copious time on blending (5 minutes), I decided to try the second and third colours. They might look better on the wall.

I gathered my sample colours, dashed over to the house and bounded up the stairs. My confidence was blown out of all proportion.

I dipped my dampened sponge into the first colour, then spotted and stroked the white wall with wild abandon.

When I stood back to appreciate the new look, all I saw was a blotchy pink mess that appeared to stick to my perfect white wall like some sort of alien mould.

I tried the next colour.

But the khaki/purple splotches simply made the wall look like the side of an army tanker!

I panicked.

Maybe both colours would be better if they were blended? I dabbed the pink over the khaki/purple and the khaki-purple over the pink.

No, they were not better. In fact, they were far worse...far worse...

Stu was in the next room installing a bathroom cabinet with the utmost care. He wouldn't be making any emotional choices on colour and he would not be acting rashly in any way.

'How are you going?', he called to me.

'OK...'. No matter how hard I tried, my reply tapered off to a wobbly murmur. My heart was beating rapidly. If the sweat on my nervous skin had a colour, I would have looked like my blotchy wall. I tried to think of something else I could say that might discourage him from peering around the corner. Nothing.

I had to work fast. I had to obliterate my mess before Stu came into the library to see my 'beautiful job'.

I grabbed my roller which was still loaded with white paint and drove it over the coloured spots like a drug-deranged madman on a rampage.

The first coat didn't colour the spots! And it had to dry before I could put another coat on!

I needed time. I could hear his footsteps. I didn't have time. I heard the footsteps stop. I looked up to see Stu's face in the doorway.

'That looks good', he said, always supportive.

'I'm just at the stage of testing colours', I said, 'Which one do you prefer?'. I tried to be as nonchalant as I possibly could.

Stu looked at my collage of goo. I could see he was having trouble recognising any colour at all.

'Do you like the 'fresh green/soft lavender' or the 'warm rustic pink'?', I helped him.

'The lavender', he replied, 'I think...but then, I'm colour-blind...?'.

Life is good. I have a supportive man who is colour blind. It doesn't get any better than that for a woman who imagines that her artistic ability is akin to those of the Renaissance artists.

(TO BE CONTINUED...my confidence is currently at an alltime low and I can only summon enough energy to LOOK at the wall...)

Stolen Jam

2010-07-17T12:03:00.000-07:00

We had been working in the garden when we heard our neighbour Renzo call to us. He was standing at the fence with a large cane basket which was full of small yellow fruit.

As we approached the fence, he explained that the fruit had come off his yellow plum tree that hung over our driveway. When he encouraged us to taste it, we popped a few into our mouths and found that they were very much like a red plum. Then he waved his basket at us and told us to 'take, take!'. I quickly dashed inside to get a bowl and happily transferred a few handfuls out of his basket.

That afternoon when we drove to town we noticed that the driveway was covered with these yellow plums. Renzo had said he collects only the 'duro' (hard) ones from the tree because the 'morbida' (soft) ones on the ground don't last long. I wondered if Renzo would mind if I picked some of the soft but newly fallen ones off the ground to make jam.

The following morning, before the sun had made its way into the valley and onto the driveway I set off with my own basket to collect plums. There were even more on the ground than the previous day so I had plenty to choose from. Since the quality of jam is only as good as the quality of the fruit and since I didn't want to deal with any grubs that might be dwelling inside them, I was careful to select only those plums without a broken skin.

As I knelt, bent and squatted to gather the fruit, more fruit kept falling from the tree. The soft dull thud they made as they hit the ground was the pure sound of nature giving which sounded only slightly less relaxing when they hit my head. It was as if by tapping me on the head, the fruit was warning me that there were more of them coming and that I should make haste with my jam making and not waste them! I imagined that it was probably preferable for them to be giving joy in a jam jar than squashed to pulp under a car tyre...

Since my initial expedition, I've made several more trips down the driveway with my basket. The result so far has been 3 batches (18 jars) of tangy yellow jam.

This taste of a bountiful summer will make it easier for us to get through a dormant winter.

Bambi is back!

2010-07-17T11:57:00.000-07:00

We'd spent a very hot and uncomfortably humid day at several hardware shops in search of various parts that were needed to finish the bathroom renovation.

Our brains were pulsing with the frustration of not finding what we were looking for and the wet heat had make our skin sticky as if we'd just spent a day on a Mediterranean beach.

The shady driveway that meanders up our little valley was a welcome relief from the sun and we were eager to get home to shelter behind our thick stone walls.

When on one of the curves in the road I caught movement, I immediately assumed it was a kangaroo (Australia affects you that way...)

My sandaled foot moved quickly to the brake, ready to stop if necessary, when suddenly out of the forest bounced a deer and two bambi's!

After they'd crossed the road and bounded a few metres into tall grass, they stopped.

I stopped.

We spent a few delicious moments observing each other.

While we were marvelling at their beauty and elegance (and the fact that we had any deer in the valley at all after recent visits by hunters), they were probably wondering if we had guns...

It takes courage to destroy

2010-07-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

It seems a contradiction but one of the high points of our renovation has been demolition.

One end of our house had two flights of stairs. One flight travelled from the ground floor to the second floor. These stairs were of concrete and tile construction but were dangerously narrow and steep. They also blocked out considerable light, making the laundry damp and the wall between the laundry and the kitchen mouldy. The other flight travelled from the second floor to the attic. These stairs were made of brittle and borer-eaten wood that wobbled and threatened to crumble under foot.

I used to dread going into the laundry to wash our clothes. Instead I would stand for long minutes rolling my eyes around the walls, the ceilings and the floors, thinking of ways I could improve that end of the house.

One day it came to me. If we removed those two flights of stairs we could insert an atrium or a light well in the two-storey high space that was left. This would provide light, warmth and circulating air for the entire area in two levels of the house.

It was quite simply a wild but brilliant idea. I embraced it with both arms and secretly nurtured it until it was a fully developed concept.

Then I told Stu.

Unfortunately, he was rather tentative about my foray into architecture and design. He failed to reach the same level of enthusiasm, which could have something to do with the fact that he does the work whereas I just dream it up...

So it was with great joy that I heard him mention a while later that my idea had some merit.

A few weeks after that, when our levels of courage were running high, Stu took to the upper stairs with a saw, a cold chisel and a hammer. He carefully took the ceiling out (so that we could re-use the wooden tongue and groove panels), then he cut the stairs and pulled each end out of the walls easily.

We had not bargained on the layers of dust that had impregnated the old wood. As we waited for the dust to subside, we coughed and spluttered our way through a conversation on our progress. We wondered if a section of some of the steps should be retained as shelves jutting out of the wall. Since I was keen to retain some of the history of the house, we decided to keep the best specimens and re-visit this decision once the entire demolition had been completed.

The next morning, it seemed that our enthusiasm woke us early. We dived out of bed and gulped a quick breakfast before heading, belching and burping, towards the house.

The lower stairs proved to be harder to demolish as they had several layers of construction materials on them. As we uncovered the layers one at a time, we found ceramic tiles, then cement, then plaster, then slate. It seemed that the top layer had only recently been added but that the original layer had been there for some time. In the cavities in the walls where we pulled the original slate steps out, we found several sheets of a magazine dated 1950. These sheets were treated with the care afforded to Tutankhamen and have now been framed for hanging in the atrium when it is finished.

While Stu demolished, I swept and shovelled countless loads of rubble into our wheelbarrow and out to our rubble pile.

As with the upper stairs, we retained sections of some of the steps for further design consideration.

Finally, a few days later when the lower stairs were gone, we stood in our sweat and the dust and watched the light rush in. It seemed to rush around the dark corners and lick the cold damp stone on its way. I thought I could almost see the furry white spores of mould desiccate and drop off the walls.

We then turned out attention to two other walls that annoyed us at the base of the new atrium. The previous owners had installed these walls in order to make a hallway from which to access the bathroom and laundry. But now that we'd effectively created a new hallway via our atrium we could remove these walls in order to enlarge the bathroom.

Since it was too late in the day to start on them, we decided to look at them again in the morning and make a final decision after a good sleep.

That night my tired and twisted mind worked against me until I believed that the stairs that we'd removed had been holding up the entire house. In the wee small hours of the morning I tossed and turned in wretched agony as I watched our dream home crumble to the ground, caving in at exactly the place where we'd removed the stairs. I woke exhausted and adamant that we should refrain from doing any more demolition.

By lunchtime, Stu had calmed me down enough to explain that the walls now under our consideration for demolition were not load bearing. I remembered Horace's words of wisdom ('In times of stress be bold and valiant'') then hid in the rustico, covering my ears lest I hear the thud of falling stones while Stu hammered and destroyed.

It is now almost two months since we finished our demolition work and that end of the house has a wonderfully happy, healthy and spacious feel to it.

It hasn't fallen down.

Food just has to play a part...

2010-07-06T11:07:00.000-07:00

I can't resist. At the risk of sounding like any other foreigner who writes about Italy, I'm going to share with you the simplest and best recipes I've yet found in Piemonte...

Tonight we lashed out and had a 2-course meal. The non-ignorant will already know that Italians normally eat a 5-course meal. Unfortunately, I am still some way from achieving a feast of these proportions.

My first course was fresh agnolotti (meat ravioli) with sage. All you do is boil the agnolotti as per normal pasta (always salting the water of course). While it is boiling, fry a handful of cut up sage in butter, then add it to the cooked and drained agnolotti with added olive oil. Delizioso! And yes, I did get the sage from my garden...

The second course was salciccia (sausage) with zucchini and basil. All you do is fry the sausage, then remove it from the frypan. Add butter to the juices and fry the zucchini with a handful of cut up basil. Meraviglioso! And yes, I did get the basil from my garden...

Fortunately for my health, I've discovered the delights of cooking with herbs straight from the garden...

But unfortunately for my health, I've discovering the delights of cooking with butter...

Our little Strenua

2010-06-28T11:07:00.001-07:00

I'm about to embark on Colleen McCullough's seven 'Masters of Rome' books.

So it seems only apt that I introduce the concept of Roman mythology to my Blog.

In giving myself a quick internet-based history lesson, I found a list of the Roman Gods. I learned that the goddess of strength and endurance was Strenua, who is also suspected of being responsible for the Italian tradition of Befana, when on Epiphany Eve (the night of 5th January) an old woman called Befana delivers gifts to children throughout Italy. She is also known as Saint Befana, La Vecchia (the Old Woman), and La Strega (the Witch).

Now let me digress...

We purchased a trailer in Switzerland just before we moved to Italy because we needed something that would help us in our move but also something in which to cart building materials, collect firewood and gather mulch once we were here.

We chose the smallest, cheapest trailer we could find. Actually, at Swiss prices, it wasn't really cheap at all...but it was small. 1.5 metres square to be exact. We thought it was huge when we purchased it but once we saw it clinging to our car we cringed. Perhaps this initial impression was partly due to our car being rather short too (a 2-door Suzuki 4WD). In fact, looking at our car with its trailer reminded me of John Wayne with a horse. Something wrong in terms of proportion.

Over the months, we've come to respect our trailer. We got over the initial shock of discovering that we couldn't actually see it behind our car (which caused major challenges in terms of reversing). We found it was capable of everything we asked of it.

We have recently felt a compulsion to name it, mainly because people just don't seem to respect it.

And since our trailer has the loyalty of a saint, the dignity of an old woman, the magic of a witch, the strength of a god and brings gifts to us like Befana, we have named it 'Strenua'.

However, it has to be said that it has caused us acute embarrassment on several occasions.

This week, we needed 60 pavers (20kg each) and 1.5 tonne of bedding sand for the base of our new pergola.

So we attached our trailer to our car and set off for the heavy duty building materials warehouse in Canelli. When we entered the carpark, we were quickly dwarfed by the builders trucks and construction lorries that surrounded us.

We parked and fled from our vehicle before anyone could see us. In the office, a man took our order and told us to drive around the back of the warehouse to the sand storage where someone would load us up.

When our humble 'rig' appeared around the corner of the building and proceeded to the sand pile, we noticed the driver of the front end loader smother a smile.

After we had proudly manoevred into position near the sand pile, he told us that 500kg of sand couldn't be carried by such a light trailer. We were indignant as we replied that our trailer could take 800kg!

Eventually we convinced him to load it and it was our turn to smother smiles as we watched his expression morph into shock, then twist into a wry sort of amazement.

We made 3 trips for the sand and 2 trips for the tiles.

Our little Strenua has the magic of a witch, the strength of a god and brings gifts to us like Befana...

Who invented the concept of stress anyway?

2010-06-27T08:07:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Frances Mayes' latest book, 'Every Day in Tuscany' (ISBN 978-1-86325-676-6)

She talks about how Italians choose a relaxing lifestyle at all cost. They focus on peace, nature, food. She also talks about the concept of 'stress' and how Italians don't really get the 'stress' thing. Apparently, the Italian word for stress, lo stress, is only a recent import into the language.

I particularly appreciated her comments because they helped me to understand a weird reaction I got from my neighbours the other day.

I haven't been speaking to them because, in trying to learn the correct grammar in my Italian lessons, I have lost confidence in my ability to speak Italian at all, let alone 'properly'. I wanted to be forgiven for my elusiveness so I explained all this to my neighbours.

They looked at me as if I'd grown horns. They stopped speaking, their mouths opening and closing like fish. In the silence, I noticed their utterly perplexed expressions.

Now I know that they just had no idea why I would feel stressed about such a thing when I'm living the perfect lifestyle, doing what I want to do, breathing pure air, living with local flora and fauna and growing my own food, all in a perfectly peaceful valley!

Uncomfortably close and very weird noises

2010-06-27T04:07:00.000-07:00

The hunters that come into our valley keep telling us they're shooting cinghiale.

But even though we've been here for nine months, we've never actually seen or heard or even noticed any evidence of these cinghiales. Apparently these wild boar maraud at night and cause all sorts of damage to rural land by digging inconvenient holes all over paddocks and lawns and even under fences.

Either they don't exist in our valley or else they've all been shot...

Instead, we focus on the Lucciole (Fireflies).

Our bedroom has a window that looks out at the vertical tufa drop that reaches down from one of our grape paddocks to the rear of the house.

Every night when we're lying in bed we gaze out our window at the Lucciole who fly around this drop.

These beautiful little creatures keep us entertained for a few wonderful minutes before we gently fall off the edge of consciousness and into sleep oblivion. There are hundreds of them, all shining their little luminous bottoms in the perfect warmth and dampness of the drop.

While I'm not sure exactly how a luminous male bottom attracts a female, I do appreciate the light show they provide. They loop and frolick around the drop, all the while turning their lights off and on. It's like watching the stars on a night when the sky is speckled by tiny clouds that sometimes expose the stars and sometimes hide them.

Our sleep is usually long, our bones and sinews heavy and over-extended, merging into the sheets.

But in the wee small hours of last night, our sleep was broken by a rather unfortunate and somewhat aggressive sound.

It was a loud rough grunt that was repeated every few seconds. One grunt was very close to our window; the other some distance away. The noises sounded like a very large dog with a seriously sore throat or a cow with a seriously bad case of worms.

I knew instantly that it was a cinghiale. It was just so strange, abrupt, earthy and, well, pig like!

Stu dived out of bed, grabbed the torch and went outside.

I maintained my half-conscious state, occasionally imagining a boar of massive proportions much like the one in an Australian horror movie I'd watched in my youth. In 'Razorback', a monster of a boar would charge at humans and trample them to a bloody mulch in the remote lonely outback.

I rustled myself into greater consciousness to listen for the desperate cries of Stu.

When I heard him creeping around the back of the house near our window, I opened my eyes to see the torch light looping and frolicking about the tufa and the foliage on the drop.

I wondered what the Lucciole were making of the giant illuminated 'bottom' that had entered their space.

Meanwhile, the grunts had stopped. Clearly, Stu's presence had scared the cinghiales away.

Before he returned inside, he stood at the window, shone the torchlight on his face and made ghost noises at me. I can't remember my response but I suggest that I didn't play the game.

We now firmly believe that cinghiales exist in our valley and they certainly haven't all been shot!

Canelli under Siege!

2010-06-20T06:26:00.001-07:00

Last weekend we attended the two-day re-enactment of the Siege of Canelli which occurred in 1613 AD.

The city is very serious about this event. For two days they take the city back to the year 1613 AD. They wear period clothes, deal in medieval currency and eat only foods served in the 17th century!

They even work hard to create a sense of the Canelli of the period, when it was surrounded by a stone wall and the only entry was through a grand stone gate with turrets.

During the week prior to the event, the city centre is closed to non-residential traffic while the city 'gates' are re-erected. These gates must be made by professional film set designers because they look like stone but they are made of wood!

On the actual days of the event, 'inside' the city is closed to all vehicles so you really feel as if you're under siege but are safely taking protection within the walls of the city.

Also 'inside' the city the buildings are draped with hessian to make them look as if they are from the 17th century. There are outdoor stalls and taverns that are also made of rough hewn wood and hessian. It all looks so wonderful!

The people of the city play out the re-enactment over a 2-3 hour period on the first day. Initially, men on horses knock on the gates to warn the city of the enemy's proximity. Then groups of 'farmers' and 'peasants' leave the countryside to seek protection within the city walls. There are also rebels, soldiers and many other groups parading into the city.

The whole event is punctuated with drums and medieval music.

Once you've finished watching the re-enactment at the city gates, you enter the city, where you convert your Euros to Testinos.

With your Testinos, you buy a wine goblet which can be re-filled at every makeshift tavern 'within' the city walls.

It helps you get up the hill to watch the battle of the warring forces, which occurs in the fields surrounding the castle. Half an hour later, the Canelli forces return to the city exhausted after the battle. You continue to drink...

That evening, there is ribald revelry 'inside' the walls as the farmers and peasants amuse themselves at the taverns that have sprung up in the streets. There is even the odd prostitute positioned to hassle you! The party goes on until midnight.

The next morning there is a huge battle at the gates, which the Canelli forces win, then there are celebration lunches held all over the city!

A truly amazing event!!!

The Monster

2010-06-19T11:10:00.001-07:00

My relationship with my garden has been difficult ever since we moved here.

I would launch at it with enthusiasm, then lose interest with surprising speed.

Within a few weeks of being here, Stu had realised that my problem was The Monster.

