Rhythm and rituals...
Archive post January 2, 2019…
What were the rhythms & rituals of il Poggiolo back before You & I hit? I may know something from ours…
An evening during our recent post-Christmas visit to il Poggiolo…
Penso di andare al letto… I think I’ll head off to bed, says You around 8:30 at night.
Nearly an outright lie. I know for a fact he will spend a good 2 to 2 + 1/2 hours under his mountainous bed-covers being Mr. Instagram. AKA, The Prince, HATES cold and can only properly function in an ambiance with not less less than 85 evenly distributed degrees Fahrenheit for various physiological and psycho reasons… all of them unhealthy AND very Italian. I won’t explain further. Comforters or radiators, You could care less. It’s the air-temp. His furnished excuse… though he knows I am onto him for said practice is… Aye muhst reeespownd too ahwll miye followerzz.
E d’abbondarmi cosi presto?… I gently retaliate with, And abandon me so early? Typical and a constant.
You silently bundles-up for the cold return up the ramp which connects La Casetta to the rest of il Poggiolo and his cozy terracotta-painted bedroom, thus ending our serata. I am left to share the long black sofa with two snoring Weimaraners and, Blessedly, a warm, blazing fire in La Casetta’s only fireplace though the firewood is still quite green.
The very next morning… and with no preamble, You kicks off with
Mi sono svegliato alle 4 stamattina… I woke up at 4AM, recounts You and in a tone of voice of wonderment mixed with a large dose of irritation. I cannot blame him.
Io ero sveglio alle 3:30AM e non potevo riaddormentarmi… comes my similar circumstances.
This is an uncontrolled bad habit with us guys. Happens every night. Shouldn’t happen on a vacation. The Dogs at least wait until the 7 o’clock is rung-out over at the church’s Medieval campanile. Must be impervious to nocturnal disturbances. You think?
Then, comes a domestic matter…
Non c’e’ latte nel frigo… said like I am totally out of whack with My Natural and habitually God-ordained Duties of Chief Cook & Bottle Washer. The task of Cook automatically implies doing the grocery shopping in a timely & efficient manner. You’s declaration meant I had to bundle up and go check the larders of the other 2 houses for a small carton of infamous long-life milk. Never found. I am heartened that I take my espresso nero. Others should learn this trick too.
Sipping my brew that same morning and nestled in La Casetta’s warmth, I began to ponder the why’s and the wherefores of our rudely early risings, when it dawned on me… ha-ha-ha… that farmer people wake up even before the cock crows. For what? Beat the cock to the crow? Cows need squeezing? Pigs have rolled over and cannot get up? Untangled the chickens from themselves before the sun peaks over yonder mountain? Admittedly, not a hugely in-depth or interesting topic. Yet, living in a farm-house after generations and generations and generations of risings & beddings, of comings & goings and of laboring 365 days of the year cracking chestnuts into flour or stuffing pork into casings for salamis, and other break-your-back farm tasks, the thought occurred that all that might leave traces of energy. Every square foot of house must’ve absorbed these ‘till the place could pop. And, Il Poggiolo just can’t shake them. Nor can we at 3:30 in the morning!
La Casetta in ful-tilt at an ungodly hour… Dog at the watch!
Visit to the Villetta...
Archive post December 22, 2018…
A mistake to have thought the villa would be perfect. Not a lot, but just enough. Turns out, Could be perfect, would have been the proper verb construction. Bad boy. I should never have done that! It compromised discovery and adventure. I must be rusty. Or, deep down I wasn’t much into it. Sometimes dreams are keener than reality. Or, reality kills them off. My subconscious surely had an inkling. I consistently refused to acknowledge the messages. So…
I went, I looked, I left. Done.
Charm and fascination are funny commodities. What appeals generally might not elsewhere. I don’t think you are supposed to crawl & scratch to get to them. Am I spoiled in my old age? Others, like You, for instance, may disagree. By my guest: scratch away.
The interior of the mock-Palladian villa and its older sister’s Fin du Siecle’ wing left me disoriented, distanced, bludgeoned by way too much stuff. No… excuse me… let me put it like this… WAY TOO MUCH STUFF!!! Furniture, books, clothes, pictures, paraphernalia, every pot ‘n pan known to Man…. farm-equipment!!!… cluttered, disordered and dirtied by the dust of neglect. Hey! Where are the house vibes? Stifled. Unreachable. Hidden. No room for its spirit to breathe. Not even a whisper heard of the villa’s abandonment when i nonni passed away in quick succession back in ‘00. I doubt the three heirs have yet to put a foot inside a doorway. Shame on them!
The villa is in three parts. Normally, Oh! Goodie, would be the response here. The oldest part is the wing lent up against… or squeezed in between… a very tall stone wall of the passing street to its left and the cube-like white & cream frescoed villa in prime picture-taking stance on the right.
The former has a big open terrace and window & door cornices bordered in terracotta brick. Easily spotted and enjoyed. A basement of cantine and a garage capped by that big open terrace, a gracious adjunct to its First Floor salotto of an immense length and little width. An 8 x 3 proportion. A modest fireplace inhabits one corner. This is followed by a luxuriously blu-tinted grey tiled 50’s styled bathroom with classic Italian early-chromed fixtures. The Second Floor has three bedrooms. Their bathroom is at the end of the hallway. A quirk of sorts: the staircase communicating between this wing’s floors fills what would have been the fourth Palladian-squared room in the white stucco-ed main villa. The dimensions fit a stairs.
The later part was either re-styled in a severe Deco mood or the terracotta window & doors mouldings were elaborated and summarily stucco-ed over after the Big Quake of ‘22. The Assessment? Tiny rooms. Stuffed to the gills tiny rooms. Four per its two floors. Scaled down Palladio, if there ever was. Overwhelmingly, each tiny room has A MAJOR FIREPLACE!!! Nice motif, baring the later modifications of shrinking them to miniscule… fits tiny… or plugging up entirely their fireboxes. Stepping through the entrance doors, on the left is a kitchen with its MAJOR FIREPLACE!!!, the quirky staircase, and then, on the right a library with more books than you can imagine… skyscrapers of books in front of skyscrapers of books… and its MAJOR FIREPLACE!!! and a salotto with its EVEN BIGGER MAJOR FIREPLACE!!!!! and the ubiquitous clutter and disorder and dust. Up the stairs… risking one’s neck to climb over the farm-equipment with sharp, jabby things… very scary looking prongs… to the three bedrooms and the proverbial… The bathroom’s at the end of the hallway, dear. Ditto clutter and disorder and dust. Cobwebs too.
Behind these two sections and up a treacherous series of stone stairs and through the accompanying jungle is the small Servants Quarters… I suppose. Could not get through the door to find out. An apartment. Once-upon-a-time, servants and/or other could come & go undetected by escaping up another series of dangerous stone stairs to the bridge above. To Freedom!!!
