Site meeting

ESSENTIAL BUILDERS' SUPPLIES (Italian style - don't let the water bottles fool you; they may not all be water and there's a huge jug of vino cotto behind them)

Today was supposed to be the day we finally take ownership of the house but we have had a message that the notary has to go to a funeral so instead of being in Comunanza this afternoon, it will be at the notary’s main office down on the coast at San Benedetto del Tronto tomorrow morning (Good Friday) and we have to meet outside our lawyer, Luca’s office at 8:15AM (which is 7:15 according to our bodies) so means another early start for the kids. On the bright side, this is the only day we have a translator available as she is going to Rome with her family and it means we can talk to some suppliers more easily.

When we wake up we look out to see everything is covered with snow and, as we set off for the house it starts snowing again and getting heavier till we can hardly see. When we get down to the level of our house in the valley (about 200m compared to 600 at La Conca) it’s still heavy but is not settling. We arrive a bit late (no snow tyres on the car) to find the man from the gas company is waiting to sign us up. They have found a good site for the tank behind an outbuilding and it will be buried so should not be visible although, unfortunately, Italian regulations mean that it still has to have a high fence all around it and, apparently, you aren’t even allowed to grow creepers up it to disguise the thing. (We tend to think of southern Europeans as being very lax on safety and it’s certainly true if you look at the way they drive. However on things like this they are the opposite. My neighbour’s gas tank at home sits completely unprotected by anything except a hedge. Perhaps they are more dangerous because of the heat – I was told the European regs. on LPG tanks in cars are due to the temperatures in Italy.)

The main thing about the house is that we have now confirmed that most of the internal walls are not structural and so we can reorganise the layout which we originally thought was constrained by the location of the original walls (even though most of them need replacing.) So, especially on the top floor, we have almost a blank canvas and need to start again - quickly. Because of this, we can’t decide with the plumber and electrician where everything will go and so will have to meet them again on Tuesday.

We still have quite a few decisions to make. (Like do we want to line up the two French windows at opposite ends of the house exactly, which means losing another window. Or do we live with them not being quite aligned. We opt for the latter.) Then it’s time for the obligatory, and warming, glass of Mariano’s vino cotto. (See the picture at the top of today's blog) We could have had mistrà instead which is, I think, a spirit made from distilling vino cotto and is absolute firewater. Gianluigi tells us that he was hospitalised as a baby when his nonna mistook a bottle of mistrà for water and made up his formula with it!

We then go off to look at windows and agree details like whether and where we will have shutters (we opt for traditional ones inside the windows) and how they will open (some will just tilt, most will tilt and also open normally).

In the evening we have a very enjoyable dinner with friends at the Hotel Paradiso which is at the top of the old town in Amandola. So we don’t get home till gone 11 with that early start tomorrow and the very steep drive from La Conca looking like it will ice up.