The monster is a huge expansive bush that sits at one end of my garden. The monster is one of those plants that propagate via sucker roots. The monster is very established and frighteningly rigorous. It's roots reach out insidiously under the dirt and suddenly appear somewhere else!

Actually, lots of somewhere elses.

So gardening for me was depressing. I would launch on it, weed it and plant special bushes and flowers in it only to find that yet another monster had appeared. No matter how hard I worked to manage my garden, the monster would breed copiously. It could haunt me from all different locations!

Finally, we decided to remove it. Simple.

Six months ago we cut it back severely in order to see what we were dealing with. Once all the foliage and branches had been removed, we found that the root ball of the main bush alone was 1 metre in diameter!

Since Stu has a level of perseverance akin to the bush, he used all manner of instrument and method to take to the monster with vigour. He dug around its roots with a spade, he hacked at it with an axe, he scraped at its suckers until his fingers were raw.

But nothing moved him any closer to the demise of the bush.

It was when he found that the roots of the suckers had diameters of 100mm that he finally cracked.

I looked out of the kitchen one morning and found him poised above the monster with the chainsaw.

I knew it was time to suggest a break.

I did better than that: I took him to Australia, where it was easy to forget about the monster.

But on our return, it was there to greet us. In the early Spring, it had flourished with even more enthusiasm. Although we had shorn it down to a few stubs of wood, it had sprung into life again and sprouted seemingly stronger foliage.

Not able to cope with this sort of challenge immediately, we focused on other jobs instead. We planted seeds and seedlings in the vegetable garden, we tiled the bedroom floor, we even created an light atrium in the house.

Although we tried to ignore this stubborn plant, eventually we had to acknowledge its existence: after all, the great gaping hole around its base wasn't enhancing the appearance of our front garden.

When Stu attacked it with the axe, we watched as the metal bounced off the healthy green wood. He poured fuel on it and tried to set it alight. I poured poison on it. But it still lived!

We ignored it again.

Finally, our neighbour suggested soaking the root ball in water and using high pressure water to remove the dirt around the solid mass of roots and suckers before then attempting to chop the roots out.

So Stu soaked the roots and was eventually able to see light between several of them. It was painfully slow work but he was encouraged. After several more days, he finally axed through all of the exposed roots and rolled the main root ball out of its massive soggy hole.

Tomorrow I can't wait to get into my garden!

Announcement

2010-06-17T10:37:00.000-07:00

I am proud to announce that I am progressing well with my book.

I now have 35,000 words and am aiming at something like 90,000-120,000 which would make it consistent with similar books.

I am enjoying the journey...and am encouraged hugely by the number of people who read my Blog!

Our New Neighbours

2010-06-07T06:32:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago, we were driving up our little valley when we came across a length of thick white tape that had been strung across a line of temporary posts on one side of the road. On closer inspection, we found that the tape was electrified and that it made a complete circuit around a section of land.

Someone had installed a temporary fence.

We'd never seen anyone in this block so we didn't know who owned it, if anyone owned it at all! It couldn't really be called a paddock; it wasn't the most agriculturally useful piece of land because of its narrow shape, its steep sides and the shadows it received all day.

When we stopped to peer through the scrub along the fence, we found a white horse and a donkey!

We watched our new neighbours for several weeks. It didn't take long for the grass in the fenced area to disappear and the foliage along the temporary fence to flatten.

One Sunday, a young man drove his small white sedan up our driveway and parked outside our house. We were working upstairs in the casa grande and looked out of the library window in order to see our visitor. The man was short and skinny, perhaps 20 years old. He wore a tidy collared shirt, old jeans and boots.

As we watched the man walk towards us, I heard Stuart's brain clunk as it prepared the necessary words to explain that we couldn't speak much Italian. But before he could get any words out, the man had positioned himself under our window.

As his enthusiastic face beamed up at us, he launched into a torrent of words.

I felt like Rapunzel.

I caught 'cavallo biano' (white horse) and 'mangiare qui' (eat here) amongst them. When he pointed down the valley, I quickly figured out that he was the owner of the horse and donkey and that he was looking for another agistment location. Our large grassy paddocks must have seemed perfect to him. From their now muddy patch, the horse and donkey could probably even smell our grass!

As with everything we do, we wanted to make sure that we followed any traditions or expectations in the region. Luckily our neighbour Renzo was visiting his property at the time, so we walked the man across to Renzo where I explained what was being suggested.

Renzo talked to the man and eventually confirmed that my translation had been accurate. The man had a horse and a donkey that he wanted to agist on our land.

We asked for his advice. He explained that the man wasn't offering a contract and therefore agistment may not be advisable. If the animals took fright for any reason (e.g. a cinghiale) they could pose a potential risk to the walkers, cyclists and horseriders who pass through our property to enjoy the tranquillity of the valley.

We had to make a decision and we wanted to make one that was right for all of us.

We decided not to be too enthusiastic about the idea.

Renzo kindly explained our quandary to the man and it was agreed that he would seek alternative agistment but that he should feel welcome to return if he couldn't find any.

The horse and donkey have remained in the same section of land along the road and we have not seen the man since.

But we've often wondered how he faired finding alternative agistment.

This week, we were driving up our little valley when we noticed that the thick white tape had been moved to the opposite side of the road.

When we stopped to peer through the scrub along the fence, we found a white horse and a donkey...

You never know...

2010-06-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, I announced with great pride that we had an almond tree.

I was proud of my tree. I loved it's thick dark trunk that stretched strongly into the sky. I felt happy when it blossomed in early Spring. I wasted many hours imagining what I could do with the nuts that would grow on the tips of it's branches.

So you can imagine my shock when I looked at my almond tree today and found clusters of bright red cherries hanging from it!

Vines, prickles and thorns

2010-05-31T23:14:00.000-07:00

After avoiding it for a few weeks, it was time to get back into the vineyard again to see if we could uncover any more vines.

I say 'uncover' because the vines have been hidden in a tangle of undergrowth and a mass of overgrowth for the last 15-20 years.

You can imagine what a mess it is.

Blackberries reach insidiously through every other type of vegetation; a blanket of woven prickles. Some of the trees growing between the vines have trunks that measure ten centimetres in diameter. We even found a cherry tree growing horizontally out from the hillside. It was resting happily across several of the rusted wire fences. The poor ugly specimen seemed unaware of the precarious nature of its position; it had an orchard of cherries hanging from it.

We commenced our attack at 9.00am but eventually withdrew from the battle at 2.00pm. By the time we agreed to stop, the chopping of branches, pulling of weeds and dragging of detritous to our burning pile had made us wet and dizzy.

Happily, we did uncover the odd vine struggling to stretch its little tendrils to the sun.

We also uncovered far too many thorn trees.

Later that afternoon, I noticed Stuart carefully feeling his head. When I asked him what was wrong, he told me that a thorn tree had fallen on his head earlier and he thought he might have a thorn embedded in his skull!

An emergency operation was required on Stuart's head.

While the patient sat patiently (?) in the kitchen, I quickly assumed the role of surgeon and went in search of some surgical instruments.

Shortly after, I returned with my eyebrow tweezers and a torch.

After a few jokes about the suitability of my equipment and whether or not the thorn had penetrated his brain, I shone the torch in a rather wobbly way at his head. Then I tried to focus my blurry eyes on the thorn long enough for my tweezers to actually make contact with it.

The bit of thorn that poked out of his skull was minute but definitely solid. When I finally grasped it and pulled, it made a woody sound as my tweezers slipped off it.

At mid-operation, I experienced a slight panic that the thorn really had penetrated his bone and brain. But my panic was short-lived. Stuart brought me back to the task at hand when he yelled at me to 'just get it out!'

Eventually, I grabbed the thorn with more conviction and was a very surprised surgeon as I watched a rather long and evil piece of tree emerge from Stuart's head.

It seems that the vineyard offers more challenges than simply finding vines...

Embarrassment is a powerful thing

2010-05-29T12:18:00.000-07:00

Our neighbours live in Canelli but come to their second house, which shares a wall with our house, every afternoon in Spring and Summer.

We enjoy the solitude when they're not here but we also enjoy the company when they are. We exchange a buon giorno or a buona sera, then make our way to our shared fence where we have an extended chat about the clarity of the air or the beauty of the forest and the birdsong.

Our private road, which is shared by five residences, extends one kilometre from the public road.

Three of the residences are located along the first five hundred metres of the road. We share the last five hundred metres with our neighbours.

The gravel road takes a meandering route up our valley. It hides like a snake under the heavy forest foliage of Spring. The bends are sometimes sharp and the vegetation growing on the shoulders can make it difficult to see too far ahead.

In wet weather, it develops puddles, one being so big that the car has all four wheels in it as it travels through it, the water reaching the rims of our wheels. In a few areas it has landslides where the road threatens to drop into the creek.

In dry weather, the puddles are potholes. The stretch that is shared by the first four residences is potholed through use. The vineyard at the beginning of the road has been responsible for much of this; they have been clearing their land as well as replacing their old vines with young vines.

The road is single lane but there are several places where vehicles can pass each other. This normally requires one of the drivers to back up but it is rare to meet another vehicle so our travels in and out of our property tend to be non-eventful.

In the late afternoon last Wednesday we set off for our Italian lesson.

As we were trundling down our little track in second gear, another vehicle suddenly appeared, sliding and skidding in front of us.

Stuart responded quickly, hitting our brakes and veering to the left.

We watched helplessly as we seemed to skid in slow motion towards the other vehicle.

When we finally came to a halt, the drivers and passengers of both cars stared open-mouthed at the inches of space between the vehicles.

Only then did we register recognition.

As Stu moved to the left to allow our neighbours to squeeze past, we shared nervous smiles and giggles before continuing on our respective ways.

Since then, we haven't met at the fence for our usual chats.

Embarrassment is a powerful thing that hopefully lessens with time.

The secret to all ills

2010-05-24T13:58:00.000-07:00

Did I mention that the secret to all of our ills is our electric blanket?

Yes, we've discovered that no matter how much work we do and how tired and sore our bodies and how wildly our muscles spasm, if we lie on an electric blanket at night we bound out of bed with the vigour of 5 year olds the following morning.

Of course, we're a little concerned about the suitability of this 'solution' during summer...

Spinning around

2010-05-24T13:02:00.000-07:00

This afternoon, Stu threw something at me.

Now before you consider calling the polizia, the thing he threw at me was the EUR 1 coin that we'd used to 'hire' our trolley at the supermarket. And I guess he didn't exactly throw it AT me; he threw it TO me.

And I caught it!

Now some of you better coordinated individuals may find this trivial.

But those of you who are familiar with my poor motor-neurone skills may appreciate this as a significant achievement.

In my office-based past, whenever I threw anything it would land in a completely unpredictable location. And whenever I prepared to catch something, it would drop, bounce and skid away long before I realised that it had been thrown! For example, if I was to throw a stone into the ocean, it would land on a sand dune. If I was to throw a ball across a field, it would land on my head. Get the picture?

Well, it appears that my coordination skills have improved since I left an office-based life. Lately, I can catch AND throw things with some measure of accuracy!

Of course, it could be that I'm just too exhausted to deliver something to someone or to collect the something that I didn't catch...

But above and beyond this mere throwing and catching business is the fact that today I almost managed to spin my lettuce spinner off the table and out the door!

I am strong. I am invincible. I am coordinated.

The international guests

2010-05-21T10:34:00.000-07:00

It won't be a surprise to anyone that I love books.

They keep my soul warm.

Last week, our Italian teacher Graziella, brought a book into class.

She waved the book around and waffled on in Italian about it but I only caught a few words.

Basically, I heard that something was going to happen with the book for about an hour at 5pm on Thursday in the school library.

When we saw Graziella the day after, she was still wandering around with the book as if she was the publisher.

The book was clearly important to Graziella so I told Stu I was going to do the 'book' thing. Being the selfless human being that he is (coffee addict), he offered to come with me but spend the hour in the cafe nearby.

So on Thursday afternoon, we finished work in the garden, jumped into the shower and then dressed for town.

We arrived in Canelli central a little late because the once-an-hour train decided to come through at an inconvenient time and we got caught at the crossing.

However, we were on time for Italy, where everything starts at least 15 minutes late. Even our Italian lessons don't start on time.

As Stu sneaked off to the cafe, I poked my head in the door. The library was tiny. It was only the size of a loungeroom and it was decked out with approximately 10 rows of 10 chairs. Almost every chair was taken. I was tempted to escape to the cafe.

But Graziella saw me and bounded up to welcome me. She wore a suit and jewellery; her hair was coiffured and her face was made up. She was not the Graziella we knew from our lessons.

She immediately introduced me to the book 'whatever' man (was he the author, the publisher, the illustrator?). He wore a checked shirt and jeans and was a small man, bald and humble but with smiling eyes. He shook my hand warmly and his eyes shone at me. I was then introduced to the school's 'presidente' (principal) who was a little distracted with the event but friendly. I found myself so warmly welcomed that I simply couldn't escape. And I no longer wanted to.

When Graziella asked if Stu had come, I realised suddenly that Stu simply had to be part of the enthusiasm that seemed to be spilling over the place.

I dashed outside to get him, only to see him already in position at an outdoor table waiting for someone to take his order. I gesticulated wildly until he saw me then I waved him over. His reaction wasn't exactly positive, his body language less than enthusiastic at being dragged away from his little luxury in the sun.

I gave up. I know when I'm beaten so I returned to the library and took one of the few free chairs that remained. In the front row.

A few seconds later I felt a shadow hover over me as Stu sat down next to me.

I noticed that Graziella had taken a seat at the front of the room, along with the man who was the book 'whatever' and another particularly dashing young man who wore a shiny grey designer suit and soft handmade leather shoes. I knew they were soft even without touching them. They were the ultimate in Italian craftsmanship.

Fifteen minutes later than scheduled, the very dashing young man started to speak.

I think he was introducing the book 'whatever' man but I didn't catch exactly what he said or what the 'whatever' was. Then he said something about 'journalista'. Immediately after, he asked the book 'whatever' man a question. There was a long response during which the 'journalista' interrupted the 'whatever' man several times. In the typical Italian way, they overspoke each another but talked naturally and enthusiastically.

Suddenly, Graziella got up, armed with her copy of the book. She took a deep breath, which seemed to give her another persona. She then read from her book with such expression and artistry that we sat open-mouthed wondering about the hidden skills of our teacher.

We realised quickly that she was reading an excerpt out of the book. After a 5 minute reading, she sat down again and the 'journalista' asked the 'whatever' man another question. This cycle went on for about an hour.

At the end, the journalista thanked everyone for their attendance and Graziella thanked the 'international guests' for their attendance.

We blushed deeply when we realised Graziella was talking about us. She then asked us if we'd understood anything. I said 'un po' (a little) and the audience laughed. As most people left, a few people closest to us hovered around, asking us where we were from, where we lived, etc.

I still don't know what the event was or who the 'whatever' man was.

But I do know that along with books keeping my soul warm the locals are keeping my heart warm.

For the love of the right snake

2010-05-20T10:40:00.000-07:00

We've been here for eight months now and had been convinced that Italy was perfect. Put simply, 'perfect' meant snake free.

But our dream has been shattered.

Yesterday I saw a snake!

Yes, I saw a snake behind the house at the top of the stairs near the pizza oven.

I was bounding up the stairs in order to get to the second level of the fienale when out of the corner of my eye I saw a 'stick'.

Now, a stick wouldn't normally attract attention in this place of many sticks, but I had only been up the stairs the day before and this stick hadn't been there then!

I was immediately suspicious, turned to look at it and realised approximately 20 minutes later that it was a snake. Okay, so it wasn't 20 minutes. It just felt like 20 minutes.

Time stood still. It might be fair to say that this little Australian, who should be used to snakes, freaked.

Somehow I got back down the stairs, walked casually over to Stu and mentioned that I'd seen a snake.

He came immediately and sneaked up the stairs but it had already disappeared.

We did the only thing we could do. We stopped all work. Tools down. Gloves off. Silence descended as we both privately wondered how we could tackle the land if there were snakes in the vicinity. PROVEN snakes in the vicinity.

Then we did the next best thing we could. We told everyone we know.

We told our Italian teacher, Graziella. We told our neighbours, Renzo and Maria. We even told a poor unsuspecting lady at a book launch.

Each of them seemed agitated. They initially waved their arms around and made diamond shapes with their hands, all the while pointing to their heads. Then they seemed to calm down and repeat the word 'acqua' (water). Finally, they smiled. We wondered if they'd had a dose of anti-venom at some stage in their lives.

Later that evening, Stu surfed the internet and found that the only dangerous snake in Italy is a viper which has a colourful diamond shape on its head. Luckily, vipers do not make this area of Italy their home. But harmless water snakes do. Apparently, the water snake is 'a European non-venomous snake that is often found near water and feeds almost exclusively on amphibians' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Snake).

Locals are a blessing. So are water snakes.

Now different 'rubbish' is haunting us...

2010-05-19T11:34:00.000-07:00

A few posts ago, I mentioned the trauma we were experiencing in terms of our rubbish.

While this particular problem still hasn't been resolved, another rubbish-related problem has raised its ugly head...

When we cleared our overgrown land late last year we didn't realise that we'd make such a huge pile of trees and branches. Actually, make that three huge piles of trees and branches. One in each paddock.

We knew that we had to get to our jungle early, or at least before Spring came in all its glory and force. We simply had to make an impact urgently because the rate of growth was destined to be incredible once the temperatures exceeded 6 degrees.

So we cut trees and pruned branches with a vengeance and made 3 huge piles of wood in the process.

And Spring hasn't disappointed us.

In fact, we've been SO NOT disappointed that we got to a desperate stage a few weeks ago. The piles of dried tinder that we'd cut in Winter were now a problem. Firstly, the piles might completely disappear amidst the new Spring growth. Secondly, the piles were a potential fire hazard for the hot Summer.

While burning was an option, the greenies in us just couldn't see all that lovely garden goodness go up in smoke.

So last month we invested in a mulcher to 'eat' our piles. We launched ourselves at the pile in our front paddock almost immediately. After a whole day, we'd finally reduced it to 3 trailerloads and 6 wheelbarrows of little pieces of munched up wood. The said wood is now all over my garden keeping my flowers company.

Today we launched at the pile in the second paddock. This pile is massive. We had been avoiding it but when we looked at it the other day we were a little concerned to find that the grass growing around it and within it had reached the height of the pile.