The garden in front of the two houses is a lumpy grassy terrace. BIG LUMPS. Sorry, no badminton or soccer. The Good News is you could land a helicopter on it. The surrounding foliage is quite picturesque. Italian evergreens mixed in with deciduous Italian nature. Cluttered and disorder. Cement and terracotta planters repose underneath the overgrowth in a scenic sort of distribution. Now that IS charming.
No deal. No perfect-ness. Off onto new horizons. We might build.
May I speak of stuff? No doubt about it: SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS!! Just look at what’s on the mantle of the EVEN BIGGER MAJOR FIREPLACE!!! Merely a hint of what could not be adequately photographed. Peccato. The house may not have moved me, but the stuff surely did. I may go back with You and rummage for some gems. A woven cane seated bent walnut three-seater sofa. I know he’d be up for that or, he wouldn’t be You.
Real-estate in the veins...
Archive post December 11, 2018…
When I was a kid up until the age of 16 when I gained independence with a Driver’s License and a used-car to go with it, I was pretty much obligated to accompany My Mother on her antiquing forays into the hinterlands of whatever State of the US Union we happened to be inhabiting at the time. I was an available gentleman companion. A bit small, but able. My Mother called these jaunts junquing. I am not a shopper, especially for junque. Being somewhat of an authoritarian personality, any contrary comments or reluctance to enter a tasty Junque Emporium… to My salivating Mother, that is… were hardly tolerated. My obstinance was referred to as not getting with the Program. For awhile, Misery was my middle name. Over the arch of so many indentured years of servitude to The Program, A Law of the Universe was made evident to me, one I learned to grapple with first hand… Junque attracts other junque. Or is found nearby. ZOOMING down a country lane in hot pursuit of some Junque Store… It’s right around the next bend, Forrest. I can feel it!!!… which had come highly recommended in a Sunday newspaper advertisement, a forlorn and/or maligned looking dilapidated clapboard house would zip by us at 80 mph. My Mother, even today at 89 years of age, knows of only one speed: full-steam ahead. Any other setting is ignored. Probably why I am bald & fat. At any rate, in passing some junquely piece of residential architecture, My Mother would hurl out to the passing winds this call-to-Real-estate-arms… Ah, now that has Distinct Possibilities for renovation!!! What? I’d say. That? She would. Too late. I was hooked. Lined. Sunk. Smitten. Saved, too. Surveying the horizons for Distinct Possibilities offered needed relief from emporium invasions. Got good at spotting them at any mph well before My Mother. And in the intimate privacy of my own brain I would fantasize just how I’d do the place up. What to keep, what to knock down. By now, an incurable disease.
Years later…
Most of the time, and yet, not without some effort to contain any pop-up urges, I have managed to be clean of evidentiary Real-Estate Lust, i.e. to the house hunt, until we came upon il Poggiolo in 2009. Normally, I just look but, I do not touch.
Then it happened. Uncontained. Here is the the culprit… proposed by a friend who had innocently asked if I knew of the house. Yes, of course. I look at it every time I drive by. Even the Dogs know it. Why? Oh, just curious. Hard to resist such a quaint & charming villa. I’ve got Real-estate in my veins.
This villa might just be a flirt though. Haven’t seen inside. Have an appointment this Thursday. Time to touch?
Villetta to see.
Perhaps it would be wise of me to share my Big Real-estate Loves before discovering and doing all that stuff to il Poggiolo back in ‘09. From L to R in order of their respective hits:
Giuseppe the Wood-working meets Frank Lloyd Wright in the Lunigiana, Castiglione del Terziere, to be exact. Friends in the village pointed us to this Moderne-Meets-Medieval Compound. Two ruins bought by an American-Italian and expensively renovated with the deft hands of a local architect and falegname. Both with great taste. So deft were their hands, the American-Italian brought a suit against them for theft. He lost! The man never stepped inside again and immediately put the houses up For Sale. You and I feel madly in love. You for no grass to mow and me for the salotto with a stepped terrace beyond the French-doors in 1/2 of the unified properties. Was not our Destiny to buy. Wildly too high asking price… Euro 600,000… and overly complicated purchase terms of the American-Italian, further confounded by an archaic real-estate agent and his extraordinarily stupid wife, we said Basta! Moved on after a year-long mourning period. By the way, we offered Euro 380,000. Today the selling price is Euro 225,000.
A magnificent early 19th Century Story-book Mansion, the seat of a family of prosperous farmers, naturally requiring an equally prosperous seat. Now in the hands of two recalcitrant brothers who have also dismantle the agro-business, the house and garden and Empire chapel through the woods have been left to decay. Asking price is in the several millions of Euros category. They will watch it fall down to pieces. Another Law of the Universe: When the roof goes, so go the walls. This dream house is quickly nearing that End. But I want it. Not to be.
A Vineyard House in Liguria scouted by a friend who was hot to have this. I wanted her to have it too. Alas, the house did not exist in black & white on paper and to restore it to that state… classic Italian tax dodge… had sent the asking price out of the solar system. That can hurt.
Rustic farm-house, perched above verdant fields, rustle of water coursing through a near-by river, solitude, privacy, your own retreat. This house was Love Numero Due for the same friend who angsted for the Vineyard House. Then, intelligently, we hired a geometra to explain why the place had ENORMOUS cracks. He hired a geologist and his report was not encouraging. The place, THE ENTIRE PLACE, was sinking into the surrounding mud. At this point, these loves just bring you more Laws of the Universe. The latest would be: You’ve got to spend money to save money. My friend saved herself a bunch of money… and trouble. That takes care of any spurned love.
My Biggest Fall for Real-estate… with an added push from Dr. You… of course, was, is il Poggiolo a Codiponte. Nothing beats it. Well, except… It was not love at first sight though. Just seemed a place with most of the boxes ticked-off. We made an offer. It was accepted. Lots of time and money spent. We moved in. Tackled the garden. Filled it up with You’s stuff. The Happy Result is we have a special house in the Italian countryside. To our taste and liking. Let me leave you with one last Law of the Universe: With renovation, it gets worse before getting much more beautiful!
Il Poggiolo Before…
And 4 years later…
So we’ll see about the villetta. Got to ease into it.
In the meantime, and I cannot resist this. In the interest of being Democratic in this age when that ideal is continually chucked in the trash of politics, You too has had his Real-estate flirts. How about A Little House on the Italian Prairie?… Oh, John-boy, wherefore art thou? It’s a mystery house too.
Missing il Poggiolo...
