Casal dei Fichi - Progress - October 05
Luxurious holiday apartments in Italy's stunning Marche.
Here in Marche we have said goodbye to Summer and are learning that Autumn is a precocious season. Many of the days are bright and crisp, the sunrise shining through the mist that hangs in the valleys making the hilltop towns appear to float on clouds, the days warm and sunny and the evenings crisp and chilly. Occasionally though we have days of drizzle and we think we might be back in Manchester.
Although they included much work August and September were also the party months in Francavilla d’Ete. A stage was set up in the town square and practically every weekend various events were performed, music, shows, comedians, classic car rallies, etc. Since all the neighbouring towns have similar schedules there was never a dull moment. The culmination in Francavilla d’Ete is its Lu Vurgu (local dialect for “the village”) when all the town spends the weekend socialising, temporary kitchens are set up which on the Saturday night peak catered to 3,000 people. Since many of Francavilla’s population of 1,000 are involved as volunteers cooking, serving, manning the bars etc. it is clearly a popular draw for the surrounding area. It is a fantastic opportunity to meet people, catch up on gossip, enjoy the entertainment and party well into the small hours accompanied by limitless cheap wine and local Mistra (a very intoxicating aniseed based ‘moonshine!’). As minor local celebrities we enjoyed a degree of fêting and amassed a whole new collection of acquaintances whose names we struggle to remember.
Obviously in a small town word spreads quickly and we realised that we would be a bit of an oddity in the rural Italian environment although the main source for gossip seems to be that we must be mad to have paid so much money (everyone thinks they know how much) for the “old Lattanzi house”. Late in July though our notoriety soared when we were asked by the mayor if we would be prepared for Italian TV to film our house as part of a feature they were doing on Francavilla d’Ete. Naturally we were delighted and later that day a small crew arrived at the house. The angle they were reporting was of us working in conjunction with Rosario and his team so they asked us to “do some work in the house” for the cameraman to film. Although we were busy at the time it was mainly on groundwork for grass planting which wasn’t of interest so instead Italian TV featured footage of us shovelling sand from one side of a pile to the other, aimlessly carrying bricks and hacking plaster of the walls – which at least is something that we have had to do. They also featured a small interview with Bob which although not exactly word perfect is still in Italian. In the introduction to our feature the interviewer asks the mayor about the town and specifically if the population is ageing, we are cited as an example of Francavilla attracting younger people which seemed slightly ironic!
The stream of visitors has slowed a little though Tara came all the way from Australia to give us some much needed advice on pool maintenance and Jo and Christopher spent a few days with us. Particularly welcome were 3 of Ian's school friends, Chris, Michael and John who came on a working holiday and spent a few very boring days hacking off plaster, painting window frames and cutting grass! They were the first people to stay in the house - the facilities being basic to put it mildly!
A band from Roma entertains at 'Lu Vurgu' |
Meanwhile home grown musicians provide alternative entertainment |
You're only 50 once, the morning's melancholy is soon forgotten. |
RAI 3 TV crew arrives at Casal dei Fichi. |
Our friend and former Italian teacher Diego is involved in a new Anglo/Italian magazine and he also asked us to write an article based on these web updates which we were happy to do so it has been a good summer for publicity. www.pensierolondinese.com.
One thing that we haven’t devoted as much time as we would have liked to is studying Italian. Obviously through living here we are becoming more confident in the language but it is easy to develop bad habits which formal study would avoid. Spending much of our time on a building site we are obviously developing a rather ‘colourful’ vocabulary, certainly Rosario is seldom short of an expletive. Perhaps the most emotive expression is ‘Loro Piceno’, unlike most (Italian) swear words this is neither sexual nor sacreligious, it is the name of a picturesque local town famed for production of ‘vino cotto’ or baked wine. It is also the place where Rosario took on some work to keep him occupied whilst he couldn’t work on our house over the winter due to the exceptional snow. It seemed that Rosario’s expectation of the snow was that it was so exceptional it would last well into the summer since to our fury he would often disappear to Loro Piceno where he had ‘just a day or two more work’ for weeks. Finally in July he told us he had finished there since which time he has devoted his efforts to our house (except, of course, for the holiday month of August...) A few weeks ago Rosario offered to show us the finished result and we had to admit that the house does look great, we also got to meet the enemy, ie the owners who, of course, are a charming young family relocated from London with the fascinating business of putting olive trees up for adoption: www.nudo-italia.com.
Now that Rosario is working full time on our house we are beginning to appreciate just what a mammoth task it is. Having finally finished the job of underpinning the whole house and excavating the floor to a depth of half a metre to put plastic arches (igloos) which form a layer of air over which he poured concrete he is now working his way up. In each room the wooden beams are lowered by 20cm then pressure washed, stained and a new tiled (piastrelli) ceiling is laid on the wood which traditionally would have been the floor above. Now however, to comply with current building regulations, he has to chase a channel about 15cm deep the entire length of the wall going all the way around the house, front to back along the 2 structural walls and side to side along a structural wall. These are then filled with reinforced concrete which provide a firm anchor to fix the new floors to. Naturally this work can only be done in sections and there is a precarious period when there is little holding the house up other than the small metal jacks which have been inserted into the channel. A floor of iron mesh is then laid fixed into these concrete rings and 20cm of concrete is poured over it to finish the structural construction. Essentially we will end up with a brand new (invisible) reinforced concrete house sitting inside the brickwork of the original building. This work is now complete on the first floor, including a new staircase and Rosario is about a third of the way through the attic floor. Once he has finished that there is just the small matter of the roof to be removed and replaced with one of reinforced concrete, RSJs etc. This will be a huge job so we are hoping the weather is not too unkind!
While Rosario has been cracking on Roger has returned and has been working on getting Apartment 1 (Raffello) ready for us to move into. It has taken a little time to build up momentum since the building materials, plaster etc. are different in Italy and we unwittingly set him the challenge of fitting fly-screens in a completely different manner to how they are designed to be used. Still we think we now have a clear way forward, the fly screens look much more elegant than they should do and short of a tiled bathroom we now have an apartment which is complete and ready to move into.
Preparatory work for the electrical works. |
Pipework for the bathrooms |
Where's them cats |
Peace - away from the dog |
.
We are trying to provide a home for an abandoned Alsation, a young dog with a gentle and affectionate personality we named him Balzo though he had some difficulties with Ian, growling and once lunging, although his rope stopped him biting. Every day the dog seems more and more settled and we are increasingly confident that he will mature into an ideal pet. The 2 new cats, twin brothers Aglio (garlic) and Olio (oil) have settled in easily developing individual personalities and quickly finding their way into our affections, building bonds between them and Balzo might be more problematic!
We have had a bumper crop from the vegetable plot, enough tomatoes to set up competition with Heinz, which have only just stopped cropping, cucumbers, melons, celery (which actually has a taste when picked fresh!), vast quantities of aubergines, courgettes. Now the winter crops are starting and we are enjoying crisp cabbages.
Many of you have kindly indicated that a holiday at Casal dei Fichi might feature on your holiday schedule for next year, we have now put some information about the individual apartments onto the ‘The House’ page, including booking arrangements, we are currently taking reservations from June onwards.
The next few months will be ones of hard work and constantly evaluating when we will realistically be finished, having got the measure of the rate of work, and finally appreciating just how big the house is, we now see what a challenge it will be to complete by next spring. We have negotiated a change in Rosario’s completion date from 11th November to the end of December, with appropriate compensation, but we all know it is impossible for him to achieve that – go on Rosario, prove us wrong!
July 2005 going backward
February 2006 going forward