Now this job is not a particularly enjoyable one. Although we are doing good things for our garden and being responsible green citizens, it is simply a fact that it is a boring job.

So, being the ex-professionals that we are, we took the time to establish our roles and responsibilities. Stu was to take the car and trailer down to the paddock and work his way through the pile while I was to talk to Mum and Dad (!!??). Then, when Stu brought the first trailerload up I was to be out there, gloves on hands, sunhat on head, ready to work the mulcher.

Surprisingly, we both took to our roles in earnest. Stu would bring a trailerload up and I would mulch it, then he'd bring another trailerload up and I'd mulch that. And on. And on. And on. To amuse ourselves, Stu listened to his ipod while I muttered and challenged myself to finish one trailerload before he brought the next one up.

Unfortunately, I never achieved my objective.

But I live in hope. After all, there's one pile left. And it simply must be tackled within the next few days.

Perhaps next week I'll be able to report at least one rubbish problem solved...

A problem with positioning

2010-05-15T09:03:00.000-07:00

Stu has observed some very strange behaviour in me.

Apparently I plant flowers, then move them to another spot a few weeks later. I re-plant them, then move them to another spot a few weeks later! This is a continuing cycle.

Unfortunately, it is true. I do this!

But what absurd aspect of my character makes me do it?

Am I indecisive or dissatisfied?

Perhaps I have a fear of putting down roots?

Blood, guilt and emptiness

2010-05-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

We could have been forgiven for thinking that Santa had come to our valley 7 months early (or 5 months late)...

A few days ago, we were taking a well-deserved lunch break on our terrace when we suddenly heard bells.

They were of the 'Rudolph the red nose reindeer' variety and they were coming closer.

We bounded off our seats and leaned over the railing of the terrace, our heads turned hard right towards the entry to the property.

Within seconds, 5 dogs appeared on our driveway: 4 beagles and 1 blood hound. Each dog had several small bells hanging from a collar around its neck. They were shortly followed by 4 men in boots and orange fluoro vests who carried two-way radios in their pockets and wore rifles over their shoulders.

Hunters.

The dogs were fine specimens, the hair covering their sturdy bodies clean and glossy. They hovered around our hedge for a while, pushing their noses into the greenery and bumping snouts in their eagerness to take on a scent. We wondered if they could smell the hare that had appeared there the day before.

The humans oozed the same level of excitement. Their steps were strong and deliberate and their faces tense as they called a distracted 'Buon Giorno!' to us. They didn't even take time to stop and talk, instead explaining in mid-step that they were hunting 'Cinghiale!' (wild boar).

Excitement must be contagious because very shortly we felt as exhilarated as these strangers in our valley.

But as animal and man moved off, we slunk back to our seats to ponder the concept of hunting.

As Australians, we are well aware of the fox hunts that are still conducted in England today. We'd always been critical of blood sports. Our conversation went along these lines for the next half hour. In the end we agreed that there was something different about hunting a wild boar to eat. Italians hunt for food. Since they have such a deep respect for food, it seemed easy to justify hunting for this purpose.

The bells hung in our valley for the next hour. Sometimes they would sound close by, perhaps in our vines or down at the creek. And sometimes they would seem at a distance, possibly on our neighbour's property or in a secondary valley.

At one point, the bells came very close. There was a cacophany of noise only metres away from our seats on the terrace. This time, we jumped up and pounced on the gap in the stone wall to try to see something. The men were calling loudly to each other constantly; their two-ways scratching frequent messages. We wondered if the purpose of this constant communication was to minimise their chances of being accidentally shot.

We could feel the tension. Our hearts pumped faster. The hairs on the backs of our necks stood up in anticipation of a gun shot. Every few seconds a dog would come into our limited view as it bounded through the long grass, clearly chasing 'something'. The men would yell louder, the dogs would bark stronger and the bells would tingle faster.

So it was strange that, when a volley of gunshots finally rang through the valley, we suddenly felt guilty and lonely.

At that moment, we hoped above all else that the bullets had missed their target.

It was one of those times when I truly wished it had been Christmas and that the visitors to our valley really had been Santa and his reindeers.

Taking our rubbish on tour

2010-05-11T12:48:00.001-07:00

The getting rid of rubbish is one of those things that one takes for granted.

One certainly doesn't expect to have to take one's rubbish for a considerable drive in the country every week.

Living close to nature, we try very hard to be environmentally responsible. We buy groceries that have minimal packaging and we compost everything that will break down (apparently garlic and onion skins don't break down so this is the only organic matter that we don't compost). We even have a small-sized rubbish bin in an attempt to limit our waste.

We have a private road up to our house that is about 1 kilometre long. The rubbish truck does not travel on private roads so we need to drive our rubbish to the corner where the private road meets the public road or drop our rubbish off ourselves at local skips that are provided by the Canelli Comune.

For our first five months here our rubbish system worked well.

We purchased strong plastic bags for our bin and at the end of each week, we would remove the bag, seal it properly, then drive it to the closest skip and drop it off.

That is, it was all going smoothly until a few weeks ago.

One morning we set off with our rubbish only to find that the skip had been removed.

Not easily put off, we drove our rubbish around Canelli until we found another skip and dropped it off.

This new system worked well for a week.

One morning we set off with our rubbish only to find that all the skips had been removed within the boundaries of Canelli.

We stood beside the now absent skip and looked at each other. We were clearly lost without a skip.

Not easily outdone and always practical, we put our rubbish back into our car and set off to find a skip outside the boundaries of Canelli.

After several hours, our rubbish was still in the back of the car and there was nought for us to do except drive it back home.

In the safety of our home we talked long and hard about the missing skip situation. We decided to ask Renzo what we should do with our rubbish.

But by the time Renzo came out to the valley again our pile of rubbish bags had grown. We were now too embarrassed to even ask Renzo!

So we did what all desperate people do in Italy. We went to the Canelli Commune. The two ladies in charge of 'rifuiti' were in place behind the sliding windows in one of the hundreds of offices in the maze that is the Canelli Comune.

Unfortunately, because I was so eager to dispose of our rubbish as soon as possible, I hadn't prepared for the conversation I would have with them. When I reached the window, I realised that I didn't know the Italian word for skip. I had planned to explain to her that the skip had disappeared and then ask here to tell us what to do with our rubbish.

Instead, I found myself telling her we had a problem with our rubbish and that there used to be a big (what?) that we put it into. In order to explain the concept of a skip, I gesticulated wildly and created an enormous shape with my arms. The ladies looked askance. They told us to turn right at the horse cart. Like I said, my Italian goes to pot when I'm under pressure...

We thanked them and left the office.

Afterwards I told Stu that the poor ladies probably thought we had a mountain of rubbish to get rid of. On high alert for potential outbreaks of the plague, they were probably redirecting us to the health department!

After this traumatic episode, we sought the shelter of our valley.

But every time we went outside the rustico, our beautiful green view seemed to be obstructed by our growing piles of rubbish.

(Please note this is a mild exaggeration. Suffice to say that we were personally very aware of our rubbish and our lack of apparent options)

Over the last few days we've been observing what other people do. It appears that some have wheelie bins while others use bags. From the overflowing wheelie bins that lined the streets, it seemed that rubbish collection day was Monday.

So on Monday we decided to drive to the end of our private road with our ageing rubbish in the trailer and drop it off at the corner where the private road meets the public road.

Having positioned our rubbish carefully in order to optimise its chances of being seen by any rubbish truck that happened to pass by, we spent a happy morning confident in the knowledge that we were no longer responsible for our rubbish.

Unfortunately, when we went to our Italian lesson later that day, our rubbish was lying in wait for us.

Worried that dogs, pigs or rats might rip the bags open and spread our secrets all over the town of Canelli, we stopped, picked up our rubbish and put it in the back of the car. Perhaps we'd got the day wrong? We'd try again tomorrow.

The following morning was cold. After dressing warmly, we walked out to the car eager to handle our first priority for the day. When we opened the doors to get in, our old rubbish rushed out at us. We could barely get near the car for the thickness of the stench that emanated from it.

One smell I remember particularly strongly is 3-week old garlic and onion skins.

Anyway, once we realised just how 'on the nose' our rubbish had become, we decided not to risk trying the street again. We needed an immediate outcome.

So that's how we came to be travelling around with our rubbish this morning. A full and comprehensive tour of the surrounding comunes was required before we finally found a skip near Asti and offloaded our burden.

As I write this, I still don't know what to do with our rubbish next week...

Is it haunted?

2010-05-03T12:13:00.001-07:00

We've spooked ourselves.

Yes, in our efforts to freak each other out, we've actually managed to convince ourselves that our house is haunted.

I cleaned the windows the other day but when I looked through them at dusk all I could see were cobwebs hanging thickly from corners and fireplaces.

When I went into the house the other day alone I felt a 'presence'. Strange noises and groans seemed to ooze from the walls. Ghosts of past owners perhaps...

Every so often, Stu launches out of the front door as if he's being pursued. When I question him, he says there's an old woman after him. A witch, to be sure.

So all ye who may partake of our hospitality in the dark nights be warned: When the light from yonder is gone and all is in darkness, strange spirits lurk...

Did I mention the doors that were banging last night...?

A 'Real Man' does not work in the 'Giardino'

2010-04-29T11:37:00.000-07:00

I refer to my Blog posting dated 6th April 2010 ('Tomatoes Anyone?')

It is with great horror that I share with you that Stu has planted 10 rows of potatoes. There are 7 potato plants in each row. That makes 70 potato plants.

Assuming that each plant will give us about 10 potatoes, our total yield is expected to be 700 potatoes!

Does anyone know any good recipes that combine tomatoes AND potatoes???

Still on the subject of gardening, yesterday we attended our second Italian lesson.

The connection, you ask?

Well, up until yesterday, I used to tell our neighbours and occasional contractors that Stu had been working in the 'giardino'. This is not only because I am proud of him but also because I know the words!

So yesterday when we arrived at our Italian lesson, I told the teacher that Stu had been working in the garden.

She looked slightly askance before enquiring exactly what he was doing.

I thought the question a little strange (what does one normally do in a garden and why is anyone else interested in such detail?)

Luckily, my gardening-related words extended further so I was able to explain that he had planted potatoes.

She laughed.

I looked askance. Stu turned red.

What was so funny about digging for hours to plant potatoes?

She then explained that 'giardino' refers to a flower garden, while 'orto' refers to a vegetable garden.

Fancy! I've been telling everyone that Stu has been playing with flowers!

I hope I haven't ruined his reputation completely...

Never Act in Undue Haste

2010-04-27T12:08:00.000-07:00

For those of you keenly interested in whether or not I had to expose my chest to the Polizia (see previous post), read on...

On Monday, I arrived at the Questura at the appointed time.

A very robust looking police woman took my resident permit paperwork and my (spotty) photos, then gave me a form and directed me to their 'criminal scientific lab'.

I followed their directions, which involved walking through a door to a bright light which I soon realised was outside. I then had to walk across an internal quadrangle to a yellow door. When I entered the yellow door, I found men in white coats peering into microscopes.

I wondered about their expectations. Did they have serious concerns about my spots? Would they attempt a blood test? Or even a biopsy?

One of the men came to take my paperwork.

He looked carefully at me. I was tempted to expose my chest immediately but I resisted.

He checked my height and my hair colour (under his interrogation, I confirmed that the colour was natural...why would anyone PAY to get the combination of brown and grey that I have!?)

Then he checked my eye colour. Blue I had said. He leaned forward and looked deeply into them as if he'd never seen blue eyes before. Or was it that he was assessing me with some new lie-detector test? I felt sure that my spots had been noted and that my honesty was being tested. Was now the right time to expose?

Then he pulled on surgical rubber gloves! I panicked. This was it. My fingers were already undoing my buttons when he took one of my hands in his.

One by one he pressed each of my fingertips onto the screen of a scanner. I was being fingerprinted!

He made fingerprints of every finger of both hands, then a 'group' portrait of all of the fingers of each hand, then another 'group' portrait of the palms of each hand!

Then he smiled and explained that my residents permit would be posted to the Canelli Comune and that I could collect it in approximately 1 month.

I left, relieved that I had not acted in undue haste and stood partly naked before an innocent fingerprinter.

Spots

2010-04-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

On Monday, I go to the Questura (state police) for the next step in my quest (pardon the pun) for a Permesso di Soggiorno (residential permit).

I have been really excited ever since I made my appointment 2 weeks ago.

That is, I was excited until I went to the local Kodak shop to have my required 4 passport-sized photos taken.

I'd brushed, primped, dampened and moussed my hair until it no longer looked like I'd slept on it.

Then I'd put a respectable amount of make-up on. A little of everything.

I'd even dragged a 'new' shirt out of my cupboard. These days, it isn't difficult for me to find an 'new' (i.e. recently unworn) shirt. I seem to wear the same things for days on end!

So I was feeling beautiful and confident when Stu dropped me off outside the Kodak shop then drove away to find a parking space.

I still felt beautiful and confident when I walked into the shop and asked for some passport photos.

I felt truly beautiful and hugely confident when I sat on the little stool, looked at the camera and arranged my expression.

It was only when she showed me the photos she'd taken that my confidence fell on the floor, rolled away and hid in the corner.

It seemed that my face was even only in its lopsidedness! My eyes were on different levels. My eyebrows were shaped differently. My lips were full at one end and narrow at the other. And on one side, they followed a wrinkle that ran down between my chin and my jowel. I was completely and utterly crooked.

She must have seen the same sad signs of ageing because she offered to take more photos.

I settled again on the stool, this time arranging my face so that it FELT crooked. I assumed a surprised expression on the right hand side of my face in order to even up my eyes. I puffed out my lips on the side where they appeared too narrow. I squinted on one side so that the cheek would lift and flatten the wrinkle and thereby raise my sagging lip. To top it all off, I then attempted a very subtle smile. I felt like I'd just had a Botox treatment.

She showed me the new photos.

Unfortunately I was still crooked but now in a different direction. And all my efforts to improve on the earlier photos had simply made me look severely retarded.

Not wanting her to think me too vain, I chose one of them, then waited for her to process 4 copies for me.

Stu walked into the shop while I was waiting.

'How did it go?', he asked.

'I'm the ugliest person in the world', I replied.

He ignored me.

Shortly after, the woman came out with 4 photos in a little plastic pocket. She opened the pocket and invited me to view the final result but I didn't dwell too long. Probably a total of 1.25 seconds. I just wanted to get out of the shop before she realised how ugly I was.

Out on the street, I stopped to have a better look.

It was then that I saw it. I looked away. I brought the pocket closer to my face. I re-focused. It was then that I was sure.

I had a red spotty rash on my neck and chest!

'What the hell is THAT!?', I yelled at Stu.

He brought the photo up to his face and squinted.

'Ha ha! The resolution must be wrong or else that woman's got some pretty low quality processing equipment!', he said, 'It looks like you've got some terrible disease! I wonder if the Italian authorities will let you in looking like THAT!?'.

He was hysterical.

If the police at the Questura look the least bit doubtful about my 'disease', I have determined to bare my chest to them...

Giant Rats

2010-04-22T10:29:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we were walking through town and stopped on a bridge in the centre of Canelli to look down on the birds along the river.

We were watching the ducks and seagulls sunning themselves when suddenly Stu went quiet.

I assumed he was in a state of bliss, the sun warm on his back and the river flowing gently below him.

Oblivious, I continued to rant on about the ducks. I wondered which ones had been to visit us in our valley recently. I wondered where they went in winter. I wondered at their laziness and simplicity.

Then I heard Stu gasp.

I looked over at him, wondering now why he would gasp at my rantings.

'What's wrong?', I asked.

'Can't you see THOSE things?', he said, pointing to the banks of the river.

I followed his finger.

Now it was my turn to make a noise.

There playing gleefully in the river was a pack of giant rats!

These things were very long and massively fat. They had webbed feet and rats tails. They looked like giant wombats. Call us sheltered or ignorant Australians but we'd never seen anything like them before.

We were about 80% through the 'freaking' stage and 50% through the 'preparing to sell' stage when I became so desperate that I accosted a lady who was passing on a pushbike. I blurted my demand : What WAS this animal?

She confirmed that it was from the rat family. She kept talking, clearly telling us everything about this creature. Unfortunately, my knowledge of Italian didn't stretch far enough to understand much of what she said. So in the end I simply asked her if it was 'good or not good'. She shrugged her shoulders and dropped the sides of her mouth in thought (the way Italians do) then announced that it was 'good'.

Stu and I thanked her then walked back to the car in silence. Why would she say they were 'good'. Surely no rat, especially one that big, could be good. Hadn't they had giant rats in Europe in the middle ages? Hadn't these rats been responsible for the plague?

We had visions of these rodents invading our valley, perhaps even our septic, bringing the plague to us.

We rushed home, dashed upstairs, fell onto our PCs and signed onto internet.

Neither of us spoke. We would occasionally glance out the window lest we missed the hoards of giant rats that would soon penetrate our valley.

Stu looked up 'giant rat' while I looked up '*rat*water*webbed feet*Europe*'.

My search took me to sites that told me way too much about the various rat families. Did you know that there are 5 Suborders, 4 Superfamilies, 2 Infraorders, 1 Parvorder and a total of 34 Families of the little blighters!?

Anyway, I eventually got to the rat family 'Myocastoridae' and there I found our giant rat!

It turns out that our horrible man-rotting sewer-dwelling animal is actually a Nutria, which is a sort of otter or beaver that has historically been slaughtered for its fur. It lives in burrows along waterways and feeds on plants.

'Good', I guess...

Time will tell...

2010-04-15T10:44:00.000-07:00

They say time heals everything.

Well, I hope time heals grapevines.

After hours of erratic wielding of knives, daggers and machetes (read 'hedge-trimmers, shears and secaturs'), our grapes have now been completely and utterly mutilated (read 'pruned').

Yes, I pruned our grapevines today, approximately 2 months after every half decent winemaker in the region did theirs.

Stu also worked in the vineyard, installing new posts and wire to support them. Ever the optimist, he honestly believes that a profuse amount of foliage will burst forth from my twigs.

Sadly, the vineyard is a little 'patchy'. Several of the vines were rotten so had to be pulled out, while others had been laying on the ground for so long that they'd rooted in all the wrong places.