Archive post December 6, 2018…
For two weeks this past November, I was 4,701 miles from il Poggiolo standing amongst the lofty pines of North Carolina. That’s a small lie. Actually, I was mostly inside nursing a severe cold sipping chicken noodle soup and watching Netflix. I hardly gave il Poggiolo a conscious thought. My subconscious could not let it go. This a long held tradition or, an annoying habit. Cannot decide. But consistently repeated twice a year: Thanksgiving and Easter. Smacks of separation anxiety. Only to a point…
Darn subconscious. And when a guy is already down to take advantage of my weary state: sleep patterns thrown to the winds by the annihilating whiz-bang-stop of modern air travel and beyond the reach of the latest tech in somniferous medicines. And, let us not forget the added boon of the 6 hour time differential. Fertile territory for nightmares to infiltrate my dreamworld, menacing my vulnerability with all which could befall my beloved Tuscan farm-house, il Poggiolo. The epitome of completing my misery: floods, fires, torrential rains, unwanted guests, unwanted anyone else, taxes upped, gas burners blazing away 24/7, every light left on to dispel the abandoned darkness 24/7 too… and much like the photos, long since DELETED, taken by a polite yet over-zealous AirBnB photographer sent by The Company to eradicate any unruly shadows or nooks of shade, thus rendering il Poggiolo ridiculously devoid of any charm or hey! Colorfulness. FLASHED to Death!!!… to Escher-esque follies of perpetually climbing up & down the house’s many ramps emulating the Myth of Sisyphus… talk about sweating while trying to sleep. Then, they stopped. Just like that. Not that the new dreams were all blue skies and birds tweeting. No, something better:
Future Poggiolo Projects…
new glass-enclosed fireplaces faced in flea-market marble veneers for La Casa Grande’s LR & DR. I can tell you right now the Dogs are going to love this innovation: beds & blankets fireside. Weimaraners love nothing more than to be WARM!!! Double French-doors in the DR too with a balcony and stairs outside to gracefully descend down to the garden for a Summer’s evening aperitivo or, to say Hello! to Dott. Bacchus standing watch over the wisteria vines and hydrangeas. Imagine hands sliding along the wrought iron railings to store firewood easily below. And, stone stairs to the top-most grassy terraces ample enough to deck them with large terracotta vases full of bromeliads and lavender, ooo-wee! Woke myself up with glee and did so until I reversed course for Italy to come back home… to il Poggiolo. And that is the Moral of the Story!
Italy to Emerald City USA...
Archive post November 29, 2018…
I traditionally vacate the Italian peninsula for Thanksgiving. Done 30+ yrs. of trans-Atlantic travel in or around the last Thursday of the last full week of the next to last month of the year of November. Got that?
Now, it is pretty obvious, just listening to my heavily American accented Italian that, lo’ & behold, I am an American! Unavoidably so. The Codipontesi mimic My Dog Commands in Americanized English… Come on being the more frequent phrase heard. The accent is a worrisome fact though. Hard as I try to roll those r’s… especially the 2 found in my first name… use big words like coniugare, pronunciare, pontificare or, throwing in obscure exclamations such as, Canta che ti passa, none disguise my oltre l’oceano origins.
Most of the surrounding Italians march past all that. My American-ness appeals. They do think I talk like the dubbed Laurel & Hardy… Stanley e Olio in Italian. They are instantly recognizable and adored for the heavily American accented Italian slap-stick. What they ARE truly wanting to know is…
Quando vai in America?
I gush, swallowing the last bit of brioche and noting that some of my cappuccino landed at stomach-level on my COS sweater before replying… Thanksgiving! Getting a blank look, I quickly translate… per il Giorno di Ringraziamento. Less of a blank look. Then, swiftly comes… Come vorrei accompagnarti in America! Eyes bright as Emerald City, for cryin’ out loud. Off they go and I am left with the sensation the Italians think America is akin to Dorothy and her tag-alongs of Toto, the Tin Man, Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion skipping on the Yellow Brick Road to savor the fun, and have granted a wish or 2, in Emerald City. A perennial Thanksgiving TV favorite… in America, that is.
Requires substitutions, alterations. The Italians are prepared. They’ve study America. TV is the culprit, again. Italians like spectacle. BIG fantasies too: BIG trucks, BIG buildings, BIG shopping and BIG food. A BIG 50 State buffet of anything you want in any quantity in any location. It dazzles and delights. A dream.
Here I am, in Emerald City USA. AKA North Carolina. And a rather different experience to what my Italian friends will expect to hear from me upon my return. Could well risk being accused of not getting it: ate salmon steaks instead of turkey on Thanksgiving, got sick with the flu because you cannot open a window for some fresh air and wall-to-wall carpet have germs… however, it might be the tactical error of that salmon as the real cause of my malady… sipped microwaveable chicken noodle soup and watched movies on Netflix for days on end so not to spread the apparent plague of influenza over the land, missed Black Friday AND Cyber-Monday totally, and so on and on and on. I may have to lie. Keep the dream going.
Closed for the Winter...
Archive post November 21, 2018…
You and I had thought il Poggiolo would be my Summer residence, June to September. You would hit on the weekends, saving people’s eyesight permitting. Other months of the year, our Tuscan farmhouse would be reserved for holiday visits: post-Christmas to New Year’s, Easter, that Commie Holiday in May. Meant closing down the house towards the end of September. Big work. A weird sort of ballet: You would shunt stuff from the garden carrying it down to the un-used space of the esseccatoio… or, chestnut drying shed… while I would de-nude the three refrigerators sanctifying them with vinegar. You then would strip beds of their linens and furiously dust his many objets and I would clip the grass one last time and cut the hedges to streamline their look. The last bits were the elegance of draping sheets over everything and closing off the utilities of water, gas, wi-fi and electricity. This was our program which we managed for a couple of years.
Enter one Weimaraner and followed by the adoption of another and then a puppy to replace the first magnificent dog. All prefered to inhale the invigorating aires of the Lunigiana more than the polluted ones in Genoa. More liberal local leash laws, now a definite thing of the past, encouraged me to spend ever more time at il Poggiolo with the canines. The years brought an expanding role as a bilingual Guardian Angel to friends tackling what You & I had tackled with il Poggiolo from 2009 to 2014. My seasonal sojourn became year-round.
Grumblings were heard, not listened too.
Though early for a New Year’s Resolution, I quietly vowed this Fall to remedy my absence from You’s and my co-habitation in the Genoa loft and from our Genoese friends & family. December to March. Meant returning to the task of closing down the house. A go-it-alone sacrifice this time. I did have help with the expert administrations of a blond-bombshell of a cleaning signora for two days. I had to stand clear. It was easy. I did umpteen loads of laundry, hauled trash to the dumpsters, moved non-resistant-to-the-cold plants inside, shoved and rearranged furniture and even supervised a firewood delivery. Piled the Dogs into the car and headed to Genoa.
I am uneasy. I knew yet was reminded despite the just concluded toil: Il Poggiolo is my Kingdom. My bit of Italian territory. An orientation of stone and wood and garden. My home. I am the missing part, me from it and it from me. I can’t wait for March.
The salotto of la Casa Grande, Sumer HQ, but closed up for the Winter.
Firewood, a done deed...
Archive post November 16, 2018…
The beauty of stacked firewood.
The outsized tractor and its outsized driver, the 6’-5” Log Man, drive cannot pass through il Poggiolo’s back gate. Meant an artful backwards descent to dump the firewood at our gate on what passes for a public street in Codiponte. Deed done, there was one anxious glitch: the tractor almost couldn’t make it back up and away, so slick was the street. The Lesson Learned: no deliveries after the end of September, when the sun shines no more on the street to our back gate.
