Fill your days with life, not your life with days
Photo: A rare day off from working the land. The women thrashed the men at boule. May 31st used to be a big day for us. It was Oracle's year end. It dominated our working life for years. One year Colin started the morning of May 31st on 49% of his annual target. I finished …
Photo: Just one of the nineteen forms to travel from Italy to the UK I handed over €5 to pay for our coffees. Gio handed me back the change. €5. No charge for our last coffees for a couple of weeks. Grazie Gio. It was 06:00 and we had a long drive to London for …
Photo: Massimo at work 19 weeks: Tops and tails As promised three more workers turned up on Monday to help Elio speed the build along. We soon realised that quantity doesn't necessarily mean speed. We almost started working as labourers as we would have been four times as fast as one of them in particular. …
Photo: We managed to collect the car just before Marche goes into the Red Zone tomorrow. Another step along the road to post Brexit life. An Italian car. An X1. The most important test was a few weeks ago when Colin rode to the dealership to see if the bike would fit in the back …
Photo: Connected - or so we thought (3rd March) Italy continues to delight and frustrate in equal measure. Here's a story of frustration. We haven't made this up. It happened. Friday 15th January In the Telecom Italia (TIM) shop in Fano they said that ordering a new fixed line for TIM Super Fibra was quicker …
New year, new start. Fast out of the blocks? Not quite. The first week of the new year was punctuated by Epiphany, or Befana. A national holiday in the middle of the week and bad weather kept progress to a minimum. We did think that once out of the ground the garage and portico would …
Would we be leaving through the green or the red door? The local Comunes have set up a scheme to offer free Covid tests for any resident. So far they have found 700 people with no symptoms that have tested positive, so we thought we should get tested. We dropped by the local restaurant being …
If you don't get the reference in the title, it's from our childhood. Trumpton (1967) The day before we, as citizens, leave the EU it was a very British experience. Queuing. Yesterday we received a reminder from "Brits in Italy" that we need to start the process of exchanging our UK driving licenses before the …
Continue reading "Queue, Queue, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb"
"About 8 weeks" was the answer from our geomtera, Sauro, when we asked how long it would take to build the cantina, garage and portico. As it took us six years to get this far then a forecast in weeks rather than months was fine by us. Like the rest of the world we are …
Photo: The only way to celebrate in Italy when the restaurants are closed On the morning of Friday 24th June 2016 the alarm went off in London at 05:00 for our drive to Italy. We turned on the radio. We were plunged into a state of shock. The UK had voted to leave the EU. …