The ones that are left have 1 or 2 weird looking 'canes' that stick out at not exactly the right angles from their 'stocks'.

Oh well...if I'd been neglected for 30 years I probably wouldn't look too good either!

Only time will tell...

Tomatoes anyone?

2010-04-06T11:56:00.000-07:00

Last week, we proudly announced to our neighbour that we'd planted a lemon tree and a lettuce patch.

Our neighbour's response was to go quiet so we naturally assumed he was jealous of our progress. Perhaps he was even concerned that our garden would be better than his?

But after a 'hum' he suggested it might be too early to plant, as the valley tends to get late frosts right through to May!

A trite embarrassed, we have been eyeing the weather report every night for fear that we make fools of ourselves.

So far, the temperature has been above zero. Except for one night when a non-forecasted snow storm in Switzerland sent our temperatures plummeting!

I wasn't really sure what damage a frost would do, so I crept out in the whiteness the following morning to inspect our lemon tree and lettuces. Amazingly, they all seemed to have survived.

So it was difficult to convince Stuart NOT to buy tomato plants when he spied them his morning at the market.

He purchased 8 plants.

Our 8 little babies are now installed and Stuart has enthusiastically announced that the yield is expected to be 70kg!

Since this announcement, I've been pacing up and down the driveway trying to think of what to do with them (pasta sauces, pizza sauce, bolognese sauce, tomato relish, tomato jam). Any ideas would be much appreciated...

In the meantime, tonight I watched fondly as Stuart 'put his tomatoes to bed'.

He gently folded a temporary plastic cover over them to warn off any stray icy fingers that might choose to come this way tonight...

Obsessed with all things septic

2010-04-01T11:37:00.000-07:00

As you know from my postings late last year, we've had our fair share of sewerage problems since we arrived here...

We've also had our fair share of freezing temperatures. December caused some panic as we learned (the hard way) how much wood we would need in order to keep our hearts pumping throughout an entire winter.

In order to store a larger amount of firewood, we have made some adjustments to our garden design.

We have decided to move the woodpile from a location against the fienale to a location at the end of our vegetable garden. This would make the wood accessible from both sides. This would also allow our woodpile to be 1 metre wide x 8 metres long (almost double what it currently is!).

Unfortunately, the new position was but a dream until we could determine exactly where our septic tank was.

So today Stu started digging again.

Luckily, within half an hour he was tapping on cement and shortly thereafter had uncovered our tank! There was great rejoicing as we peered into our tank, alive and pumping and 'aromatic' as it was!

So it seems that we can now confirm the new position for our extended woodpile.

It also seems that next winter will be a cosy one...

We now have ducks!

2010-04-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

Today we discovered 3 ducks in our creek!

They normally live along the main creek in Canelli but the melting snows and the recent rains have swollen our little creek and they appear to have migrated up our little valley!

Mind you, if I was a duck, I'd head up this valley too. It's quiet and peaceful and pure.

Of course, when the creek runs dry in Summer, they'll have to go back to Canelli in search of water.

But in the meantime, we'll marvel at their pretty faces and their glossy green feathers...

Without Guilt

2010-03-31T11:03:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm over my little tantrum (see posting dated 26th March 2010) and ready to write again.
This is partly due to the fact that today was the first day since October that we've had something resembling a 'Siesta'!

Siesta forces me to stop, relax, read and write.

Without Siesta, I feel guilty if I don't work like a convict.

So today I had a nice break in the middle of the day, sat on our beautiful terrace and let my exposed toes soak up the sun.

And I wrote.

Without guilt.

I am SO sore

2010-03-27T10:47:00.000-07:00

I am SO completely and utterly sore today that I can't even type.

We have been clearing some heavy duty weeds, vines and dead trees out of an overgrown section near the house. Pulling and dragging vegetation has taken all of the strength from my forearms and fingers.

I've also been thinning out our plum grove in the hope that the little trees there will be able to fruit this year. Sawing off the in-between seedlings has taken all of the strength from my shoulders and wrists.

So sorry...a longer story to be posted tomorrow...

You know you've got problems when DHL can't find your address!

2010-03-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

I just spent 1.5 hours writing a really brilliant blog entry about my 'lost' study materials (hence the title of this posting).

Despite the fact that I saved it every few minutes during that time, I now can't 'find' it.

I'm really jacked off.

It's times like these when writing is a mug's game.

My entry visa trauma...

2010-03-24T11:57:00.000-07:00

When we moved to Italy in October 2009, Stuart entered on his EU passport which meant that he could stay as long as he wanted to. Since I had an Australian or New Zealand passport, I could stay a maximum of 90 days only on a tourist visa. After that period, I needed to leave Italy for 3 months during which time I had to find out how to legally stay in Italy longer than 3 months at a time.

We made our first trip to the Italian Consulate in Brisbane immediately after Christmas 2009. The Consulate explained that a longterm stay in Italy would be easy for me. Since Stuart has an EU passport, I could enter Italy as his 'wife'!

All we needed was a marriage certificate.

And therein lay the problem: We were not married!

However, we thanked the Consulate and smiled sweetly at him before making an embarrassed escape.

At a local coffee shop, we sought refuge in a dark corner. We sweated profusely at the prospect of an urgent marriage proposal being made in the very near future.

We agreed that these were not the best circumstances under which to pledge undying love for each other.

So it was back to the Consulate to explain our lack of a marriage certificate.

No problems, the Consulate said. There was another alternative. I could apply for a longterm visa. This visa would depend on my health insurance and would therefore expire on the same day as my insurance. Since we had only 6 months insurance, he suggested that we try to extend it to 12 months. We told him we would try and return as soon as possible.

However, first we had to go on a 4 week camping trip.

In hindsight, our trip seems extravagant given the criticality of the longterm visa. On returning from our trip, we would have only 2 weeks before we were to fly back to Italy. But the Consulate had promised that my application could be processed quickly so we weren't unduly worried.

While we were away, our insurance company had advised that our insurance couldn't be extended because the premiums for 2010-2011 hadn't been established.

This was a hiccup but we still weren't worried. We would simply proceed with a 6 month longterm visa instead.

So back to the Consulate we went, only to be told that the Consulate had gone to Italy on compassionate leave! His offsider had utterly no idea what to do with our application. We realised this when he disappeared behind closed doors for 2 hours before emerging with several folders of legislation and a strange nervous tick.

We were doomed.

He told us between twitches that the Consulate would be back 3 days before our flights. We asked him if he thought we should re-schedule our flights. He ticked.

We were on our own. We decided to take the risk.

On the third last day, we were the first customers at the office. We sat shaking in our waiting room seats, desperately straining to view a glimpse of the Consulate.

Finally, with joy beyond description, we saw him!

Within minutes he and his ticking offsider were processing our application.

They told us that the visa 'may' be ready on the day of our flight. We asked them if they thought we should re-schedule our flights. The consulate shrugged. His offsider ticked.

We were on our own. We decided to take the risk.

On the last day, we made the first phone call into the office. Frustration levels were at an alltime high and the tension was unbearable. We waited while the receptionist checked the status of our application.

'Yes, Catherine, your visa is ready', were the sacred words I heard.

We were away. Emotionally exhausted but on our way.

Aah...the pleasure of a smoke-free environment...

2010-03-23T12:24:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to announce that we have a smoke-free environment once again.

Some considerable effort was needed to achieve our new pollution-free air. All of our brooms, buckets and shovels are now black. Not to mention the floors and walls.

Our skin was also black but this has since been corrected.

All in a good cause.

All for a deep breath of pure unadulterated oxygen.

Where there's smoke there's fire...

2010-03-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

Since moving to Italy, it would be reasonable to say that we've had more than our fair share of challenges. Each challenge has called on us to become 'experts' in various ways. We have been plumbers, electricians, stone masons, brick layers, tile layers, water technicians, drain layers, landscapers and gardeners.

You would think by now that there were no more 'experts' that we could be...

I love our log fire. In fact I wouldn't be alive now if it wasn't for our log fire. The nights before Christmas were some of the coldest I had ever experienced, where even 5 layers of clothing and a down sleeping bag weren't enough to keep me warm.

My relationship with our log fire had progressed to such an extent that I have lately been lighting it with only 1 match (as opposed to the 8 matches that I used to need!)

So you can imagine my confusion when the Afghan biscuits I baked this morning didn't seem to fill the kitchen with their sweet aroma like they normally did.

Instead, there was another more insidious stink pervading the air.

'The rustico smells of smoke!', I cried out to Stuart.

Stuart dropped his gardening tools and rushed inside, where he sniffed the air and announced that it was all in my imagination.

I wondered fleetingly about my own sanity before opening the doors and windows to allow the smoke to clear. Maybe there was too much ash in the fire...I would clean it out before lighting tonight's fire...

But that evening, just as we were enjoying a meal of chilli con carne, we were again surrounded by smoke.

'There's smoke everywhere!', I cried to Stuart.

Stuart must have considered the distraught woman before him long enough to realise that a little tact was necessary. He suggested that the wood might be damp.

'I'm telling you! I can't breathe!', I yelled as I grabbed the torch and shone it at the flue where great swatches of smoke were escaping through every nook and cranny.

After realising the gravity of the situation, Stuart launched himself at the flue, prodding and pushing its 9 different sections in an attempt to tighten the gaps.

Unfortunately, there was little improvement and smoke continued to ooze into the room.

I guess this means that there's one more 'expert' that we will need to be tomorrow...

Chimney Sweeps.

My Mind Works in Mysterious Ways

2010-03-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

It was raining today, that thick misty rain that doesn't seem to make a noise but soaks you right through to your bones.

So there was nothing for it but to cook!

I cooked a perfect sugo sauce with 30 cherry tomatoes, then creamy honey and date muffins.

And then I realised that I always listen to ABBA when I'm descending in a plane.

Yes, I know that these activities/thoughts may not appear to be connected...but I just thought I'd share with you a typical deranged movement of my brain...

It's better for me if he's ignorant!

2010-03-19T10:51:00.000-07:00

The thing that has surprised me most of all about our return to Italy is just how comfortable Stuart is in this country.

Except for (very) occasionally listening to an Italian language course on his ipod, he doesn't make any attempt to practice the language.

On our first day back, he drove on the 'right' hand side of the road instantly and was even seen to go to the 'wrong' side of the road to park! (For those of you who don't understand this, Italians park in any direction regardless of the flow of traffic).

Today, we ventured to the market. Stuart looked so comfortable with all the locals yapping in Italian around him. On the contrary, I looked to be under severe mental strain as I prepared the words I would use to order the various foods.

So you can imagine my surprise when, as all the necessary words relating to cheese were buzzing around in my head, I heard a giggle next to me.

I turned to find Stuart apparently enjoying a joke.

I must have looked a little confused (dismayed?) because he quickly explained.

'See that lady beside you?', he said.

'The one about my age? Yes', I replied.

'The shopkeeper called her Signorina (young woman) and you Signora (old woman)!', he laughed.

'Ha ha', I grunted.

Where and when had he learned this!?

When your man knows that you've been classified as an 'old woman' instead of a 'young woman' it's time he 'lost' his ipod...

Conflict

2010-03-18T11:47:00.000-07:00

After spending a heavenly three months with family in Australia, one's can't help but pose a question to the universe: 'Is it right that I live so far away from family and country?'

Panic regarding our return to Italy had only set in during the last few days of our holiday. We started to doubt our ability to 'brave' the unknowns in a country where we had no support structure. We started to believe that we would never learn Italian. We started to believe that all of our improvements that we'd done to date had collapsed or failed and that all of our services and utilities had been cut off!

We panicked even more after our long flight to Italy...

We'd hired a small car at the Milan airport in order to get our embarrassingly heavy suitcases home without slipping any vertabrae (the lure of second hand book shops in Australia had been too much of a temptation and we were laden with literature).

About ten kilometres from Canelli, we found snow laying on the hills!

Now, while I am normally gleeful about snow, it did pose a particular concern yesterday. The 2 kilometre drive into our small valley is dotted with sections that never see the sun so it was reasonable for us to assume that the snow may have made it impassable.

Fortunately, 'someone' was looking after us. While there were a few patches of snow on the road, the thickest snow was to be found in our lower paddocks only.

So after three months in hot humid weather, where I frequently found myself in a state of panic regarding over-heating, it was with immense pleasure that I alighted from the car to the fresh intensity of 7 degrees, the tranquillity of our valley, the first of our Spring bulbs and the reawakening of our birdlife.

I like to think that nature and fate was sending me a message: 'Living overseas is the right thing to do at the moment'. We're simply meant to be here for a while longer.

Or at least until all of the family have had their Italian holiday experience!

Snow - Why Now???

2009-12-13T11:28:00.000-08:00

OK. Enough's enough.

I am completely and utterly freezing.

I seem unable to lift my core body temperature. In fact, those medical types who say that the core body temperature is 37.5 degrees are all wrong.

My body is functioning on 17 degrees (albeit a little poorly and not in the best of moods).

If my temperature gets any lower, I'll be hibernating like the dormice in our walls.

But hope looms tomorrow in the form of an aeroplane travelling to warmer climes.

Tomorrow this little dormouse will be WARM, WARM, WARM!

And NOTHING is going to stop me from getting on that plane.

That is, nothing except the forecasted snow...

Actually, not even that.

If there are any problems, I will take action akin to that which occurs on The Sopranos.

The Hulk

2009-12-12T10:33:00.000-08:00

I'm happy to announce that we have finished all of our jobs, at least those that we considered necessary before our holiday.

After 2.5 months of heavy lifting, shovelling, dragging, loading, moving, cutting, sawing, wheelbarrowing, etc. we are definitely ready for a holiday.

I'm tired and sore and I feel like the Incredible Hulk.

This morning, I cut a few prickly trees out of our hazelnut grove with the handsaw. I noticed that each truck had a thick coating of ice on it. I learned that handsaws can cut ice.

This afternoon I helped Stu move some roof tiles. Clay tile roofs are an architectural feature of most Italian houses and ours is no different. These tiles are not attached to the roof or each other in any way; they simply overlap.

They last about 50 years so they're a fairly good investment, except after a snowfall when the weight of the snow can make them slide off the roof. Needless to say, walking under your eaves after snow can be quite a dangerous activity. Most Italians do a 'walk around' to check the state of their roofs. The tiles can also crack in severe temperatures. After last year's winter, our neighbour had to replace most of his tiles because his roof points towards the north.

Anyway, the other compelling thing about these tiles is that they weigh about 4kg each. This is a particularly interesting fact if you need to move them.

And we moved 160 of them today...

We have about 300 of these tiles stored on the second level of our fienale. Unfortunately, earlier owners stacked them on top of each other across the arched ceiling of the lower level. There's now a rather ominous crack along the ceiling directly under them so we decided moving them had become an urgent job.

The tiles are quite brittle and will crack and break easily if they fall on each other. So we dragged an old mattress out from the house and placed it on the ground outside the fienale.

Then Stu stood on the second level and threw each tile carefully down onto the mattress. This was a rather difficult task because they tend to bounce in unexpected directions like a rubgy football.

After about 6 tiles, he would call 'OK' which told me that it was safe to move in with the wheelbarrow and load them, cart them and offload them at the rear of the house.

While I was away, he would throw down the next lot of tiles in time for my return.

After about 10 wheelbarrow loads, I was more tired and more sore and I felt even more like the Incredible Hulk.

When I returned to the mattress, I looked at the tiles, laying there haphazardly in the morning frost and I thought of the girls in Little Women, who huddled together in bed to keep warm.

'What's wrong?', I heard a voice from above.

'Oh nothing', I replied to Stu, forcing myself back to the task.

He must have sensed my tiredness because he started going up and down the steps to move the tiles off the mattress while I was away offloading. By the time I returned I had two lots of tiles ready for my next wheelbarrow load. Clearly, my pace had slowed down, which is fair enough when you feel like the Incredible Hulk.

Tonight I glanced at myself in the mirror.

I was incredibly tired and excruciatingly sore.

The Incredible Hulk looked back at me.

Talking to Trees

2009-12-11T10:29:00.000-08:00

When I was young, I used to talk to trees because I knew they would listen to my problems.

When I was a teenager I used to hug them, confident that they would give me strength in difficult times.

Sadly, as an adult, I surf the internet about them.

One job that I felt particularly compelled to do in these pre-winter weeks was the pruning. We have a small orchard with apple and pear trees that have been neglected for years. There are strong fibrous vines growing at their bases which twist up into a maze of branches above. These vines drag the branches down and effectively ruin any hope the tree might have of creating a decent crop.

A friend told me that the time for pruning was after they'd gone dormant, in winter. And I already knew from experience that Spring in Italy meant wild and untamed growth. If I didn't do it now, I knew it would be another year before I could get to the fruit trees.

This morning we woke to yet another frost. This one was so thick that it covered the ground like snow. It was a miserable minus 1 degree so we decided to stay indoors for a few hours until it warmed up. Like any responsible and intelligent adult, I took the opportunity to do some internet research on pruning fruit trees.

At 11am, the 'big melt' had occurred around the house but the paddocks were still white.

Regardless, I pulled my layers on, grabbed my Swiss-made secateurs and walked rather stiffly to the shed where I collected the saw.

Then I crackled down the long grass to the orchard, slipping occasionally on the ice.

The first tree didn't look at all like the picture on the internet. I identified some 'upward growing anterior branches' but where were the 'narrow crotches' and 'whorls' that I'd read about?

Faced with a real tree with its own experience of life, I had no idea how to proceed.

So I reverted to my childhood. I talked to it. I asked it to show me what to do.

Yes, I know this sounds like I've finally gone over the edge or that my brain has partly frozen.

But I knew the tree would show me what to do.

So I talked and pruned and talked until a neat but rather vulnerable looking tree stood before me.

Then I moved on to the next tree and talked and pruned and talked to it.

Before long, I'd pruned four trees.

While this story has a slight tinge of insanity to it, I am actually a sane and practical person. So while I may not be able to expect the world's best crop next year, I'm absolutely sure that I've made a few new 'friends'...we certainly hugged goodbye!

Something To Be Endured

2009-12-10T11:05:00.000-08:00

In a few days, we see our families on home turf for the first time in two years.

While this is certainly the main motivating factor behind our trip, more recently my thoughts have turned to another possible factor.