Firewood...
Archive post November 15, 2018…
I just can not get it done right. It’s firewood, for cryin’ out loud. How hard should it be to have a pile of it cut & delivered at an anointed moment? June. Before Summer’s heat. The Summer temps can dry the logs out. The log’s Destiny is to be burned from October to March. Yeah! Last year, however, I had a fire going until late May. Unpleasantly cold until the 20th. Then BAM!!! Instant Extreme Heat Wave. Good to have enough lumber available for any games the weather decides to play. Not its fault. Year in and year out, I seem to manage a log delivery six months past that May due date.
Wonder why? Well, I feel I have cause here to blame out-of-control situations beyond nominating my own dramas. I will anyway…
I was slammed… this word it the latest import from America to say… I’m really busy. Its use has sidelined… Thanks to The All Mighty God… the 2nd most obnoxious American expression to be kicked across the Atlantic… awesome. To be truthful, I did have a lot of work following the re-construction of a client & friend’s hillside fortress. The slammed part came from all the stress of a lot of work following the re-construction of a client & friend’s hillside fortress. There’s a lesson somewhere in there. No time to find it. I digress.
Due to the very unpleasant circumstances circling My Puppy’s recent attack upon a neighbor’s cat involving unscheduled night-time meetings and telephone calls to the day-time visits by the local vigili… basically, traffic cops with extra duties towards the maintenance of the public order. Stuff like… Why aren’t your dogs on a leash? Well, because we are on woodland walk, Sir. I volunteered to have a protective fence installed around the perimeter of il Poggiolo’s ample and maturing quite nicely garden.
Simple infrastructure project collided with all sorts of delays: extreme heat, the gardener’s prior commitments slowed by the extreme heat, I hadn’t had time to cut the hedges to facilitate the installation of the fence, even more extreme heat. It became evident that the fence’s uncertain construction might impede the critical and important log delivery, tentatively schedule before construction. The inopportune delivery of logs would have put quite a crimp in blocking il Poggiolo’s back-entrance for the two guys come to build Safety-for-the-neighborhood. I was apparently the only participant carrying the gauntlet of Hope. As time moved forward, both ambitions seemed to evaporate into a non-happening.
How quickly the months of July and August slid by with each tear of a calendar’s monthly page. No fence, no wood. Others hindrances rose on the horizon: the vendemia in September… a hit & run for a couple of days… joined mid-stream in the month of October by the insanely labor-intensive olive harvest.
My Lord & Master, Dr. You, who was ecstatic about the log delivery delays. Not keen to lug, load, and stack logs, when he could happily lay out by a friend’s mock-infinity pool instead. Could he really be blamed? You was insistent on giving the fence priority but that was relegated to the Italian penchant for patience in the face of adversity or, delay.
Here we are in the middle of November. The fence has been rescheduled for January 2019. The weather is sunny. Afternoon temps are warm. Might we have a Go! for wood? Yes! The 6’-5” Log Man called last Tuesday to say he could deliver the firewood on Wednesday afternoon. Great! Helpers booked. Legnaia prepped. Tarps and wheelbarrow at the ready. At 3PM yesterday, with the Helpers leaning on things waiting while the time-clock clicked, I called the 6’-5” Log Man. Where are you? It’ll be dark soon! He bellowed back that his tractor had broken down and he could not reach me by phone to tell me. Can we do it tomorrow? Ma certo! Everyone sent home. For tomorrow is another day!
Seasonal changes...
Archive post November 8, 2018…
… and the lessons learned:
September is usually glorious here in the Lunigiana. October too, but there might be a couple of threats to any left over gloriousness from the Weather-men’s latest forecasts. Those guys like to get our hopes up for rain, assuaging nothing with smiley alternatives of warm temps, sunny Italian skies. The difference between the two months of Summer & Fall are the progressively falling night-time temps and the Spring-forward-Fall-back time change towards the end of October. Halloween. They dress up here now and go door-to-door. The Dogs and I hide. Then, Puppy barks at the kid induced-fracus outside the front door and our cover quickly disappears. Fruit for treats. Yuck. The kids are savvy enough to remark… No Milka-bars? Another and way more important conversion from Summer to Fall, from September to October to November, are: the days are shorter. Gads. With that Fall-back business, it is DARK OUT at 5:30PM. And the second and more devastating result is the unavoidable consequence of less day-light. The stone walls of il Poggiolo radiate less sun-nourished heat ‘cause there’s less of it. In other words. it’s cold inside!!!… NO HEAT!!!
When You and I discussed re-building il Poggiolo way back in double-nought 9, we pretty much hovered over the same point on the same page of the same map, i.e, maintain the house as it was-upon-a-time. La Casetta would have a fireplace and radiators, the Apt. Azzurro would have only a fireplace and La Casa Grande double-nought. Why do we need heat in what was a hay barn and now, perennially, Our Blue Cool Summer Residence. Our equating the Dogs and Me. You sleeps in his own Cool Terracotta BR… which does have heat. Nice of me to have organized it for Mr. Freddoloso. But it gets chilly in La Casa Grande towards the end of October. We seek to resist. The Dogs try but moan that lack of snuggling warmth, burrowing deeper into the already completely-shot 50’s wing-back chairs to compensate. I have to go to sleep with wool track-pants and a sweater for night-wear. Yes, we resist until the thermometer on the electronic naptha-heater shows an electronic 14C… 57F. When that temp is registered, the Dogs bark at me. They know these things instinctively. Nothing more to do than to relocate giu’.
Off I scuffed to enter La Casetta and set the thermostat at a pleasant 20C. 30 minutes later I scuffed back to check on things. WHAT? NO?? NO HEAT??? Oh, cruel fate. I called assistance immediately. I hold it to be an iron-clad rule never to deal with electronic or mechanical contraptions. I’m afraid they’ll bite. Too young & white wine soaked for that End. The Gentle and Kind Electrician… who installed the delinquent machine… on the other end of the mobile line said… Sure, tomorrow. No Problem. I have done this enough not to ask… Not tonight? Had to bribe the Dogs to keep their complaints to themselves with sardines in with their croquette. They obeyed. Good for them.
What happened to everything, anything you could just stab the ON/OFF button and the darn thing would bubble and burp into action, no matter the task? Now, you need an instruction booklet… IN ENGLISH, PLEASE!!!… to read that there is foreplay required before you may stab the button. Thanks to the ENORMOUS FAVOR I gave Our Builder back in double-nought 9… and to You and me too for avoiding an unsightly column to hide a water heater’s ventilation duct-work right at an already iffy staircase… I must trudge up to the Esseccatoio to carry the HEAVIEST METAL LADDER ever manufactured in the ENTIRE WORLD down the ramp to La Casetta, up the already iffy staircase, unfold the ladder in the minimum space allowed for such maneuvers and once done, single-handedly, climb up by myself and without assistance to steady the ladder up and into the crawl space to check on what-in-the-f**k is off with the water heater. Gosh. What do those tear-drops symbols mean? The red light, I know about. The lack of electronic purring? Not.
