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Photo: Ciao bella

When we were working we used to go out on a Sunday night to stretch the weekend for as long as possible. Much better than staying at home waiting for that Monday morning feeling.

As Colin is often on the bike at the weekend we’ve started doing it again, even though Monday is pretty much the same as any other day for us.

Jans’ hair is getting blonder and blonder, Colin’s is getting less and less.

Photo: Manuelo under cover

Though I spends me time
In the ashes and smoke
In this ‘ole wide world
There’s no ‘appier bloke

These lyrics were certainly true of Manuelo. This cheerful chappy turned up on time to sweep our chimney. We were handed a letter of introduction from his company Gli Spazzacamino di Manlio.

He did a fantastic job cleaning the chimney and the fireplace. He left the place spotlessly clean. All the while he was so enthusiastic.

One of the challenges of speaking a foreign language is that once you get to a certain level most native speakers think you are as fluent as them. We’re not.

His enthusiasm and assumption that our Italian was as good as his meant that he spoke at 100 mph so we didn’t understand everything, but enough.

Job done. Thank you Manuelo. Thoroughly recommended.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo: Gio, Patrzia, Jan, Rodolfo, Maddalenna, Marco, Nadia, Leo and Sabrina

To mark the anniversary of the Pansèrs first Twinning trip to London we hosted them for a BBQ at Casa Angeletti yesterday. A great night of chat, eating and drinking. We promised them a proper English BBQ (no rain though), loads to drink and too much food, including sausages of course.

They stunned us by presenting this fantastic cake to complete a wonderful evening:

 

Photos mostly by Rodolfo Rosaverde

Photo: Jan’s impromtu rain scarf summed up a miserable week for the weather.

A quick dash to London. Jan had Board meetings and presentations to attend this week so we had four nights back at the apartment.

Colin managed to squeeze in a quick ride with David and we had a great evening with Carolyn and a different David. It was mid June and we had a weather appropriate meal – chicken pie. Comfort food for a British summer.

We’ll be glad to get back to Italy. Whilst we’ve been here we’ve swapped this:

For this:

Whilst in the butchers collecting a load of British meat for a BBQ on Sunday a guy next to us made us laugh. “I know this sounds odd, but can you recommend a cut of beef for a picnic this afternoon”.

 

Photo: All our olive trees received a serious haircut this spring.

Despite boughts of illness and the worst May weather for decades we’ve been busy in the garden at Casa Angeletti.

It’s all part of our big plan for the garage, cantina and garden to be completed in 2020. Maybe.

It started with Luigi, our olive tree expert. He spent three weekends cutting back the trees. Many of them had suffered over a couple of winters and were in need of serious surgery.

Whilst we didn’t have to do anything during the pruning, we were left with all the cuttings to deal with. There were a lot.

The first step is to recover all the usuable wood. We’ve been very traditional and left piles of wood at the base of the trees.

 

Next job was to remove all the old rosemary and lavender around the house. It took us less time than we expected but still quite a job.

We did manage to salvage some of the rosemary and re-plant them up by the cemetry.

Then a small matter of planting 110 new lavender plants to transform the bank from this:

To this:

Then dealing with all the cuttings from the olive trees. Do we burn them or salvage them somehow? We invested in a new toy. The shredder turned these olive branches …

… into mulch for the bay hedge:

We’re getting very green in our old age. We’re making our own mulch and now our own fertiliser in a hot composter:

This means we no longer leave a bin out for the organic collection once a week. The hot composter can cope with all food waste, bones and all. This is all in preparation for the small vegetable garden (orto) we’re planning. We’ve undergone a complete transformation from City guys to country folk. We’re even planning on attending a bee keeping course this winter so we can have a couple of hives next year.

We can’t do anymore development in the garden until we’ve built the garage.

But that’s another story.

 

 

Photo: ‘Here comes the summer. Alfresco dining at last.

Our first lunch on the terrace at Yankee signifies the start of summer. Incredibly, this year it was the 7th of June. Usually May is glorious but this year was the worst we’ve ever known. “Un disastro” commented Stefano.

Italian hospitality is always good but when you are regular customers the welcome is always so much more personal. Franco was delighted to congratulate Jan on Liverpool’s Champions League victory.

Colin was congratulated for being brave enough to order their new dish for 2019, spaghetti al tonno fresca. I can think of many brave things people have done but ordering spaghetti in a Italian restaurant isn’t one of them. Nevertheless, a nice thing to say and a nice dish it was.