After four days of frost and ice puddles and hands that don't move, I have been thinking about that thing called 'warmth'.

As I sit in my down sleeping bag in the lounge at night when it's below zero outside and our little fire has managed to get the inside temperature to 16, I imagine strolling down to the beach.

I imagine myself as a child of the universe. My beany, my scarf, my boots and my socks are cast off. Finally, my five layers of clothing are ripped and torn to shreds as I attack them with reckless abandon.

I stand there, a child of the sun. My muscles are liquid, thawed out and loosened by the raw heat so that I can stretch my arms to the sky and twist my body til it cracks and lengthens.

What joy!

The truth of the matter is that after ten minutes in the sun, I would be hot, sweaty, blistered and burnt. And cranky.

So I guess I should focus on family after all and put the warmth into the 'to be endured' box.

Hopefully the family will never need to go in the 'to be endured' box...although three months is a long time...perhaps I'll find myself in the 'to be endured' box???

Words of Wisdom Concerning Washing Cars

2009-12-08T11:37:00.001-08:00

For a second today I thought I'd run out of half decent topics to discuss on my Blog...but then I remembered a topic whose level of importance exceeds that of all other topics.

Before today, I had managed to avoid the 'washing the car' task for all of my 45 years.

Clearly, this is something of which I am very proud.

My downfall came today in the form of an ultimatum.

As I mentioned yesterday, we are a little stressed trying to get several important jobs done before we go on holidays. So I wasn't surprised when I leaned over to read the list of jobs that Stu was redrafting this morning at breakfast and found a certain 'Wash car' task against my name.

Panic seized me. Shivers ran down my spine, sweat beaded on my top lip.

'But that will take all day!', I warned.

'It won't take ALL day', Stu promised.

I did at least TRY to avoid it. I suggested that he might have time to do it later in the week. This didn't seem to go down very well. His eyes bulged and bits of toast sprayed from between his teeth.

'It's either that or YOU can build the security door!', he spat.

Now, no matter what my family genealogy says about my father being a carpenter, I am not the most able-bodied person when it comes to tools and wood and crooked houses.

So, being a cooperative and peace-loving creature, I accepted that I was stuck with the 'washing the car' task. I use the word 'accepted' but I did try not to be too gracious about it, lest assumptions were made about future repeats.

So I swallowed my last sip of hot tea, choked on several bits of 'calcare' that rested in the bottom on my cup, donned my 5 layers of clothing and dragged my lower lip to the garage.

I hoisted my lower lip into the car and reversed the vehicle so that it was close to the house.

Next, I went into the house to get the vacuum cleaner but decided to make a loaf of bread instead. I put the mixture into the breadmaker, then made a couple of phone calls.

About an hour later, I emerged with the vacuum cleaner.

I poked and prodded the awkward thing around until I got every bit of dirt and leaf and twig off the mats and the carpet. When I went inside to get a bucket of water, I took the opportunity to check the bread and bake a date loaf.

I emerged about an hour later.

'Now what was I doing?', I asked myself.

'Washing the car?', Stu grunted under his breath.

I went back inside to get a bucket and cloth. I cut a slice of my hot bread, spread it with honey and sat down to read my book.

An hour later, I emerged with a bucket and cloth.

By now you'll be getting the picture...

I finished the 'washing the car' task at 3.00pm. As you will understand, it took this long through no fault of my own. I was always dedicated and committed to the task. Indeed, I managed to keep motivated right to the end.

I just hope Stu remembers this next time he makes a list...

'As Is'

2009-12-07T10:40:00.000-08:00

As mentioned yesterday, we're rather stressed about all the jobs we have to do before Sunday.

Stu is trying to finish shutter doors which will provide security for two french doors we have in the loungeroom in the house. He has been putting the biggest bolts and hinges I've ever seen in the stones around the doors. This involves picking out the stones, then lodging a bolt in the space, along with a heap of reinforcing and cement.

Unfortunately, he ran out of cement.

So we had an emergency dash to the hardware shop.

Dare I say it, but I went 'as is'.

Now 'as is' on this rural property in winter is not a pleasant sight.

My tracksuit pants had its own knees which bulged and swayed out the front. They made me look like I walk with my knees permanently bent. They are also too big so I have to keep hitching them up lest they fall to an inappropriate level.

My four upper layers can be politely defined as 'practical'.

First, I wore an old black polypropylene undergarment. Next, I wore an equally old brown woollen jumper that sagged under the weight of its own shapelessness. Bobbles of wool hung off its oft-rubbed areas. Next, I wore an old grey fleece that is normally my top layer on warmer days and therefore carries a layer of dirt and dust on its sleeves. Finally, I wore a bright blue polarfleece that I used when I backpacked around Europe 15 years ago. It is also too big, which is probably a blessing since it has to contain all the other layers!

Depending on the type of people my readers are, some of you will be thinking 'How could she possibly go out in public like that!?' while others will be thinking 'Why does she keep clothes that are that old!?'.

My whole 'look' was capped off by a blue polarfleece beany that tends to grip my head, flattening what little hair I have left. I suspect that I looked like a boy. I felt like an undercover agent.

With a partner like this, it was a credit to Stu that he was prepared to have me follow him around the hardware shop. I could have been his son or his trades assistant.

He was even prepared to discuss hinge sizes with me, although I suspect the conversation was adjusted slightly in consideration of my appearance.

'What size do you reckon, mate?', he would say.

Despite this seemingly cosy acceptance, he must have had a few too many strange looks from other customers because after about half an hour he suggested I wait with the trolley while he went in search of the things he needed.

We'd been piling our trolley up with objects of varying shapes and sizes so it had become rather ungainly. So, while his suggestion was a pragmatic solution, I had a niggling suspicion that I'd pushed my luck a bit too far on the 'as is'.

He left me in the timber aisle. With the trolley.

Now, the timber aisle is not the most exciting of aisles to be in. I longed for the gardening aisle, the handicraft aisle or even the paint aisle.

However, I'm not one to complain about one's circumstances so I made the most of the timber aisle. I went right through the 40cm wide panels to find the best ones for our shutter doors. I looked for twists in the lengths and knots in the wrong places. My carpenter father would have been proud of me.

But one can only amuse oneself for so long in the timber aisle.

Before long, I ventured out. Without the trolley.

Soon I found myself in the flooring aisle. I was on my way to the tiles when I was dumbstruck by the parquetry. Neat boxes of laminated wooden panels were piled on a pallet in the middle of the aisle. My eyes twinkled. My hands reached out compulsively. They were smooth. There were different colour options. They were 'interlockable'.

My curiousity was instantly aroused.

I reached for the four display panels, wondering just how difficult it could be to interlock them.

I lined them up, I twisted, I pulled and I pushed.

Within seconds I'd made a perfect square metre of flooring, which now balanced precariously across the top of the palleted boxes.

Immensely satisfied, I returned to my trolley. It hadn't moved.

I waited.

Eventually Stu returned with an armful of bolts, hinges and little plastic things.

'I've made a floor!' I burst out.

'Good, mate. Are you ready to go?', he said.

I felt wonderful, probably like a truant child who'd had a secret adventure. I hitched my tracksuit pants up, held my head high and proceeded to the cash register with him and our trolley.

As is.

Christmas Travel Debris

2009-12-06T11:07:00.000-08:00

We are now on the countdown to our trip to Australia...and madly trying to complete several jobs that will make the place secure and give us peace of mind while we're away.

We also have the virtually impossible task of PACKING!

Yes, the BIG PACK is going to be the trauma to end all traumas (except maybe the septic trauma...)

For weeks, we've been buying 'goodies' for our remote antipodean family and friends. To ensure that we remain constantly aware of just how many goodies we've got to take, and to smooth the effort of packing, we've been gathering all these goodies on and around a particular chair in the loungeroom.

If I look over at that chair now, I see treats from Switzerland (vinegar and oils from Globus) as well as treats from Italy (nougat, biscotti, cioccolata, Piemontese specialties such as tarti di nocciole and various sauces and jams, etc). And of course there are the mandatory bottles of alcohol (5 to be exact...so far...). If we didn't take several bottles of Limoncello, the fabulous lemon liquor from the south, we'd run the risk of not having a bed! And we simply must take a bottle or two of the local Spumante!

Our problem is that we only have 2 suitcases and both of these are small wheelie cases particularly suitable for business travel. They neatly fit into the overhead luggage racks in business class and they are designed to make one look like a hero when one travels. On many occasions we have felt the joy of being 'business class idiots' as we've exited a taxi and strutted confidently to the business class counters. These suitcases have never let us down. They always made us look like we'd done it all before, like we were so used to travel that we could carelessly throw a few meagre essentials into a midget suitcase and go across the world.

Unfortunately, the trip that looms next week is not a business trip and we're not travelling business class.

This means our suitcases are inappropriate for our purposes and will definitely not fit our image. We will be carrying copious amounts of superfluous debris with a 20kg weight limitation and a luggage rack the size of a glovebox!

What to do???

It remains to be seen how we handle this latest of challenges.

We have yet to broach the subject but I'm fairly confident it will not make for a peaceful or romantic start to our holiday...

Muscles or Sweat?

2009-12-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

Today we filled our septic hole back in.

And tonight, I'm feeling the wonderful warmth and buzz of physical exhaustion.

The dry clay that we had extracted 4 days ago had been rained on and by the time we got to it today it had turned to mud. Very heavy mud.

So I was shovelling for two hours and now I can hardly organise my fingers around my pen. There seems to be a delay in the time it takes for the message to get from my brain to my fingers. I massage them, squeeze them and bend them and even this takes a mammoth effort.

My wrists are even worse. The constant action of twisting my hands to offload each shovelful of heavy clay has made them like jelly. I couldn't even pull my seatbelt on today. And tasks such as grinding salt onto my evening meal and wringing out the dishcloth were absolute impossibilities!

My arms are heavy. They're so heavy I allow my shoulders to sag and my arms to hang beside me, all thoughts of posture abandoned.

So, I hear you wonder, why do I call this uncomfortable state of pain and tiredness 'wonderful'?

Well, I have rediscovered muscles long gone...

When Stu unearthed an unusually large rock the other day, he started to give me instructions on correct lifting techniques. But I'd bent my knees, tightened my stomach and lifted the rock long before he'd finished his sentence. I even held it while we continued our conversation about lifting! So my arms are no longer the 'old ladies arms' that they were ('old ladies arms' are the type that expand, go lumpy, then sag).

Also, my stomach muscles went missing when I gave up dancing 15 years ago. In recent years, my stomach simply wobbled around and any attempt to tighten it brought no movement whatsoever! Now, I think I'm approaching the thing that the fitness experts call 'core strength'. I can make my stomach move! Perhaps I'm not too far away from having a 'six-pack' or at least a 'ripple'!?

And I am not even going to start talking about my rear end...

However, I am fully aware of the danger that is facing me in the very near future...

We'll be going to Australia for a holiday. It's summer in Australia, the sort of summer that has you sweating even when you're not doing anything. So you do nothing and get lazy, unfit and fat.

My newly discovered muscles may very soon be a thing of the past...again...

FOOTNOTE:

Today we managed to get the temperature INSIDE our rustico down to 11 degrees.

This new 'low' has brought me to a point where I can't wait to sweat.

Who cares about being fit and slim anyway...

Beginnings of a Dream and the End of a Saga

2009-12-03T10:19:00.000-08:00

I have recently come into contact with a very inspirational woman, Erika Liodice, who runs a website called 'Beyond the Gray' (www.beyondthegray.wordpress.com).

Erika wants to inspire people to follow their dreams. She kindly invited me to be interviewed for her website because she had heard of my recent decision to take 12 months off paid employment in order to follow my dreams.

I feel very humbled and grateful for the interest that Erika has shown in me and I would be hugely happy if my words are able to give any of Erika's readers the tiniest piece of wisdom to follow their dreams...

The interview can be found at w ww.beyondthegray.wordpress.com/category/interviews-with-dream-chasers/

Now, for those of you who read my Blog for the sole reason that it makes you feel grateful for your sewerage system, read on...

Today was a warmer morning (4 degrees). We woke bright and early because we wanted to be ready for the drainlayer.

He arrived exactly on time at 8.30am. We expected a drain-dwelling sort of person with grime under his fingernails. Instead, we got a very stylish man who wore designer clothes and clean white runners and looked more like a fashion designer!

What sort of drainlayer comes to a job like that!!?? We were immediately suspicious.

As we stood proudly over the hole that we'd dug, he tip-toed around taking extreme care to avoid discoloured areas.

Then he told us to do some more digging and marked out the area he wanted us to dig. He would return at 2pm to reassess the situation.

Stu had been looking forward to doing something that didn't involve digging. But we really had no choice, so we dragged on our work clothes and boots and got started. I'm not sure how Stu dug so continuously today because, right from the first showel-load of dirt that I tilted into the wheelbarrow, my wrists seemed to go limp.

A couple of hours later, we had a bigger hole but we had also found a continuation of the broken sewer pipe which seemed to indicate that it went straight past the septic tank! But where?

Being amateur drainlayers, we assumed that when the drainlayer returned he would want us to dig in the direction of the newly discovered extension to see where it went.

So we continued digging.

At noon, the drainlayer arrived, two hours earlier than expected.

He tip-toe around again, then picked up a shovel and started to prise up a protective cement cover that lay over the broken sewer pipe. He discovered another hole into which a stormwater pipe had been forced. Nothing had been cut neatly, sealed or joined properly and ooze leaked out from all around the hole. He pulled at the stormwater pipe until it came out. It had been thrust into the sewer pipe so that only a narrow channel remained in the sewer pipe. No wonder our sewer was backed up!

As another explosion of backed up sewerage oozed out of this hole, he quickly walked a couple of metres further along the septic pipe, then drilled a hole.

'Niente! Non pieno!', he called. Nothing. Empty.

Apparently, that side of the sewer pipe was empty. He had identified the location of the blockage.

He told us to cut the entire section out (from the leak that Stu found yesterday to the stormwater hole that he'd found today) and he would return at 2pm to reconstruct it.

m afraid the stench was too much for me so I again stood outside my 5 metre radius while Stu cut through the sewer pipe in two places, then emptied it, then redirected the contents to a dam he'd created for the purpose.

Then we waited.

When the drainlayer returned at 2pm, we were refilling some of the superfluous holes we'd dug (we like to think of them as 'exploratory holes').

He opened the back of his 4WD, extracted eight orange PVC pipes and started to measure the gap Stu had created. At one stage, he came dangerously close to contact with the ooze. But this was properly avoided by a quick trip to his car where he extracted a pair of soft white gloves. He now looked like a fashion designer who did a bit of surgery on the side.

We watched as he measured, cut, matched, joined, placed and glued a new maze of pipes for us.

Tonight we spent a long time in our bathroom. Aahh! There's nothing quite like the pleasure of running hot water that drains away properly...

The True Saga of the Septic

2009-12-02T11:23:00.000-08:00

I announced yesterday with immense pride that our 'foul water' (sewerage) was better than everyone else's 'foul water'. This certainty came about when we opened our septic tank and found that no disgusting odours emanated from it.

Well, things changed today. For the worst.

And because I desire to be a writer of the truth, I feel compelled to share the grisley details with you...

This morning, I phoned our geometra to ask him to view the maze of pipes that we'd uncovered while we'd been looking for our septic tank. We wanted him to suggest how and where we should proceed. With acres of land and no idea where our septic tank was, there was a great risk that we would dig up the entire property before we found it.

He came within an hour. In the bitter cold of a heavy frost, he walked around the pipes, leaned over them, measured and estimated distances, falls and likely locations for pipes and tanks.

Finally, he suggested that we do more digging.

As Murphy would have it, he wanted us to dig in exactly the place where we'd thrown all the dirt from the previous holes we'd dug. The mound was so huge and heavy (it had been soaked by recent rain) that it took us a full hour to move it.

By the time we'd cleared the dirt off the chosen spot, we were already tired, our arms barely able to be lifted, our backs fragile.

We needed a break so we staggered into the warmth of the rustico for lunch.

An hour later, the frost still had not melted. We had no choice but to layer ourselves with clothing and emerge.

We had agreed to take turns at working. Stu would use a heavy crowbar to spear and loosen the hard earth, then I would collect the loose dirt on my shovel and throw it onto a new pile.

The cold sun was now making its way into the valley. Feeling the light on my face and listening to the dull thuds on the clay was relaxing.

Suddenly, the dull thuds stopped and I heard a grunt.

I looked across just in time to see Stu recoil.

Cautiously, I advanced with my shovel, unaware of the revolting sight that awaited me.

Stu had broken through a pipe. And there was absolutely no doubt that this pipe was backed up, alive and pumping with gas. As he poked in the hole, I watched all manner of half decomposed fetid crap ooze out of the pipe and creep down our driveway.

I gagged.

I hoped the neighbour wouldn't be out today.

I wondered about cholera and black death.

Then the stench hit me and I was forced to retreat a few metres (Stu said afterwards that I dropped tools and 'fled' inside the rustico).

After a few minutes spent gathering myself, I ventured back out, sensitive that we were in this thing together. There was also the small possibility that I may have been personally responsible for some of the ooze.

I circled the area, careful not to come within smelling distance (approx 5 metres).

While I provided spiritual support (talking, gagging), Stu waded in the mess, occasionally slipping in the mustard-like ooze. His gloves were wet and the soles of his gumboots were caked.

For some reason (probably a need to be distracted from the work at hand), I noticed that the broken pipe had a crack through it. The crack was discoloured so it must have been leaking for a while. Indeed, we had noticed some strange water levels in our toilet recently and our plumber had hinted that we may have had a broken pipe.

I phoned our geometra again and told him we'd found the septic and a cracked/broken pipe. He confirmed that he would send a drainlayer and a supersucker tomorrow.

While this was a really horrible experience, this afternoon we agreed that it was a good thing to have discovered both our septic and the cracked pipe. We now had an opportunity to have the world's strongest and cleanest sewer pipe as well as the world's cleanest septic!

Morals of the Story:

If your septic tank smells good, there is something wrong!

If you ever need to get close to your sewerage, remember that no matter how good you think you are, your excrement stinks!

Septics and Solids

2009-12-01T10:55:00.000-08:00

Today we experiened the joy of looking inside our septic tank.