The day after, in the morning… because I called to bug the poor Gentle and Kind Electrician to come ASAP. I wanted to take a necessary shower… the Dogs were noticing I smelt a bit gamey…the key message were those tear-drops symbols. Meant the lap-top-for-a-heater was out of water. Really? But, but, but, doesn’t that just happen? A long pause then… No.
Thing still didn’t purr. No burps either. Me and my staff of one… and guess who really knew what then was to be the issue?… descended from on high, down the iffy staircase, to check the thermostat, where it all began the day before. New set of symbols, too. It was gently and kindly pointed out to me that the empty symbol resembling a battery actually was ripe with info. Gosh. Empty meant dead. Scoured all three of our houses for 2 AA batteries with no success. I was convinced we had scads of them but, no. Silly me, I live with You. I bid adieu to the Gentle and Kind Electrician with his assurances that once the brand-spanking new batteries have replaced the d-e-a-d ones, ALL WILL BE WELL WITH THE WORLD AGAIN. And you know, it was. The Dogs and I relocated to La Casetta, warm, cozy, happy, ready for Fall and/or Winter, however they hit.
The shock of my life...
Archive post March 23, 2010…
Naturally, photos do not do any Justice…
Maybe you had to be there, when I walked in to see a yucky candy wrapper Blue-Green paint on my newly stucco-ed walls of La Casetta, I knew… instantaneously… it was NOT Our Signature Sage Color I had spent so many Euro’s on various paint candidates to find just the RIGHT SAGE GREEN for Mr. You-know-who.
I called the Painter but, my cellphone conveniently was out of juice, refusing every attempt to be kick-started too. I then called Our Geometra, however, he wasn’t available either. So, I corralled Our Builder, handily present to offer any criticism, and he said… Non e’ giusto. A man of few words, is Our Builder. He then left me to gaze at the horror. Finally, while soothing my worried color sense on a piping hot plate of gnocchi & funghi at my favourite local trattoria, Our Geometra called to tell me that that sickening Blue-Green was only the primer coat. WHEW!!! Crisis averted. Gads.
You can see the difference between the wall as I found it today in the left-hand photo and The Correct Sage Green in the photo on the right. Sadly, the colors look a bit off-kilter in the photos from any Real Life impression, with much thanks to the rainy day outside and its waining & wavering light. But, the Sage Green on the right IS You’s Signature Sage Color.
Fall's Big Storm...
Archive post November 1, 2018…
I don’t trust the Italian weather-people on TV. Some, from Mars, supposedly, wear uniforms. Aeronautical. Others, still from Mars or thereabouts, wear blue jackets way too short. They never button them either. So ignorant of THE LAW to don a jacket standing before the public. Untrustworthy. As for those persons from Venus, either the do their weather-map ballet in way too skimpy & tight dresses in TEAL or turn & twist in blown away looking nylon blouses matched with a straight skirt and clunky flats. I do rather like one weather-Venus on Canale 5 who sashays in short tight dark jeans with precipitously high heels. Nice flanks when she turns to look at the monitor. No marks for any of their prognostications.
I regularly surf three weather Internet sites here in Italy: meteo.it, meteoapuane.it and meteowebcam.it. Mid-stream though last week, just when You said he was goin ’to com’ on down to Codiponte, I checked the weather report. One showed end-of-world rain the entire weekend and then some. Cannot recall which. Another’s map was full of multi-drop rain icons for Sunday night, Monday morning. The rest rain would be basically AWOL. The last gave a midland probability of much needed… desperately… needed H2O but spotty coverage. Typical expose’. On the day of You’s arrival, I gave another look-see. All three had gotten onto the same program. Dire rain from now until the following weekend. RED & ORANGE ALARMS from the authorities over at the Italian Civil Defence facilities. Wow. You and I and the dogs can nap the entire weekend. Maybe.
Took all of Saturday for the storm to get cranking. Went out to dinner with You to a local cooking/styling conclave in a light rain but buxom winds. The later was a hint. Got home with the help of the gathering winds… tail-winds are always appreciated… packed everyone and the dogs off to bed and promptly conked out from too much American accented Italian cooking. Heavy Chevy. Right about 2:30AM… KA-KA-KABOOM kracked over-head and it did until an hour past the Fall back sunrise. Got up and made myself a caffe’. The dogs ate and then wanted to immediately go out. But, it’s RAINING, animals!!! Can’t you hold it? No. Their rain jackets fluttered & flapped. The two were drenched in 17 seconds flat. Unhappy. You dashed from his unattached BR and into the Kitchen only to growl… semi-politely… that he did not get much sleep during the tempest. None of these personalities asked how my night was. They only wanted to be consoled and to commiserate on a very adverse Sunday morning.
You went back to Genoa post-haste. The dogs moved from club-chair to sofa to the floor, showing no interest to go bounce with the liquid Mother Nature outside. I read and then watched Robin Hood for the nth time. Got fed up with King John… that over-sexed creep… so, I went back to slog through a book published by Edith Wharton in 1903 about Italian Villas and Gardens. She admitted to an error in the order of the title because, in her opinion, gardens make the villa and not the other way around. The classic Italian gardens also did not need the quantities of water like those later laid out in The English Fashion. With grass. Seemed an appropriate tome to consume… or, at least calming… whilst it truly began to storm outside. I had to put the book down. Could not concentrate what with all the whistling, crashing, screeching noises of the winds propelling the rain horizontally against trees, houses, windows, doors. I found myself the physical and moral support of two extremely worried Weimaraners on one single bed width sofa in the Casa Grande’s main salotto. The gale howled for a couple more hours in between rapid fire lightning flashed overhead and thunder rocked our ears below, huddled as we were. At some point during the 5th hour, the electricity blinked, blinked again, blinked a third time and then went out. Damn. The flashlight? Found that after bumping parts of my body from waist -ine down to retrieve it out on the Loggia. Candles? Oh, yes, You’s Reserve DOC of IKEA lanterns and bulky candles in the Stanza dei Tini. Matches? Matches?? MATCHES??? Found a small cache in a spinster-esque porcelain jar in You’s BR. What does he do with them? One of his flea-market treasures. Small as in 3 dinky matches. Being weak-minded in Emergencies, I am amazed at the presence of mind I showed to light first a candle and then light the others from one measly candle. NORMALLY, I would have gone on and used up what at the critical time was A Very Vital Resource!!!
Then True Storm & Disaster Danger struck. Laptop exhausted from its video labors. Ditto… damn-it… for the beleaguered iPhone. Could have thought about that before I sent those 521 Whatsapp messages to loved ones in distant and out-of-danger lands. No lights to read by. And the worse was the flashlight shut-down and only to be resurrected after 3 hours of being re-charged, if the electricity would deign to return to do its appointed job. No way man. Not until 2PM the following day would it be restored. I was out with the dogs surveying damage in the garden when I heard an alarm sound. Spied from my heights that the Scuzzy bar had lights, the antipatica signora in the Swiss chalet house had a light… could it be? Yes, it could. ELECTRICITY!!! Praise the Heavens. Not those which launch wind and some horizontal rain but, he who governs all. The weather-persons, not.
