Casal dei Fichi - Progress - April 05
Luxurious holiday apartments in Italy's stunning Marche.
Kitty Update - 4/5/05
After 2 days of gentle washing with cotton buds we cleared the scabs from around the right eye, then the cat got the idea and joined in the cleaning and now has 2 beautiful blue eyes! We have also spotted something else we missed on the initial inspection and are considering new names for our ginger Tom. In the last 4 days he has gained a quarter of his body weight and is getting more and more playful - our toes bear the scars!
Yes! This really was the view from our house today!
When we originally planned to open by Easter 05 we hadn't allowed for the fact that Easter this year was particularly early. Neither had we anticipated the exceptionally harsh winter which wreaked havoc across Marche, damaged many olive trees and left several barns and some houses roofless due to the sheer weight of the snow. It is also possible that we allowed an element of optimism to creep into our calculations.
So when we arrived here in our transit van full of our first batch of stuff from the UK we were not particularly surprised - if slightly disappointed to discover that the only noticeable change to the house had been a slight deterioration in the state of the road, so much so that we managed to get stuck whilst trying to turn and had to be towed out of the mud. That would not mean however that our move to Italy has not been a complete success! One thing that we did complete to schedule was our escape from London - slightly early in fact and we spent 3 fantastic weeks catching up with friends all around the UK, some of whom we hadn't seen for several years - it was fantastic to see you all and everyone scores full marks for everything. When the van started to splutter on the hills of southern Belgium (yes there really are some - with snow on even) we wondered if moving ourselves was such a good idea but things got better after a fresh tank of diesel so we put it down to a dodgy fill in France and we finally got to Aosta in the Italian Alps where we had planned to spend a few days skiing. The sunshine was brilliant and temperatures in the 20s and there was just about enough snow for us to have a fantastic time - a good portent for our new life in Italy.
So long blighty!
Not wanting to rush into things we spent a couple of nights at the Hotel Castellani, the first night we ate with the other Brits staying there and seemed to get through rather a lot of wine, they included our new friends Lesley and Dean who we arranged to meet a few days later, see each others' places (they have a similar plan to us) and then eat at our new flat.
Easter is a big deal in Italy of course, on Good Friday the nearby town of Mogliano presents a passion play - with a cast of thousands and several horses and 'Christ' ends up being crucified outside the Banca della Marche, we hope that a similar fate does not befall us! On Easter Sunday we were invited next door to Rosario our landlord / builder's for lunch. His wife Anna never fails to serve up a succession of delicious vegetarian food which we washed down with generous quantities of home made wine, home made grappa and home made limoncella. The evening we resolved to spend quietly - just a stroll around the town. Rosario had told us about the new restaurant in town so we had a look in the window and were immediately shanghaied by Vincenzo, an elderly gentleman who insisted on showing us around explaining that he was the owner's father, we stayed for "just one beer" when Vincenzo invited us to the office upstairs to meet his son. After chatting to Fausto for a while we went back down to the restaurant, Fausto ordered wine and snacks we chatted, various people joined us, the wine kept on flowing, the guitar came out, the tequila came out, Ian sang a song in Welsh... At about 1am we returned from our quiet stroll around the village. We were very pleased that a few nights later we were able to return with a British couple who have a holiday home in the village and their family guests and spend some money on a very enjoyable meal. |
|
The following Sunday was lunch with the British couple outside in the warm late March sunshine enjoying fantastic views of hills and snow covered mountains, delicious food and an opportunity to meet their friends and widen our network of acquaintances, including an invite to lunch the following Tuesday - another very enjoyable event with more beautiful views and new people to meet.
Not that it has been all socialising and sunbathing! On arrival we were advised that it was imperative that we pruned our olive trees immediately, Davide, Anna's uncle, has been looking after olive trees for over 60 years and is considered an authority on the subject, he offered to show us how it is done and on the appointed day he arrived at our house to give us a crash course in olive maintenance. Before we knew it the 81 year old had the ladders out and was then scaling the trees like a cat so it's true what they say about olive oil and the mediterranean diet. We managed to persuade him not to do them all and over the coming days did the rest ourselves - along with our fig trees. More recently we have turned our attention to the vegetable plot or 'orto', we have had various vague promises that Giampiero, Anna's brother, or Davide, would run a tractor over the land for us one occasion was rained off and we were never quite sure what the arrangement was. Since our beans were well outstripping the seed trays we spent a day weeding and turning over a small patch - about 20 sq m or 0.2% of our land to plant out - it had the desired effect, today Giampiero brought his ancient tractor (towed behind his shiny new one) over and ploughed a large tract of land for us and, even better, let us have a go.
The expert at work |
One we did before |
and after |
beats the M25 |
Rosario and his team have also been industrious. The rest of the ground floor has now been cleared and excavated and now they are in the middle of excavating a trench around the outside of the house which is also being filled with reinforced concrete. There was a minor glitch when they discovered that one of the structural walls has no foundations but architect Michele assures us that there is a simple solution and even better it won't cost us any more money; it does require half the roof to be removed (sooner or later its all got to come off) so we are hoping that there are no earthquakes in the mean time. Rosario (quite justifiably) takes a pride in his workmanship and is gratified to receive 'bellissimo', 'bravo' and other comments of admiration on his achievements so when we arrived one day with someone to give a quote for a swimming pool we tried to parry his exaltations to "venite vedere" or come and see but he was insistent so we entered the house "bravo, fantastico" we pronounced on seeing the newly dug hole, no no - that wasn't it and Rosario proudly displayed the pile of newly slaughtered snakes that they had found living in a large crack in the wall. Although neither of us are keen on snakes it turned out that these were totally harmless and although up to 1m long they are basically like grass-snakes who were just coming to the end of their hibernation.
Il maestro |
Rosario's sensitive nature doesn't just extend to his pride in his work, he is also an accomplished water diviner. Since we need a well to irrigate the land and fill our pool he was a useful man to have around. We watched him stride the land with a metal rod - a cut off piece of reinforcing iron - and pronouncing "qua" every few metres. Fabio, Rosario's son then staked the point whilst trying to suppress an embarrassed smirk at his mad father. At the point where Rosario pronounced that the veins met we determined to dig a well, and either as a result of Rosario's empathy with nature - or cynically his knowledge of the location of the previous productive well - we now have a 20m deep hole which should produce up to 2,000 litres of water a day. |
Our agricultural ambitions are not great. Amongst the many kindnesses shown us by Anna is a regular supply of eggs, including the last 3 the turkey laid before her throat was slit! This has reinforced our desire to have chickens and maybe a couple of goats. We always planned a few dogs and cats - not just because we love them but also as working mousers. When our friends Sandy and Laurence told us that their cat had had four kittens we were eager to volunteer to take two, it was slightly sooner than we had planned but we are excited about meeting them next week before taking custody in about a month. Then a couple of days ago Anna told us that there were 2 kittens, abandoned by their mother in their garden. Sadly one of them had died but they were feeding the other one milk though since their daughter Martha is allergic to cats it was not allowed in the house. After a day we couldn't bear to see the tiny thing living outdoors in a cement mixer and we have adopted her, she has been fed a mixture of egg yolk, milk and sunflower oil (as recommended by an American website) and is now sleeping contentedly. She is the most beautiful one eyed ginger lady you have ever seen, we are hoping that her fighting spirit will pull her through and in the next update you will read more about the 3 new additions to our household.
Assuntina, named after a village character
January 2005 going backwards
July 2005 going forward