We woke completely committed to our septic. At least, Stu did. I was committed to any other task. Oops! I mean I was commited to another critical task. Okay, so gardening can't really be defined as a critical task when your drains are blocked. But gardening was the best I could offer. I just couldn't be exposed to anything distasteful that might cause me to have nightmares for a week.

I positioned myself and my spade within 10 metres of Stu and the septic so that I could monitor his expression and evaluate the horror of his discovery.

After half an hour of digging, everything at the septic went quiet. I looked over. Stu was preparing to lift the lid. Seconds later, I watched him lean forward to look down the hole.

I'd imagined a stench that would hover around for a week. I'd imagined rats that would bound out of the stinking mire, wet and slippery and dark. I'd imagined worms and other life forms that would ooze and squelch as they sucked at the sludge on the sides of the tank.

'It doesn't smell!', he cried.

Believing that the situation was tolerable, I walked over to the hole. It was true. It didn't smell.

Confident in the purity of our septic system, Stu decided to see how deep it was. He carefully poked a crowbar into the water. About 10 centimetres down he felt resistance. He prepared to add some force to the poke. I stepped back, just before the crowbar burst through.

'There's a crust!' Stu exclaimed (I'm sorry, there's no other word for it)

I gagged. Visions of a mass of hard excrement came to mind.

He kept poking and stirring, exploring the thick viscosity of the liquid under the crust like a witch with her cauldron.

'I've hit the bottom!' he cried.

Seconds later, several large bubbles popped lethargically on the surface.

The witch keeled backwards.

'Phaw!' he sounded, unable to formulate words.

Once he recovered, he dragged the crowbar out of the mire, up through the soup, the crust and the water.

I felt a weird compulsion to watch. Whatever was lurking on the bottom of the tank would be speared on the end of the crowbar. Perhaps one of those rats? Or perhaps some other organic matter?

The end of the crowbar was wet with what looked like, well, mud.

I proposed to Stu that he should smell it. Now you're probably thinking we're a bit strange and morbid in our obsession with our septic. But really it's quite critical that we understand how things work around here and what better way to do this than to get your hands dirty? (well, Stu's hands, anyway...please pardon the pun...)

He looked at me like he was about to chase me around the yard with the the gooey crowbar.

I fled to the refuge of my garden. When I looked back, I saw him lean over to smell the wet end of the crowbar.

I gagged. Visions of a soft excrement mixture came to mind.

'No smell!' he yelled.

Both confused, we went inside to read our 'restoring old houses with septic tanks in Italy' book.

Apparently, our septic system ('biologica') is a fascinating balance of nature. 'Foul water' goes into an initial tank which is filled with water, 'solids' dissolve or fall to the bottom, then as more 'foul water' is introduced to the tank, the cleanest water (at the top) seeps into a filtration unit which consists of gravel and sand, then into a 'soakaway' which diffuses it into the land.

So all we have to worry about is having the undissolved 'solids' sucked out every few years!

Despite the beauty of this system, we are unfortunately at the point in the cycle where we have a tank full of undissolved 'solids'. And worse, since we've only been here 2 months, these undissolved 'solids' are other people's undissolved 'solids'!

Regardless, our new wisdom tells us that noone else will fix the problem except us so tomorrow we will phone the 'pit emptier' and invite him to view our 'solids' and perhaps even supersuck them.

Of course, I will record this momentous event by taking photos a safe distance from the supersucker...

Let There Be Light Amidst the Rain!

2009-11-30T10:22:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, I mentioned that it had rained 2 days out of 60.

Today, I'd like to change that to 3 days out of 61.

The good news is that the rain forced us inside for the day, something we've been dreaming about since we got here. Having exhausted ourselves for weeks doing heavy work like chopping wood and digging gardens, we spent a wonderfully relaxing day going through paperwork and generally wasting time.

Stu also did some indoor maintenance jobs. He was especially inspired to change our bedroom light fitting after he shook one of his jumpers and sent the hanging light swaying. We've both had altercations with this light fitting ever since we moved here (me when I make the bed) and today was the last straw for Stuart.

He charged over to his workshop and returned with his toolbox, drill and several light fittings that we had brought from our apartment in Switzerland. It was not difficult to choose a fitting: the prerequisite was 'must not hang or swing'.

Being a safety conscious individual, he turned off the electricity and asked me to hold the torch while he performed the work. What he hadn't considered is how distracted I become when armed with a torch ('You're just like a 5 year old!' is what he yelled). But I was not listening, enraptured with my viewing possibilities as I was!

At one stage, the torch beamed across the room to the corners to check out the cobwebs. Later, it scanned the bed to check the amount of dust he was creating. I told him he should be grateful that I always come back to the job at hand even though I have these little distractions involving enhanced visibility. He thinks that this isn't a lot of comfort when he's got his arms up in the air holding wires and light fittings ('A fat lot of good that is!' is what he yelled). I guess he has a point. But you'd be amazed what I can see with a torch!

Then in the middle of the crucial part (connecting the wires), the torch went dull, then yellow, then dead. I rushed to get candles. Stu told me to go upstairs to get the spare torch. I bounded up the stairs, then back down with the spare torch, only to watch aghast as it went dull, then yellow after only two minutes! But at least it wasn't completely dead...

Since Stu is slightly colour blind, he finished the job with me giving him instructions on the colours of the wires.

Tomorrow, we'll be ready to dive back into heavy work...specifically, digging for our septic tank and poking hoses up pooey pipes, etc.

Actually, come to think of it, maybe Stu will dive into that work...I'm sure there's another job I can do?

Stay tuned...tomorrow's activities promise amusement and definitely horror...

Fiere e Pioggia...

2009-11-29T10:41:00.000-08:00

Canelli hosts two major fiere (festivals) in Autumn: the Fiera del Tartufo and the Fiera di San Martino.

The fiere are held approximately 3 weeks apart in November.

This year, we had pioggia (rain) on both days. This was extremely unfortunate, especially given that we have only had 2 days of rain in the whole 60 days we've been living here.

Both Fiere are marked by mercati (markets) in the streets of Canelli.

The Fiera del Tartufo celebrates the famous and rare white truffle, which is only found in southern Piemonte and is on the wish list of every reputable chef in the world.

As you can imagine, there is a strong focus on food and it's market stalls sell cheeses, salamis, pane, pasticerrie and biscotti. The prized truffles are hosted on stalls located in a large covered area in the manufacturing facility of Gancia, the area's largest producer of wine and spumante.

And this location isn't short of atmosphere. There are musicians dressed up in medieval costumes who mingle in the crowd and play old Italian folk music. The air is heavy with the smell of special cheeses such as the piccante that is fermented in Barolo grape skins. And of course there is the all-prevading scent of the truffles themselves.

Most stalls sell both black and white truffles but they are always few in quantity. Only about five to ten are visible on each stall. As I walk past one stall, an enthusiastic young man pushes two white truffles at me. I lean over to smell them but he keeps waving them at me clearly inviting me to hold them. I take them, delighted to have the opportunity to see, smell AND feel these exquisite treasures of cuisine. The little lumps are about the size of a golf ball. They are heavy, cold and knobbly. I bring them up to my nose and inhale. As a damp pungent aroma wafts into my nostrils, I quickly understand why some people say that these truffles 'carry the smell of the earth itself' and others say they are the 'diamond of the kitchen'.

Yesterday, I talked about dogs and men with guns. Well, sometimes we have dogs and men without guns walking up our valley. Our neighbour tells us that these men are truffle hunters. Their dogs have their noses glued to the earth, desperate to pick up the smell of truffle. This is understandable, given that white truffles are worth approximately USD 3,000 per pound. Truffle hunters can be extremely protective and will not normally disclose the location of truffles that they have found. I like to think that there are truffles growing by the thousands on our land. How I would find them I don't know but given my story about guns yesterday, I'm not sure it would be a wise thing to try...

As the host of the main displays, Gancia takes the opportunity to promote its products by offering free flow spumante.

And, of course, it is not difficult to lose the entire day in such hospitality...

The Fiera di San Martino celebrates the itinerant labourers and immigrants who have tilled the fields of this farming community for centuries.

It's markets sell clothing, shoes, hats, belts and bags. There are also stalls that sell ethnic goods and handicrafts from South America and Africa and 'fast food' stalls that sell Farinata (a pizza shaped thing made out of chick peas that is cooked in wood fired ovens) and deep fried pastry that is eaten with a light dusting of icing sugar.

Not quite the same atmostphere as the Fiera del Tartufo...but still meaningful and enjoyable...especially when you finish off with a Campari Rosso e Soda!

Something Different...

2009-11-28T10:17:00.000-08:00

Even I know when I've written about a certain issue once too often.

This is how I feel about our plumbing problems.

So today's post will not mention any issues of a plumbing nature.

I will talk about guns instead.

Today we were enjoying a nice little toasted cheese sandwich in the safety and comfort of our rustico when we looked up to see a man walking past our window with a gun.

Men with guns regularly walk up this peaceful valley and past our place. At first, we were shocked to come across these visitors but then our neighbour explained that they are hunting for cinghiale (wild boar). Apparently, our valley is filled with deer and wild boar and is therefore a favourite spot for hunters. While we have seen a few deer, we have never seen a wild boar. I'm not sure how we would react if we were faced with a big pig but I suspect we would not react like one of the locals.

The men with guns always have dogs. The dogs are usually scrawny, dirty and diseased looking. Actually, the men are also usually dirty and diseased looking. Regardless, we watch from the safety of our rustico while these dangerous men holding dangerous weapons walk past us with their dangerous dogs. If we're outside, the men sometimes ask if we've seen any cinghiale. We respond in the negative, not sure if we should tell them we wouldn't recognise one if we fell over it.

So today, while I did my usual thing and watched the man and his dog, Stu (otherwise known as Louie) watched The Gun. He is obsessed with The Gun and feels a weird compulsion to explain The Gun to me: its material, its size, it capacity to do damage, etc. It must be a boy thing. Apparently, today's gun was a '22' (whatever that means). All I know is that it was the biggest gun I'd ever seen. I had to look twice because the gun was slung over the man's shoulder in such a way that it looked like something he'd already slaughtered (albeit a skinny one). I was sure The Gun would kill a whole pack of cinghiale with just one bullet.

This led me to wonder if we would be as obsessed about guns if we had come from a country where guns were legal or if we'd grown up in a rural area where guns were permitted.

The Italians in our area just seem to accept guns and hunting as a way of life.

Tonight, Stu wandered down to the bottom paddock to check if the gate was closed. At 6pm, it was cold, damp and a thick fog hung in the valley which prevented him from seeing very far ahead.

Suddenly a gunshot rang out and echoed around the hills.

He told me later that he simply froze to the spot, chills moving up and down his nerves like electricity. He couldn't tell how far away The Gun was because it was muffled by the fog. He was clearly shocked that bullets would be fired in such poor visibility.

When he was finally able to move his legs again, he crept back to the rustico careful to stay on the driveway and as close to the fence as possible, just in case The Gun mistook his fawn coloured tracksuit for a deer (or a cinghiale!).

Who's Louie?

2009-11-27T11:01:00.000-08:00

In country Italy, tradespeople don't seem to finish jobs; they leave the finishing up to Louie.

Stu keeps wondering who Louie is because Lilo, our plumber, keeps saying 'Louie will do this, Louie will do that'.

Today, Lilo came to finish the instant hot water installation. He screeched up the driveway right on time. We were dressed and ready for him this time. As he bounded out of his van, his black curls danced around his wide grin.

I pounced on him with the bad news.

'Noi abbiamo una grande probleme! Nostre canale sono blocco!', I screeched. We have a bigger problem. Our drains are blocked.

I'd prepared the sentences the evening before.

I detected a twitch in Lilo's facial expression. A certain distaste. A squirm.

He wandered around the immediate area, shrugging his shoulders. At one point he asked us where our septic tank was which was met by blank stares. He continued shrugging his shoulders (which in Italian means 'This situation is hopeless; I have no idea') and finally announced 'Geometra' (which in Italian means 'This is too hard for me; you'll have to ring your renovation go-between')

He then muttered something vague which sounded to me like, 'Bad luck' then continued around the back of the house to recommence his hot water job.

Clearly he didn't have much interest in drains.

Stu and I looked at each other. If your plumber isn't interested in your blocked drains, where do you turn?

Lilo's work lasted all morning, which was good because it gave him ample opportunity to see us doing some serious work in the garden.

At about noon he started looking at his watch. Siesta. His eyes glazed over. No doubt he was thinking of pasta. He quickly packed his van, told us that if there were any problems we should phone the manufacturer and that we should also phone the technica to set up the water purification system once Louie had installed a power plug.

'Grazie', I said.

'Who's Louie?', Stuart said.

We waved Lilo off, feeling like we'd been dumped. We were alone in Italy with blocked drains. It doesn't get any worse than that.

We crept inside, our confidence squashed between our toes. Negative thoughts abounded. How naiive we'd been to think that we could cope with renovating a 'casa vecchia' in a foreign country.

I phoned the Geometra. No answer. I texted the Geometra. No reply.

A short while later, he phoned back. After I explained our problem, he said, 'No problem! If a house is not used for a while it can go hard in there!'. I was imagining the hard stuff as he continued, 'I know a company that can clean your septic tank!'

'Va Bene', I said, graphic pictures of hard stuff looming.

Suddenly, there was a screech in the driveway.

Lilo jumped out of his van, waving a plastic contraption which had a circle at one end and a handle at the other.

'Chiave!', he shouted, clearly enraptured with the tool.

We smiled back. Stu told me afterwards he thought it was 'one of those wand things that you wave over the ground that beeps when it locates your septic tank'. Sometimes it's sad being an optimist.

Anyway, we followed Lilo to see how the chiave worked. To our great disappointment, the chiave was used to change the filter on our water purification system. Lilo probably noticed our distinct lack of enthusiasm. Surely he saw that our 'canale blocco' problem was oozing from our pores?

He must have. Because a few seconds later, he suggested we ask our neighbour if he knows where our septic tank is. Our neighbour is a long term resident of Canelli. The stone house attached to ours used to be his mothers.

I phoned our neighbour and put Lilo on.

While our neighbour talked, Lilo walked around the house taking measured steps against our neighbour's directions. He walked to the window near the bagno in the casa grande and took 4 large paces into the driveway. This was the location of the septic tank for the house. He walked to the corner of the house outside the kitchen and pointed down. This was the location of the septic tank for the rustico.

We were overjoyed! There is nothing quite like the joy of knowing where your septic tank is!

'Louie scavera', Lilo suggested.

'Si', I replied.

We waved Lilo off.

'Who's Louie?', Stu said.

Footnote:
Stu is trying really hard to understand Italian. The 'Louie' he keeps hearing is in fact 'Lui' which means 'He'. Stu didn't know it yet but Lilo and I had just volunteered Lui to dig for his septic tank...

We Never Do Any Work...

2009-11-26T11:08:00.000-08:00

Many of you who have followed our plumbing woes will not be surprised to learn that the tradesperson who gets the most business out of us is our plumber, Lilo.

This week we gave Lilo more business.

And early this morning, while we were still in bed, he screeched up the driveway.

We both jumped out, groaned, then stood around like stunned deer while we looked for our clothes. I pulled my beanie on, which really wasn't enough to go public. When I looked over at Stu, he was wandering around in circles searching for his work pants. He kept repeating 'Lilo mustn't think we do any work...whenever he comes, we're inside...'

Anyway, after what seemed like hours, we were clothed and welcoming Lilo.

He had dropped off our new instant hot water system and water purifier. Unfortunately, he had an urgent job at the post office so he promised to return to install them either that afternoon or the next morning.

Since we were up and dressed we decided to start work immediately. We chainsawed wood for three (3!) hours, stopped for a quick lunch, then Stu continued cutting wood with the axe while I cleared gravel off our future vege patch and moved it to the driveway.

Three (3!) hours later, Stu had filled our woodpile and I'd made the perfect driveway. It's bumpy surface had been filled, raked and compacted, over and over again. To absolute perfection.

So when we fell into the rustico at 4pm, we felt we'd justified our existence and earned our keep. We had a wash, lit the fire and sat down with our books and a wine.

Then Lilo screeched up the driveway.

Even though we were fully dressed this time, we groaned. It took us the same amount of time to get off our chairs, put our boots on and go outside. On our way to the back of the house, I heard Stu mutter 'Lilo mustn't think we do any work...whenever he comes, we're inside...'

Things In Rows Make Me Smile

2009-11-25T10:33:00.000-08:00

If I line anything up in a row, it can make me smile, sometimes even laugh.

Now, don't be alarmed and let me explain...

It was foggy today. My skin and every one of my bones was damp and cold.

Fog in Australia means 'its a bit overcast and dewy but it will be a lovely day'. Fog in Piemonte means' its thick and covers the whole region and it will not lift for weeks'.

So we did what the Piemontese do. We worked.

We emptied our fienale.

A fienale is an old stone building close to the main house where previous famers used to keep their animals. Our fienale's old stone walls have soft white fluff oozing out of them, the gentle evidence of concrete cancer, and blotches and rough patches where previous owners have badly plastered them. But it is also a haven of earthiness. Mixed in with the damp smell of wet dirt is a raw animal smell. It makes my nose want to smell. I can smell a farmer damp with hot sweat as he hoists hay into the pigs; I can smell the pigs, steamy but clean as they push against each other inside their pen.

Our fienale was full of 'things'. We weren't sure what 'things' exactly except that there were a lot of them. They lined the space, floor to ceiling and promised treasure and discovery.

Amongst the treasure, we found old garden tools, old wine making equipment, old gates and doors and old farming equipment. And old furniture.

It took us all day to drag everything outside and find a better place for it.

The furniture was placed along the driveway while we poked and prodded it trying to assess its value and potential for restoration. We went for lunch and when we returned in the afternoon, the furniture had taken on a personality. It was loitering in our driveway like youths wanting to make trouble. It was a group of friends who had come to visit. It was a group of strangers on their way to somewhere else.

Regardless, it made me smile.

I smiled through the fog and felt warm.

An Unwholesome Ingredient

2009-11-23T06:00:00.000-08:00

When the hair off your head becomes a regular ingredient in the meals you cook, you really need to reconsider your 'look'.

Twice this week, I've fed Stu strands of long curly brown hair. Although it appears not to bother him, it would certainly be enough to turn me off eating. (Perhaps this is why he's been losing weight?)