The MarGas Experience...
Archive post March 21, 2010…
The MarGas Company? Well, cutting right to the ditch…
I waited for over four months and had to pay nearly $3,000 to have four guys take two days to cut a gaping twelve foot long trough and on My Ramp too, stick an ugly iron cover over a hole already dug off ramp and probably gouged out by a previous Gang of Four from the MarGas Company, run a cheap industrially looking black tube into the guts of a Communist looking niche with a perforated G A S on its door, which is pretty Communist too, if you think about it, and, before high-tailing it back to whence they came, from frigging Viareggio, an hour’s drive away, they slathered a cheap cemented over it all and said… My, oh, my! What A Good Work we have done?
Hell, if I had known it was going to be a simple Cut & Cover, I would have hollered for a pick… and done it myself… dammit… and saved myself some Euros!!!
Codiponte jingles...
Archive post October 25, 2018…
When I was a kid living in a suburban wonderland of American-invented conveniences, I can still hear the echoing of the old time jingle of the ice-cream truck making a Summer-time tour of our neighborhood. The dinky bell-like jingle of jing-a-ling, jing-a-ling played off the facades of the split-level and ranch-style homes of our sub-division along newly paved asphalt drives with perfectly formed cement curbs and sidewalks. The later was ideal for roller-skating while sucking a manufactured cone with vanilla ice-cream topped with jimmies just bought off the ice-cream truck. It was fantastic. Saved us too from having to pile into the back of our dad’s Buick to head to, what else? McDonald’s, the King-super grocery store or the big toy-store at the Cherry Creek Shopping Village.
A couple of days ago, sitting in 2nd floor studio working with the tech-guy on a new website for my concierge service, I was stopped, arrested by a familiar sounding jingly-jangling music coming up from the street below. What’s that? The music? It’s the fish-monger. Ice-cream. No, he sells fish. Sorry. I was thinking back to an ice-cream truck. Yeah, had them too in the UK.
Once heard you begin to listen for others. Once-upon-a-time, back in the presumed glory days of Codiponte of 30 years ago, few who lived in Codiponte had cars. The options were to wait until you could hitch a ride with someone on market day, say to big towns of Fivizzano and Aulla or, you waited for what you needed to buy from the daily meandering village-to-village truck-vendors: fruit & vegetable trucks, the 3-wheeler Ape carrying kitchen furnishings, the hardware guy, auto-supply husband & wife team, the cleaning products lady, chicken & fried food family, the cheese brothers too, they all came punctually every week and they each had their own musical schtick: whistles, a running commentary on items & prices… Get your fresh ripe peaches, 2.20 a kilo, none better around… musical chimes, even a silly horn toot of… Shave and Haircut, two bits… or snippets of popular songs stolen off the radio, all to distinguish and alert. You’d recognize the ditty you were waiting for and be drawn by the noise to one or the other stopping places in Codiponte: the main piazza which once sported a bar, a laundry, several stores and artisan cubby-holes or at the sliver of a parking lot across from the Pieve di Codiponte, the church.
A great time to peruse the merchandise, get the latest on-the-other-side-of-the-hill news & gossip, run into folk in the village you hardly see since, you never go to that side of Codiponte… it may be a small Italian village but Codiponte is big… make your purchase and push back for home.
These days this roving commercial traffic is down to a fish-monger, 2 green-grocers and occasionally a guy walking and selling brooms and Kleenex. Times have changed. Convenience is spelled… c-a-r… to drive to the wider choices had in the bigger towns or the Internet and hope the DHL-guy knows where in the Hell Codiponte is.
Un-do to re-do...
Archive post March 21, 2010…
The Procedure is... the old chestnut beams are removed for restoration. Then, the first 1/2 yard of stonework is re-built with the old stones and cement mortar. The refurbished beams are then returned to their rightful positions before the cordolo of cement & iron rods in constructed. The cordolo is sort of capping which keeps all together. Once-upon-a-time, only the tree trunks held the stone walls & roof together as one unit. Now, The Law dictates a cordolo and Good Sense requires the under-flooring of a solaio to keep all together, through thick & thin and, hopefully, through shake-rattle-and-roll! (It did in the earthquake of June 23, 2013)
The beams are more than heavy. It needs four work-guys to carry one off. The fourth fellow is out of view in the photo. He was adjusting his ipod for the upcoming effort. Gads.
Sacred Sunday... Domenica sacrosanta...
Archive post October 15, 2018…
God rested on the Seventh Day. Man gets to fool around, make noises but, more importantly, do Sunday stuff. Ah, Domenica… or, Sunday… in a small Italian village. Let me describe it…
The day starts with the standard 7-day a week bell-ringing exactly at 7AM. The steadied number of rings from Codiponte’s campanile is followed by an immature medley of more bell-ringing just to get The Point across: Get out of bed and get to work! Croesus-person and Nina-beena, our two highly spoiled Weimaraners, bound out of their respective sleeping stations after the first ring. One comes out from under the covers with me and the other, who is a Lady and wouldn’t dare, stretches and coughs as she lumbers out of one of two club-chairs at her disposition. These hounds cavort with near uncontrolled ecstasy knowing breakfast is just a few sluggish steps for their old and crippled Supreme Master to go into the Kitchen to prepare il pasto del mattino. Che gioia!
General Peace & Tranquility are squelched beyond the initial clanging by the sudden and rapid gun-shots echoing across our verdant valley. Horrors of horrors. Sunday is Boar Hunting Day. They get an early start. Like our Dogs, up and at ’em at 7AM. Seems a sacrilege, doesn’t it? Wednesday is too la caccia al cinghiale but, suffers a different effect being a work-day. On both days though there are lot of parked SUV’s and FIAT Panda 4x4’s on the side of the roads.
But, hey! Get busy. There’s stuff to do on Sunday: clean the house and do the laundry. The first, since there’s no time or desire to squeeze cleaning dal Lunedi’ al Sabato, per forza it falls on a Sunday morning. The second because utilities… gas, acqua e elettricita’… are mightily expensive in Italy. Rates are lowered… a tad… for this long-standing Italian tradition with a washing machine and a Hoover. Thanks to the essential convenience of washing machine, we are all, blessedly, saved from trudging down to da’ river with a tub to wash someone’s T-shirts, underwear and sheets. By Noon, Codiponte is draped with pastel prints sheets… or ones with gorey Teddy-bears printed in psycho-colors… assorted jeans, T-shirts- T-shirts, T-shirts and a bra. Not quite like Christmas but there is a weird aria di festivita’ about.