Anyway, for the last week, I've been entertaining ideas that involve scissors. I've sent cries of help to my younger sister which have been met by silence. I've tried to resist but I've been getting increasingly desperate and in the wee small hours of last night I made The Decision.

When I dived out of bed this morning, I went straight to the mirror just to be sure that my 'look' wasn't worth saving. It wasn't. It definitely wasn't.

An hour later, Stu and I were in the car on a desperate mission to find a parrucchiere.

Half an hour later we'd found the perfect one: a salon that didn't require appointments!

Anyone who knows me will know that this is the stuff of dreams for me. When it comes to beauty I have a complete and utter inability to plan. Being a woman of little vanity, ugliness tends to creep up and surprise me. Going to the hairdresser is a decision that is made quickly and must occur immediately.

There were already 2 women in the salon. One had thick grey colouring cream in her long hair which made it look horribly matted. The other was sitting at the washing basins, her wet hair wrapped in a towel.

The hairdresser told me there would be a wait.

I pretended that I didn't have much time but my act only lasted 2 seconds. I was desperate.

So I sat down and waited.

Stu went to the cafe for a cappuccio.

He returned an hour later.

I was still waiting. The other ladies had progressed slightly. One was having her hair dried. The other was waiting for her colour to take.

Stu went to the supermarket to buy hot chocolate mix and a toilet plunger (don't ask...)

He returned an hour later.

Mere seconds before his arrival, I'd been promoted to the wash basins. I was proudly in position. One lady had paid and left. The other lady was getting her hair dried. A new lady waited.

Stu sat on a bench outside the shop. I watched him unwrap a chocolate bar and eat it. I gestured for him to give me some but I was to remain chocolate-less.

Half an hour later, I'd had my hair cut. More specifically, I'd been shaved.

Oh, but what joy!

Of course, I now have a cold head and a cold neck...but I can only hope that my new 'look' will arrest Stu's slide into anorexia...

Hard Butter & Not Enough Time

2009-11-22T11:21:00.001-08:00

I'm currently reading a biography of Jane Austen in which the author describes the weather in terms of the laundry. She writes that the laundry froze before it dried.

This got me thinking about weather. It's so cold here that sometimes I come inside and feel cosy in temperatures that once would have had me sitting ON the heater (14 degrees).

Anyway, the other day I decided to make a cake. I took the butter out of the fridge and softened it in the microwave so that I could cream it with the sugar. Then I quickly dashed outside to do something that I can't remember and which is irrelevant to this story.

I was only gone a couple of minutes but when I returned, the butter was hard again.

I quickly realised that 14 degrees probably wasn't that warm after all and 2 minutes in such a temperature is a very long time if you're soft butter.

This got me thinking about time.

Like many others, I never have enough of it.

I used to blame this lack of time on work. I used to promise myself that if I ever had the opportunity not to work, I'd have lots of time to do the things I always wanted to do.

And I knew exactly what I would do. I would grasp it, clutch it, never waste it. I would write, read, write, cook, write, paint, write, etc.

Obviously, I've been telling myself for years that I would write...

And now here I am without a fulltime job but with a very ideal environment and I still don't have enough time to write.

My learnings for today?

That I should never allow myself to be distracted after I've softened the butter (at least not until Summer) and that I should never allow a day to pass by without writing.

One Dead Tree & Lots of Noise

2009-11-21T10:54:00.001-08:00

In my pre-sabbatical days, I used to get violently angry when I heard a chainsaw. A chainsaw doesn't just cut something. It cuts lots of those somethings.. It does acres of damage and creates thousands of deaths in a short time.

Today we used a chainsaw.

We cut one tree down. One dead tree.

I don't know how old the tree was or why it had died. It wasn't a huge tree (about 3-4 metres in height and 30 centimetres in diameter) but its grey leafless branches made the entrance to our property 'sad'.

So, this morning we stood under it with chainsaw, handsaw and axe.

First, we pulled off the thick ivy that was crawling up it's bark. Great swathes of the tree's bark came away with the ivy until suddenly the tree stood clean, naked and vulnerable before us.

Next, we cut off one of the three main branches with a handsaw, then the second branch, then the third branch.

Then we cut the trunk into several pieces with the chainsaw.

The branches and large pieces of trunk that lay scattered around the stump then had to be cut into smaller transportable pieces with the chainsaw.

Then the stump had to be mulched and grubbed with the axe.

All in all, we worked for 4 hours to remove this tree. Half a day of chainsaw noise.

What did I learn? What is my new wisdom?

I learned that the noise of a chainsaw doesn't necessarily mean irresponsible forestry bloodletting. It could simply mean a couple is struggling with a single dead tree, eager to use it as firewood before the white grubs get it as food...

The Bottom Paddock

2009-11-20T10:18:00.001-08:00

Today we ventured far beyond our immediate surrounds.

We ventured to The Bottom Paddock.

The impetus for this trip came with the purchase of a lawn mower.

Just before lunch we took possession of our new toy, then celebrated with the purchase of 2 coffees and 4 bottles of wine. And before you wonder about our drinking habits, we DRANK the coffees and brought the wine home for our cellar...

Anyway, when we arrived home, we gulped a quick lunch of sausage rolls and commenced preparations for our 'trip'. We knew that these sorts of expeditions were not to be taken lightly. Equipment had to be collected and checked (lawnmower, petrol, funnel, chainsaw, ear muffs, safety specs, tree clippers) and provisions gathered. The trailer had to be attached to the car and the passenger boarded onto the trailer (me!).

After 20 minutes we commenced our journey.

We arrived 2 minutes later.

We toiled for 3 hours at The Bottom Paddock. We walked the ground to remove stumps and branches, we cut the grass, we unloaded mulch and we pruned one of the long-neglected apple trees.

All in all, we spent a busy afternoon in the remote reaches of our property.

When we finally returned home, we were satisfied with our achievements but also proud of our proven ability to thrive in the wilderness.

(The Bottom Paddock is 100 metres from the house...)

Social Climbers

2009-11-17T12:40:00.000-08:00

For all you die-hard Cath's Cache Blog followers, I'm treating you to a sneak preview of our 'new look' (see bottom of page). This 'new look' will appear for a short time only (in order to minimise our embarrassment) so make the most of it. Hopefully our deterioriation will remind you to be grateful for your jobs...

In the meantime, we are proud to announce that we appear to have penetrated the upper eschelons of Canelli society.

Yesterday, we went to the Post Office to pay a bill for the annual fill of our gas tank (EUR 1,500).
We parked outside reasonably easily and looked in the windows to assess how busy it was. Thankfully, we saw only a few heads bobbing along the window.

So we walked in with supreme confidence, our breasts beating proudly in the knowledge that we had money in the bank and plastic. This bill would be paid in an efficient and smooth manner.

We waited. People left. More people came. Even more people came.

Finally, our number was called. We approached the desk and announced that we wanted to pay a bill.

The lady behind the counter was late middle-aged, one of those important public servant types who exudes indispensability and prides themselves on the speed at which they can process paperwork.

She processed our bill for long minutes in the computer before she turned to us and asked for the money.

I gave her my plastic debit card.

She turned to her keyboard and typed for more long minutes.

'Non posso!', she said, 'EUR 1,000 limita!'

I looked at Stuart, assuming that he hadn't made a transfer from Switzerland (when embarrassed, always blame someone else...)

'But we have way more money than that in the bank!', he whispered.

We stared at her.

I forgot all my Italian. I'd become deaf, dumb and stupid.

She became louder.

'Non posso!'

I did what I always do when I'm in a crowded room and I can't understand.

'Inglese?', I asked.

'Non Inglese!', she yelled.

At this point, the eyes of all 56 people in the post office were upon us. Every one of them knew that we couldn't speak Italian AND that we couldn't pay our bill.

We were instructed us to go to the bank and return with cash so that she could complete the payment.

We crept away quietly, our heads inside our shoulders.

At the bank, we put our plastic in the machine and discovered that we had a cash withdrawal limit of EUR 500 each per day. That meant we had EUR 1,000 to pay a bill of EUR 1,500. Any idiot knows that this is 'non posso'.

With our confidence in our gumboots, we returned to the Post Office, where approximately 20 new people were waiting to be served.

She beamed when she saw us. Now she could process! Her reputation would remain intact.

She dumped her current customer and gesticulated for us to approach her counter.

We worried briefly about the customer who already stood at the counter. Her request for a stamp for her parcel had been suspended in mid sentence.

'Non posso', we said to the public servant, 'Soltante EUR 1,000. Noi pagiamo domani'.

She frowned. She talked to herself. She reddened. She expanded in a Hulk-like way.

The customer waited while the public servant yelled our problems to a colleague. Eventually, and only after everyone in the general vicinity knew our business, she gave us a form shreiking instructions in fast Italian.

The customer leaned over to us.

'I speak English. Can I help?', she said.

'Yes please!', we gushed.

She explained that the public servant had already processed the payment so we needed to complete the form in order to annul the payment. It would be processed afresh when we returned at a later date with the correct amount of cash.

While Stuart was listening, I was observing her non-verbals. She was an elegant woman of early middle age, with thick shoulder length hair that had been well coiffured. She wore heavy makeup and jangled with an expensive wrist watch and other jewellery. I turned my eyes to her parcel and strained to read the name and address on it.

It seemed that she was from the only Michelin Star restaurant in Canelli. We were 'socialising' with a member of the Canelli elite.

We thanked her and everyone else in the Post Office and left, confident in the knowledge that we'd taken our first step into Canelli society.

p.s. Some time later, Stuart suggested that if we ever went to her restaurant she'd be highly likely to ask for a downpayment before feeding us...

A Woman of the Computer Age

2009-11-16T11:55:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I shared with you some things I'd learned about myself in my new environment...

Well, over the last 2 days, I've learned even more things...

1. That I cannot tolerate feeling helpless when it comes to PCs
2. That I should not rely on my Blog and emails to write

This new wisdom was bestowed on me by my PC, or rather, the failure of my PC.

It started doing weird things after a download of some virus scanning software and my life turned sour very quickly.

I dreamed of the luxury of a employer-sponsored helpdesk and someone who I could complain to in a rather vague way (e.g. 'There's something wrong with my PC' or 'My PC doesn't work'). This someone would have a bookcase at home that was full of PC magazines and a spare room that was full of old PCs that had been dismantled and fused together in wonderful ways to create time machines. This someone would embrace my PC with joy and 'make it work' again.

But I did not have a helpdesk.

I was sad, shattered and alone.

The other member of the household would say I was cranky, negative and childish (and I suspect that his view of my personality change during this PC-related trauma may be more accurate...)

Regardless, I am now happy to report that I am back online and more committed to better juggling my Blog and my emails with my 'serious' writing...

p.s. I am also very proud to report that I fixed the problem myself which means that I can exist without an employer-sponsored helpdesk after all...!

Is this what they call 'community'?

2009-11-13T10:25:00.000-08:00

I fear we are being stalked by our post woman.

Our post woman is a 30-something artificial blonde. She has a vibrant personality and large facial features and is one of those people you simply notice.

She drives a tiny white car at break neck speed around Canelli and zooms up our driveway as if she hasn't noticed it's potholes or fragile edges.

She spied us walking along our driveway a few weeks ago. She stopped the car, leaned across the front passenger seat, smiled her big teeth at us, then yelled and gave us a number of letters. While we were still wondering whose letters they were, she sped off.

Then this week, I was doing the rubbish run. The rubbish run is one of our regular outings and is cause for great excitement in the household. It involves throwing our non-organic rubbish, our plastic bottles and our glass bottles into three separate skips. Thankfully, all the skips are lined up along the side of the road just outside Canelli so we can perform this activity with some measure of efficiency.

Beside the skips is a side track where vehicles can stop to offload their goodies. This side track gets rather muddy after rain so careful assessment is required before deciding to take it.

I was just making my way through the mud, laden with our embarrassingly sizeable non-organic rubbish bag when a car slid to a halt beside me. I had just enough time to register teeth and eyes before I found myself holding a number of letters and parcels. I said 'Grazie'. In return, she asked me what was in the parcels. Being a rather private person, I was a little stunned at her intrusiveness but I heard myself explaining anyway. 'Produtto per saluti della mio marito', I said, 'Vitamine'. I think she heard me but she might not have. I saw her disappear in the distance just as I finished my sentence.

I stood for a while in the mud with my rubbish bag beside me, trying to make sense of the warmth I was feeling.

Today was our third visit to the open air market in the centre of Canelli and several of the vendors now recognise me.

We stopped at the frutta e verdura stall first and brought a week's worth of fruit and veg for under EUR 10. The stall owner gave us mandarins to taste and a free lemon. We then wandered over to the salciccia stall for a few days's worth of salami and a dozen free range eggs. The stall owner gave us three salami cacciatori. Finally, we found ourselves waiting in line at the caseificio to buy a selection of cheeses. At all of these stalls, there was a sense of joy and celebration. Joy of life? Celebration of food? We weren't sure...but we were so inspired that we continued to the supermarket to get a few extra items. Sadly, the gloom of the supermarket was all pervading. The eyes on the woman behind the cashier were glazed as she asked if I wanted a bag. It was a dismal contrast to the market. No joy. No celebration.

In an attempt to lift our spirits again, we dropped into our macellaio on the way home to ask for 'una pezza carni per arrosto'. Our butcher and his wife smiled and yelled conversation at us before wobbling into their freezer and bringing out a piece of meat that could feed us for a month. I panicked. 'Soltanto uno kilogrammi per favore', I said. What I hadn't realised was that the butcher wanted to share the joy of this wonderful piece of meat with me in all its freshness and beauty. He even asked me behind the counter so that I could watch him tie it before he cut our piece off.

I shared his joy.

For my whole life people have been talking about 'community' and I've never really understood what it meant, much less appreciated it.

Now I think I'm starting to understand...even if it does involve stalking...

Water Wonderful Water

2009-11-12T07:40:00.001-08:00

For those of you who have followed our progress since we purchased 'Casa Tranquilla', you will already be more than familiar with our water challenges to date.

And, not to disappoint (lest we take the clear liquid for granted!) we had yet more water challenges this week.

On Saturday, water was pouring in a rather torrential way from the skies but we couldn't coax even a drop from our taps.

So we did the usual thing and panicked that the well had run dry, then phoned our geometra, who promised to get someone to look at it 'probably on Monday'.

It was Saturday. We had a friend from Australia staying with us. We had no water. The situation was more than a little frustrating, not to mention embarrassing.

Faced with the dismal prospect that we would have to drink, cook and wash in bottled water for 3 days at least, a generally gloomy atmosphere settled over our little rustico.

Finally, the most optimist one amongst us (who also happened to be the only male), encouraged a better atmosphere by suggesting that we go out for a coffee. And to buy copious amounts of water. And to go to the toilet.

So we headed off to the supermarket where we browsed the shelves, not seeing anything. The females of the party were distracted with thoughts of how long they could go without washing their hair. At what point would it stick up obscenely from the tops of their heads? At what point would it become plastered to their scalps? There were also thoughts related to community health. At what point would the toilet fill with obscene stenches? How long would it take for multiple deposits of excrement to back up?

The coffee helped. At least temporarily.

On Monday, the females donned hats and took a trip to Torino, while the male worked with the plumber for 3 hours until clear gold poured from our taps.

All in all, we coped reasonably well...but I certainly have a new respect for the person who invented buckets.

p.s. As I write this, something 'different' has happened in our water situation. We have supplies of hot water that last 1 minute only...but I guess that's another story...stay tuned!

Finding Fuel between Torino & Canell

2009-11-06T08:40:00.000-08:00

As the title of this post suggests, we had a bit of a scare last night. Sadly, this is a scare that we tend to challenge ourselves with on an annual basis. Last time it happened we were travelling north towards the Gotthard tunnel when the low petrol indicator came on and there were no re-fuelling stops for 30 kilometres. If I want to be entirely honest, I've been running out of petrol since I got my licence. Just ask Dad.

So last night, we had travelled to Torino to collect an Aussie friend from the railway station.

On the way back, at about 10.30pm, the car was bubbling along to the joyful noises of shared memories and new stories.

So it was easy to understand how we could forget to look at the petrol gauge until a certain little yellow indicator was flashing.

'How long has that been on?', I asked Stu.

'Not long. It just came on', he replied. I looked across at him. He was biting his nails. I suspected the light had been on for longer than was suggested in the Suzuki owners manual.

Conversation in the car dried up. We became 3 people living their individual fears of being stranded on a highway with a dehydrated vehicle. Although we weren't to find out until after the trauma had passed, each had decided on a separate course of action that should be taken were our car to choke, tremble and dwindle to a stop before we came upon a petrol station. Maria had decided to walk to the closest farm and knock on their door, Stu had decided to walk 50km to Canelli, collect his HD and ride it (illegally) back to collect us one by one. I had decided to sit on the side of the road and cry. Maria was practical, Stu was illegal, I was tragic. Typical.

After about 25km we knew we were getting desperate when suddenly the warm and welcoming lights of a servo appeared in the distance just off the highway. Stu made a sudden exit and we soon found ourselves parked at a fuel pump.

Conversation bubbled again as we piled out of the car armed with our wallets and our intelligence. The place was unmanned but we lived in hope of technology allowing us to do something 'automatic'.

We stood at the machine, fumbled with the place where you insert money, poked at the place where you insert plastic cards, then pushed another few buttons, grasped the pump and squeezed the trigger. Niente. We read the instructions and tried again. Niente.

We were starting to become morbid again when a car pulled up. A small dented farm vehicle. It contained a middle aged man who looked like he'd worked for too many years. We asked him for help. He took our EUR 20 and pushed it into the machine. The machine spat it out. He did it again. It spat it out. He took out his own wallet and pushed his own EUR 20 in the machine. The machine spat it out. He did it again. It swallowed.

After a few other tweaks of the pump and the trigger, we could hear the pump build pressure as the fuel line filled.

Relief would be an understatement.

The Canelli Market

2009-11-04T09:34:00.000-08:00

Today we woke at 8am, had a slow breakfast of fried egg and mushroom, cloaked ourselves with every bit of warm clothing we have and set off to walk into Canelli markets, which are held every Wednesday and Friday.

Unfortunately, it seems that the Canelli markets are NOT held on Wednesdays.