What is that rumble you ask? More to shatter Our Peace & Tranquility, knocked low now by the indigenous or not-indigenous motorcycle gangs. The various categories are evident: 20-somethings focus on ear-rattling dirt-bikes… like someone yawning at FULL VOLUME!!!… which leave acrid blue fumes of pollution along our stretch of the Strada Statale. Mostly nubile guys and one nubile gal with frizzy hair fluttering; the 30-somethings tear through our world on hunky motorcycles emblazoned with foreign-sounding names on medallions affixed to the darn machine’s gas tanks. While the machines sport chrome, the guys and gals sport butch leather with garish patches. Oh, and these folk have coupled; the 50-somethings, long since united with someone to share the seat of a motorcycle with, roar by on their Harley’s. Usually His Woman is encased in a pink quilted jacket, helmet and ear-phones straddled behind Her Man who is tightly encased in his, thanks to his abundant tummy. They all drive like maniacs.
Church definitely is part of the deal of a Domenica. Got a clean and wash by 11AM. Not everyone gives a hoot to go. A few village ladies scurry arm-in-arm to Mass at the famous Pieve di Codiponte, ie The Church. The men, well, those who will dare to step near a church, are already congregated at the Scuzzy Bar to accompany the women the rest of the way to the wood portone of the nearly pre-Medieval pile of stones. A tactic which seems an attempt to hide their subjugation. The Men brake solidly before the entrance and graciously elect to stay outside and sit upon a stone bench under a well-manicured magnolia tree. The service is still heard and that counts for something, in case needed.
Dopo pranzo finds most of the those same Men passing the afternoon carousing at the log-cabin community center, of sorts, erected for the deaf & dumb…. ooops… sorry, the hearing & speaking impaired. I guess it is sole place in Codiponte the Men can gather and let off whatever with just their own sex. Very Italian. The hunter’s shots and motorcycles roars are ignored by the whoops and jeers of the assembled over cards and beer. I like their noises. Better than the ruckus the younger gents offer smoking cigarettes and ribbing each other with their generational bull-shit out on the balcony back over at the Scuzzy Bar.
Late afternoon I take the dogs for a turn through the village. No sense in risking their being shot for some short-sighted or stupid hunter mistaking a Weimaraner for a boar on the road through the woods to Acqua Paradiso, a natural spring. One Sunday, the Dogs and I came upon a friend lounging in the comfort of his FORD listening to a soccer game on the car’s radio. Felt like he had found his Sunday Heaven.
My Paradiso, instead, is to plop myself in a chaise out on our aia with my dog-chewed straw hat, an IKEA tumbler of pro-secco and a good book to absorb the atmosfera domenicale… even the most hated man in Codiponte’s green plastic porch awning flapping in the wind does not disturb. Sunday bliss.
Dog Fence prep...
Archive post October 3, 2018…
I think I bit off too much to chew. It IS my fault. No denying it. I wanted a house with a garden. Numero Uno of House Prerequisites from when it was compiled back in 2005. There were only 2 items: a garden and bedrooms for guests. Both checked off after 4 years and once il Poggiolo was found and bought. 2009. Awesome year. Gosh! Nearly 10 years of second-home ownership. What would You say to that? Let’s sell and move to France? Not just yet. Je ne suis pas prêt. Hopefully, not that I’ve gotten too old. I am. Fatter too. Both show. They are intertwined, damn-it. Just cannot handle the thrice-yearly garden assaults. Cut & burn, mostly. No time to piecemeal it either, say, every Saturday AM.
Would be nice to have a gardener come. A full-fledged one. Guys only. Women, apparently, don’t do those kinds of tasks here in the Lunigiana. Nor do the guys, really, if we were are not talking about olives trees, vineyards or, orti… vegetable gardens. All else is out-of-the-question. A neighbor has a lawn-service which comes about twice a year from the Versilia, over by that Med-Sea. I don’t really know the people. They live year-round, like the lawn-service, over at the Med-Sea, keeping the Codiponte family home next to the scuzzy bar in pristine condition for the Sagra Appearance on the first weekend of September. However, their garden is no big beans. It is a small, ornamental slip of grass with a mock-well done up in reinforced cement and faced in stone with a cute little roof in terracotta… and a dangling copper bucket!!!… a couple of scrawny trees… a weeping willow and a plum tree… plus some tuffs of pampas grass. You HATES pampas grass. I kind of like it. Reminds me of that tacky 70’s deco-scheme of spray painting the pampas fronds da-glo fuschia and planting them in some overly decorated Mexican urn. At the front door. Or in the LR. I think the lawn-service would freak, if they saw what all needs tackling at il Poggiolo. Anyway, I lost their card. Too much trouble to hunt on the Internet. And a bit difficult to get folk to come to Codiponte. Pool and lawn services and repairmen for appliances.
Found out by a vicarious route that our painter’s son would/could do yard work. But, when I tried to fix an appointment, the painter said his son preferred working as a painter. With his dad. Ah, Italy. The country invented… Like father, like son. In other countries it is called nepotism, though low-grade for our painter’s kid. Jobs are hard to find here so, bumping into one at the dinner table at home beats the anxiety & stress of il Job Hunting in the outside World.
About all I can scare up are a couple of folk to do odd & ends: the Real Nice Lady below us comes and consults on roses… a perennial disaster… and a Real Nice Man from the other side of the village comes to prune fruit and olive trees… less of a disaster and more an art.
The heavy garden attacks are my responsibility. Though physically taxing, cumbersome of effort and time and stamina, I like doing most of it myself. I ably provide plenty of fodder for You for his usual tours of the garden before sitting down to a home-cooked meal when, between bites, I am furnished with a running synopsis of what he found lacking with my labors.
All this verbiage is about the soon to-be-installed Dog Fence. I have A Mission!!! But, let me say right off the bat… I expect a standing ovation from the Codiponte community-at-large for this bit of domestic infrastructure. They have made my life an inferno, thanks to the appearance of our adored Weimaraner puppy. His exuberance has known no bounds. It will and in about 5 days time when he runs smack into the Tuscan green wire fencing around the entire perimeter of il Poggiolo. Oh, boy… what fun.
I am in full swing with the Dog Fence prep. Major undertaking. Big push. 2 fellows are waiting for a High Sign that I have clipped and pruned and cleared a narrow swath past, sometimes in between and around all the shrubbery You and I have planted from 2009 onwards. My handy-work relies upon a battery-operated hedge clipper, cesoie… or, sheers, pruning scissors, rakes and a wheelbarrow. I am almost there. Then, watch out Puppy!
Kat Killer or, how do you like our leash law?...
Archive post October 2, 2018…
A brief Dog History…
You and I were spoiled by our first dog. His name was Moses, a splendid Weimaraner, and nearly perfect in every way. He could do no wrong. Well, almost no wrong. He wanted to be with us when we sat down to dinner. Automatically plopping down in the Dining Room as I would put steaming plates of pasta with sausages & broccoli on the table, You would likewise automatically command the dog to vacate the premises post haste. The strong tone & loud voice of the dog’s Supreme Commander would send Moses to the Siberia of the hallway beyond. Moses would skulk off and lay down to stare at us and our plates of pasta. Slowly, minute by minute, the dog would creep back into the Dining Room. His fatal mistake was, once inside… he thought so stealth-like… he’d dash to his preferred spot next to me, His Supreme Master, erring in thinking his re-entry was a success. The process would repeat itself to exhaustion. Might be why You and I now eat in front of the TV where no animal is ever allowed to be near. 15 and 1/2 years later, Moses passed away, God Bless, him.
And there is our adored and adopted gem of a Weimaraner, Nina-beena. Another near perfect canine except for her annoying flaw of scappating to sniff the surrounding environment of cogent country smells. Nina has her spots to inspect and then comes home to roost with our new entry, a year and a 1/2 old Weimaraner puppy. Boy, what a difference he’s been.
Croesus, a name practically no one can pronounce, much less understand, has been more than a handful. I believe we took him too early from the warm nurturing of his amazon of a mother-dog. You thinks I over-did the attempt to substitute warm nurturing, spoiling him into bad behaviors. The consequence of my actions… spoiling to be loved, I suppose… Croesus has a nearly maniacal desire to be physically attached to me at all times AND when not, does just what he pleases. Danger written all over him. He can do no right. Woo-woo and wee-wee throughout the apt. in Genoa… oh, he’d manage to hit the newspapers carefully placed in strategic spots, but then, well, he’d make another bio-donation on one of our innumerable Oriental rugs immediately afterwards. From there he branched into a paper, book, pillow, basket shredder par excellence, if we so dared to leave the house without him.
Then, at our home, il Poggiolo, Croesus expanded his field of operations. Deforestation of our garden, clawing the pristine finishes off all our doors… to ge to me… and a nifty predilection to cause a shoddily made old door down in the cantina open to his brand of Run Wild, Run Free. The local Codiponte populace shudder in fear when he’s in sight. I would too if a 66 lb. fritz-out Weimaraner gased from his freshly gained Freedom were to come rushing down a lane at top speed with his tongue wagging from the lust of it all. To forestall such escapes, leashing the dog has became de rigor and an unfortunate exercise in imminent back surgery. Short leads are not the trick. Croesus lunges and my back has to surrender to the force of the dog’s 66 lbs of Weimaraner take-off power. I told You that if the dog persisted to pull on his leash, I would be crippled in less than two years. I am well on my way and despite You’s admonitions to train the darn dog not to instead. Yeah, right.
Things got dramatically worse. Croesus killed a neighbor’s kat. The wrong neighbors too. Ones I had already had words with over a water infiltration issue which, in the end, was not even remotely our fault or responsibility. Turned out is was and still is the neighbor’s cousin, who lives between us.
And aside… everything which goes wrong in Codiponte is ALWAYS my fault: pooh-pooh, trash, car in a non-scantioned parking spot, fire burning off hours, more pooh-pooh, dogs off their leashes, still more pooh-pooh, etc. Never is You accused ‘cause he’s un dottore.
However, I can admit to the fault regarding the kat’s sad demise. I was irresponsible. Croesus was off his lead and I was wrong to allow it. You was furious with me about it. Did not speak to me for over a week. His silence was deadly and made my trials all the more burdensome.
The tragic story…
In the selfish interest to preserve some semblance of vertebral structure to my 220 lb. demeanor, I accompanied dinner guests to their car parked at the village’s Medieval bridge with both dogs senza guinzagli. A catastrophic tactical error.
An aside, Nina-beena does try to lend a bark or two pointed at and in the hope of corralling said the recalcitrant Croesus to follow her example by trotting happily next to me… leash-less…but, alas, not on this particular evening.
Kiss-kiss, Buona Notte to the guests and us… two dogs and a 220 lb. guy… headed for home. Well, two of us did. The thug dog had dashed off before us. I mused that he probably scappated to enjoy the night’s fresh air and its breeze rushing past his flapping Weimaraner ears. Or was drawn to the irresistible scent of food perhaps left on some door-step for the village’s array of felines to feast upon. Suddenly disappeared, suddenly re-appeared… with a bloody scratch across his muzzle. Ah, I said to myself, an unexpected kat encounter. Little did I know.
24 hours later, gory photos of a kat with horrifying wounds were sent to me through Whatsapp. What made the consignments worse was the cryptic and, I would also like to say, nastily sarcastic messages, such as… Have you not even remotely thought to keep your dog on a leash? The double disaster quickly tripled when the neighbors chose not to answer their door chime or responded to my Whatsapp message of concern. I sought consolation with a tranquilizer. I wanted to sleep. I would need re-vitalization to resume attempts to mediate the situation as much a possible in the coming days.
The neighbors were devastated. Their poor kitty-kat dead. I was devastated. A Kat Killer sleeps under my covers at night. Yet, Peace was re-installed and financial restitution made, our previous controversies put behind us too.
Word got around the community. Branded as the owner of a Kat Killer, I had to have the dogs under konstant kontrol, ie. leashes throttling our dogs necks with every exit from the konfines of il Poggiolo. So long to my back. The community would be safe. No Comment.
Croesus was impervious to the political klimate. And not enjoying the konfinement, he took to occasionally prying open the shoddy cantina door to scappate once-in-a-while. The vigili… guys in uniform but carrying NO GUNS promptly came a-knocking on my gate. The towns-people had alerted them to the marauding Kat Killer. The vigile I know said… Konfine your dog or else. Leashes attached without variation. Your dog is a Killer. Yes, sir.
This coming Saturday, two men will come and begin the construction of a concrete re-enforced post and wire fencing around the entire perimeter of il Poggiolo’s garden. Croesus will have to konfine his Run Wild, Run Free within its 25,000 square feet of grassy terraces. I hope he doesn’t develop an inclination to dig.
Re-launch of Italian House blog...
Archive post October 2, 2018…
It has been a long time since I posted anything on Italian House blog. Practically moribund. I’ve been busy. One recent item just arrived on the docket is a third re-vamped of the Your Italian Concierge website. It’s where Italian House resides, so to speak. The first site was geared for my travel planning duties and not much else. Fusing the other endeavours added along the course in recent years… concierge services, property purchase & renovations and vacation rentals at il Poggiolo, our 800 yr old Tuscan farm-house… caused a new look, a new structure for the second YICitalia website. The site was so vast, pages and pages of information, photos, suggestions, features and Italian House to boot, I could barely monitor them much less update any of it regularly yet, especially, Italian House blog. And, the site seemed visually too fussy with so many iphotos. Thus, the third one is in the works. The 3rd site’s initial signature image is the Baroque fresco design I have concocted shown above. What do you think? Once the new website is up & running, I will attempt to dedicate a post each week on the usual… living in Italy, life in a small Italian village, that of a big city, like Genoa… and perhaps discourses on food, wine, culture, art & architecture all the way to how Italians insist on driving while punching messages on their smart phones. It used to just be smoking. Now this. Fun to come, I hope.
Italian Baroque arabesque for Your Italian Concierge.