Not wanting the neighbours to see us returning so soon after we left, we wandered around town for a while, dropped into the bank to collect our new credit cards and spent an hour at the post office to post a letter. Yes, you read it correctly. The post office is probably the biggest time-wasting and patience-building exercise in Canelli. We haven't figured it out yet but it seems that everyone goes there to have a chat. We have adopted the attitude of the locals, which is to listen to everyone else's conversations while you wait to have yours. Unfortunately, my conversation is considerably shorter than the locals...

When we returned home, I warmed up some leftover pumpkin soup for lunch, then wasted the afternoon.

I say wasted because I really have no idea how I spent my time, only that it appeared to go very quickly. I would like to say 'I wrote a chapter of my book this afternoon' or 'I made 6 loaves of bread that all rose perfectly', etc. But unfortunately, the dreamer in me doesn't permit such achievements.

If I think REALLY hard, I could come up with a few things. For example, I searched in the removalists boxes. Again. On an inefficiently frequent basis, I recall various objects that I used in an earlier life. There follows the realisation that I simply cannot live without them in this life. So off I go to the house to rummage through the removalists boxes that are piled high in one room and contain all the things that I will no doubt recall in the future. Probably one by one.

So I guess it would be fair to say that I wasted the afternoon with my head buried in cardboard boxes, although it doesn't quite have the same ring to it as 'I wrote a chapter of my book'.

Of course, I guess it would be even fairer to say that I wasted the entire day...

Man-Eating Reptile

2009-11-02T10:47:00.000-08:00

You know you're an Australian when you see a black reptile with yellow spots in your garden and freak in the expert knowledge that it simply must be deadly poisonous.

This is what happened to me today.

All day I've been admiring how quickly Autumn is turning the leaves. We haven't experienced Piemonte in this season before and we are simply overcome with the beauty of the colours.

Unfortunately, Autumn also brings days of fog and rain and today was one of those days.

This afternoon, I was walking from the laundry to the boiler room (to hang up our washing), generally dreaming and minding my own business, when my eyes rested on a black and yellow leaf.

But this 'leaf' was not like the other leaves. It was too shiny, too perfect, too bright. I kept looking at it and within seconds I had decided that it was a snake. I leaned closer to see if it had legs. It did. Thankfully.

I called Stu over. He had been loading wood into the boiler room fire box to create the hot water to heat our radiators (and dry our washing). He marvelled at the 'leaf' for a few short seconds before he also panicked that it was a snake. I told him to calm down. It had legs.

While Stu watched it, I dashed over to the rustico to get the camera and was able to take a few photos as it laboured slowly up our embankment and under our pizza oven.

As you can imagine, one of my main priorities this evening was to identify what manner of deadly animal we now needed to brace ourselves against! Apparently our 'leaf' (also known as 'snake') is a Fire Salamander, a harmless lizard common in European woodlands. It is mostly active at night but also on rainy days, it can live up to 50 years and needs small clean brooks in order to survive and breed.

We had always hoped that the environment in our little valley was clean and pure. We already knew that the lichen growing on our trees indicated good air quality. But the discovery of this little reptile and the fact that it needs a healthy environment to thrive now confirms our hopes...

The Garden starts with the Wine Barrel

2009-11-01T11:21:00.000-08:00

'Every garden needs a wine barrel' may seem a wild generalisation but it certainly seems that our wine barrel has been the catalyst to imagineering our garden!

A few months ago, long before we moved here, Stu decided that the grey stones of the house and the grey stones of the courtyard paving and the grey stones of the gravelled driveway were a little too...well...'grey'. He was inspired to 'green up and soften the place'.

For a man who consistently says he has no imagination, he really does have a knack of 'seeing' possibilities when it comes to a property. Indeed, in an effort to redefine himself, he has taken to calling himself a 'property developer', which isn't too far from the truth: noone needs to know that he is only developing ONE property...

Anyway, Stu's garden inspiration has recently been pulling his attention away from our relationship. In the early morning, he has been sneaking outside to make plans without me, to measure spaces and lay string lines to define borders and claim areas. Later, after I have risen, we hide behind walls, creep around corners and steal each other's gardening tools...It could be said that we have drifted apart in our attempts to define our garden.

Our relationship improved only after we'd positioned the wine barrel. On that day, it had all become clear: we knew what had to be done and what had to go where.

Ever since, we've been out in the stones, dirt and dust of our 'construction site' surroundings, building our garden like a couple of cloned Don Burkes!

This morning, we lingered at the kitchen table reading gardening books and establishing a planting and harvesting calendar.

This afteroon, we were out 'on location'. Stu continued on his stone wall while I moved 12 wheelbarrow loads of bedding sand from our future vege patch to our future reduced driveway.

Meanwhile, our barrel oversees the progress of our garden...and the improvement of our relationship...

Reflections on Fire

2009-10-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

I've been contemplating our fire today.

When we first moved here, we had a fire in our cosy every night. I used to worry that everything I owned would very quickly smell like wood smoke. I had visions of all my beautiful Zurich clothing going rank in the odour of fire.

Today I realised with a little surprise that the fire makes me happy.

It was a cold morning and, since I don't feel too well (flu), I decided to stay inside and restore a little cupboard. To provide a bit of comfort in my misery, Stu started the fire and soon the little rustico was warm.

While I was sanding and painting, the fire was crackling and whirring away and generally doing what it's designed to do. That is, until I got distracted with my painting and sanding and let it die out...several times...

Sometimes at night the fire emits a strange noise and I worry what's it's up to. The other night there was a terrible whistle from the flue and Stu and I looked at each other. I wondered if an animal had fallen down the flue. Stu wondered if white ants squealed when they were being burned.

Noises aside, one thing is certain: I no longer worry about the smell.

Mind you, I suspect this may be because I myself now smell like the fire...!

Staying Positive

2009-10-29T10:59:00.000-07:00

I am still remaining positive, despite the fact that I can't eat any food.

Yes, you read it correctly. I can't eat.

Let me explain. I told you a few days ago that I baked this week for the first time since I've been here. Well, that joyful experience of baking lead onto bigger and better things and yesterday I found myself making a chicken casserole in my slow cooker. So, I hear you say, what has this got to do with not being able to eat? Well, the casserole smelled so good and I was so famished from my day of weeding that I tucked into it a little too quickly and burnt the roof of my mouth!

So now I can't eat...

But there are other problems too.

Stu can't walk.

Let me explain. He was a little too over zealous constructing his stone wall yesterday. To place the stones properly and securely in the soil and gravel, he decided he would kick them into place. Well, he kicked a little too vigorously and bruised his foot.

And now he can't walk...

However, aside from my food problem and Stu's foot problem, all is well.

Yesterday, before these misfortunes befell us, we were able to achieve great things in the garden. I told you a while ago that I was cleaning out the garage? Well, one of the things in the garage that needed to be removed was an old wine barrel and we had already found a place for it. The Pomegranate tree that had recently died had been growing out of a circle of cemented stones about 1 foot high at the start of our driveway. This circle of stones would be a perfect base for the wine barrel, where it could frame the beginning of our garden.

So we cut down the tree, axed the remaining trunk, made firewood, made kindling, levelled the stones in the circle, poured sand inside the circle and bored holes in the bottom of the barrel. And yesterday, finally, we were ready to 'roll out the barrel' as they say!

So, with great concentration, Stu tilted the barrel until it rested on its centre of balance, then he carefully rolled it out of the garage and across our gravel driveway to its new home. Once we positioned it, we were impressed by the character that it added to the place, so much so that we then did 2 hours of gardening around it to do it justice!

Since we are not (yet?) making wine, we had some initial concerns that our barrel made us look like 'pretender foreigners' in this very farming-authentic region. However, after much soul-searching, we have been able to convince ourselves that (since grappa-making is part of the history of this property) it is acceptable for us to have a barrel in our garden.

And even if I can't eat and Stu can't walk, we can still be proud of our barrel...

Discovery

2009-10-28T09:41:00.001-07:00

In a couple of days, we will have been here 4 weeks.

During this time, I have learned a lot about myself. Just when I thought I was at an age when I knew everything (at least about myself!), I've discovered that I'm not particularly self-motivated (I spend more time dreaming and imagining what this place could be like than actually doing anything!), I'm stubborn beyond my wildest dreams (I spent a full hour yesterday fighting a particularly prickly weed that left thorns in my gardening gloves!) and I'm most definitely a team member (I work best when Stu and I are working together!)

Also, I get so distracted here...I have trouble sticking to one job because I see other things that I'd like to do. This drives Stu crazy. He's the lucky one who looks at the tools and things that I leave all over the place as I jump from one job to another and never finish or tidy up.

Along with these self-discoveries, I've learned about personal achievement. For example, I feel great personal achievement when I grub my garden and when I make kindling. Yesterday I spent 2 hours breaking small branches into kindling and proudly stood over my bulging cardboard box, comfortable in the knowledge that I'd spent valuable hours of my life in this mundane activity. Yes, I know...it's tragic that I have come to this. My global career has been reduced to pulling weeds and breaking branches... :-)

I have also learned about appreciating simple pleasures. For example, I used to take cafes and bakeries for granted, dropping in for some little delight on a very regular basis. Now I have 'big days out' in town every 2-3 days, when the joy of having a cafe lungo and a crema pasticceria is completely beyond belief!

So, I hear you say, why should my readers be interested in my self-discoveries?

They don't need to be. I'm sharing them because they are enlightening for me and may help to explain the anticipated unbounded joy of my future posts. For the first time today I've felt at home here. I'm not sure if I would actually call it 'home' yet but I certainly feel comfortable.

I think it's 'right' that I'm here doing what I'm doing...even if I do dream about it a little too much...

Goodbye Fruit Tree, Hello Firewood

2009-10-26T10:34:00.000-07:00

Today I woke with a sore back, so I was having a slow morning wondering what to do and waiting for writing inspiration when I remembered my new oven! I dashed upstairs to the lounge where I found my trusty Edmonds cookbook waiting for me on the bookcase. I found a nice easy chocolate cake recipe, one that I'd previously marked 'lovely but not dark'. The cookbook and I went back downstairs where I made the chocolate cake mixture and put it into muffin tins. So I guess I made chocolate muffins.

Stuart has been losing weight at the rate of a chronic anorexic so I need to feed him more. My baking should do the trick. We've also upped our carb intake something amazing. If we were working in an office now, we'd both be dangerously obese!

Then I decided to clean. Yes, tragically, cleaning appears to be my new pasttime. Cleaning is not something I've been very good at to date (just ask Stu) but apparently it is one of the critical tasks associated with renovating a house. Why didn't anyone tell me this before!? Renovation cleaning means removing construction detritus and cobwebs and sweeping tonnes of cement dust.

Last week, I cleaned the main bedroom and the ensuite bathroom. Among the detritus I found two grotty t-shirts which I can only assume belonged to a previous renovator, several strange circular metal contraptions and many fluffy pieces of decomposed insulation batt (used to seal the gappy door).

Today I cleaned the smoke house (the room where long dead owners used to smoke their salamis and which will be our lounge) and the dining room. The smoke house requires the most work of all the rooms so we have decided to use it as a construction storage room while we do the rest of the house.

Just before lunch, Stu sought me out to talk about our fireplaces. He had found a brochure on fireplaces and wanted to identify the types of fireplaces we have and how to use them. In one of them we found an ashtray full of water which had leaked and rusted its marble front. I guess it's never too late to correct problems during a renovation. And I guess you've always got to expect surprises. Yesterday, we found a hole in the cement casing of our stormwater tank and had to do some quick repairs (but that's another story...).

After lunch, Stu started up the chain saw in preparation for another afternoon of firewood cutting. We have an incredible amount of wood lying around the place which just needs to be cut to fit our fire places. The benefits of cutting are two-fold: we get firewood but we also tidy up the place. The pile we cut today was in the garage so we are getting nearer and nearer to parking our car in a covered area!

We have a good system. Stu cuts while I feed logs into him, pick up the bits, throw them onto the wheelbarrow and transfer them to the woodpile.

After 3 hours of cutting, we finally agreed to stop.

Unfortunately, we always have trouble stopping and the next thing I knew Stu had wandered over to a tree and started to cut it down!

This tree had been dead since last winter when it had perished in the severe frosts and minus 10 degree temperatures. We had been eyeing it off for some time because it stood at the beginning of our garden and we wanted to replace it with a wine barrel in which we would grow strawberries next Spring/Summer.

So we spent another hour cutting and making firewood and kindling from this tree before finally calling it a day.

This once beautiful fruit tree, a pomegranate, had been adored by the previous owner and our neighbour. Now it seems Summer 2008's fruit tree will be Winter 2009's firewood...

The Big Day Out

2009-10-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we forced ourselves to take a day off...

The sun was shining for the first time in 3 days so we decided to wander into town and investigate all the little shops.

Always considering Siesta, we headed off at 10am, which meant that we would get 2.5 hours of viewing in before they all closed on us.

First we found a little salumeria just around the corner from the end of our strada, where we looked at dozens of fat salami hanging on hooks from the ceiling.

Then we found a little Carni spesa (meat shop = butcher) a little further along the street. I went in to talk to the older couple behind the counter. Thankfully there were no other clienti in the shop so I was willing to share my Italian with them. I told them I had been living here for 3 weeks and I was from Australia; they told me all their relatives were living in Perth! They gave me a quick lesson on present and past tense related to eating marrone (chestnuts) which was really valuable and I told them that I would return to buy meat and cheese often. Stuart stayed outside, worried that they might try to communicate with him too..

Then we wandered into and out of several other small alimentari (grocery) shops. I'm not sure how they make money because there are heaps of them (4-5 between our place and the Canelli train station!) and each of them is only the size of a single garage!

Then we dropped into church (Sacred Heart) to see what times Mass is on Sundays before we continued into town, buying a cannoli at a pane shop and a coffee at a pasticceria.

The tourist bureau told us that the Tartufi festival on 8th Nov is held in Gancia's (Canelli's main wine maker's) premises and they have truffle dog displays and run buses to take people out to typical truffle areas to hunt...sounds like fun! And I'm sure Gancia will put on a few free drinks...hopefully!

This got us thinking about food and wine so we found it easy to talk ourselves into eating out for lunch. This was our first meal out since we arrived 3.5 weeks ago so we made it a good one and went to the Enoteca, an underground cellar near the train station. There are several Enotecas in the area and these restaurants showcase the local wines on behalf of the growers so the alcohol is really cheap. We had a lovely 2 hour stay there, during which we had primi, secondi and dolce courses (as well as several 'gifts' from the chef) and vino rosso and moscato!

We then walked home, through our little dark valley and up to our little elevated spot where the sun always shines...

A truly beautiful day that gave real purpose to what we're doing here...

A Cold Day

2009-10-23T10:32:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we reached a top temperature of 8 degrees. A bit on the cold side so we had the fire going almost all day until we decided to get out and about during siesta (as usual). We wandered around the grocery shop, then the hardware shop (typical haunts) and had a coffee, then returned and waited for Lilo the plumber to come and connect the gas to the new kitchen.

Lilo's appointment was at 5pm so we were surprised when he arrived basically on time! He got to work immediately by extracting a huge drill from his van and proceeding to destroy our beautiful stone wall next to the kitchen. The drill he used was the largest drill I have ever seen (beyond serious underground mining drills!). It was probably 25mm in diameter and 1 metre long. He shuddered and shook for a full 15 mins before giving up and going to his van, where he extracted an even bigger drill. This one was 50mm in diameter and 1 metre long! He leaned and forced and finally managed to create a hole about the size of a man's head (!). I'm not sure why the hole ended up being this big but I suspect he misjudged the level at which he was attacking the 1 metre thick wall from both sides. He told me 'vuoi marito chiuso' (your husband can close that) and then asked me if I had a broom. As I stepped forward to do my thing (that is, clean up the mess after the tradie), my mouth dropped open at the quantity of cement and the huge rocks that had fallen out of the hole!

The rest of the story is fairly boring. He selected connectors and valves and welded different pipes together until finally after 2 hours his work was done.

Today we reached 16 degrees which was a pleasant change and we launched on the woodpile and the garage again.

Stuart split kindling while I removed bricks from the garage. The kindling pile is now full and the garage is now empty (of bricks anyway).

We are pondering treating ourselves this weekend and going out for lunch or dinner! We promised we'd do this every week before we left work (we worked the cost into our budget) but it seems that our early enthusiasm and hyperactivity has got the better of us in our first 3 weeks here...

Vodafone Italia

2009-10-21T01:44:00.000-07:00

We had the trauma called 'Connecting the Phone' yesterday.

We had an appointment with Vodafone 'on site' (home) at 10am so we were up and having breakfast in our dressing gowns when a van pulled up at 9am. Yes, 9am. And yes, it was Vodafone.

After quickly flattening our wayward curls and throwing on the habitual trackie dacks we went out to meet them.

(Niente Inglese...)

We showed them what we believed was our telephone cable, which was a cable that attached itself to the second level of the house and then ran into a cable box and underground. We then showed them what we believed were 2 phone outlets inside the house. They huffed and walked away from these, which we think meant 'you are stupid' (the outlets turned out to be fans for the wood fires in the smoke house lounge and the kitchen). Then we found another cable box and twigged the cable in there and found that both cables that headed underground moved each other but neither appeared to be connected to anything else!

The Vodafone men seemed to be concerned that the cable might belong to the owner of the connected house but I assured him that the neighbour did not have a phone. I told them to cut the cable and redirect it into our rustico. Stuart asked me if I was sure of this. I said I was, but I wasn't. Stuart suggested I check with Renzo (neighbour) first. I said OK and got my mobile phone. I phoned Renzo. No answer. I went outside to the Vodafone men to ask them to wait before cutting the cable. I looked at 2 Vodafone men already holding a cut cable in their hands. Oops.

They busied themselves doing things that phone people do. Then they left, saying they would be back. We weren't sure if this would be in an hour, in the afternoon, this week or next month.

We waited.

Two hours later they returned. They did more things that phone people do then gave Stu a huge roll of cable and instructions in Italian. It seemed that the job of running the cable, drilling holes in the wall and connecting was much larger than their scope of work would allow. So they left and Stu stood there, with a roll of cable and a join in his hands.

A lot of work and 1 day later, we appear to be connected!

Unfortunately, our phone, which we purchased in Singapore in 2001, appears to have died so we're off today to buy a new one...