“Something was nagging at me. I tried lying down on the bed and reading. A book about how the potato came to Sweden. I had read it several times before. Presumably because it didn’t raise any questions. I could turn page after page and know that I wasn’t going to be faced with something unpleasant and unexpected. I switched off the light at midnight. My two animals had gone off to sleep (...) I tried to come to a decision.” (“Italian Shoes” by Henning Mankell).

I read today, that in the current economic crisis, Italians are spending about the same as always.  The difference being that they are spending less on shoes, but more on over-the-counter medications.  I don’t spend too much time drawing conclusions from that.

The burning issue which kept me awake last night was “cotto”.  For the floors of our “new build” do we lay real cotto tiles or porcelain (gres porcellanato)?  The pros and cons are manifold.  Cotto is the genuine article.  It is, and it looks it!  It complements a rustic house.  It diffuses heat evenly from underfloor heating and, with modern methods of wax protection, it is (we are assured by the makers) relatively easy to maintain.  But, it creates an uneven surface, it is more expensive and complicated to install and it is more prone to crack, especially in an area of seismic activity.

Ah, seismic activity!  Peter, Paolo and I spent two and a half hours last week with the structural engineer, agreeing (trying to) his detailed report, which ran to over 1,000 pages (we took his word). It was not the report itself which took so much time, as the discussion, sometimes heated on the engineer's side, about the nature of Italian bureaucracy which requires such a lengthy report on a small house.  Oh, and the one about unskilled brickies being paid more than highly qualified structural engineers.  (For all I know there may be a commissioned report somewhere which analyses how each of these income groups spends its money).  At the time it seemed like a relief when the "seismic" question surfaced.  Peter asked how the seismic activity beneath our house rated.  “Moderate” was the expert’s reply.  No-one  asked, nor was told, where “moderate” features on the Richter scale of an earth moving disaster.

Back to cotto.  Yesterday we drove 2 hours inland to Perugia to visit a real Umbrian cotto manufacturer.  (Such is the gravitas of this decision.  It should also be mentioned that we had previously visited a world renowned porcelain tile manufacturer, based not a million kilometers from here).  In Perugia each cotto tile is made by hand in an enormous barn.  The floor is heated and the tile makers work at a blink and you miss it pace, hopping to their industry on bare feet and using the simplest of wooden frames to shape each tile.  The tile is then placed on the warm floor to partially dry before going into the oven.  The oven is then heated to some unimaginable (scary) temperature.  For some reason the rough wooden templates, and those bare feet, brought the pyramids to mind.

Porcelain tiles, on the other hand, are relatively effortless to install and maintain.  They are virtually indestructible and, with Italian design ingenuity, can be breathtakingly beautiful.  Some can look like the real thing - almost.

It’s a tough call;  can lead to sleepless nights.

Back to the house itself where work progresses at its own pace.  Igloos are ready to be put in place and soon we will be pressed to decide on the flooring.  Something to be pondered upon after a good night’s rest, I think.  Domani ...

Stack of igloos waiting to form the sub-floor

"Spring is sprung, the grass is ris. I wonder where the birdies is. Some say the bird is on the wing. But that's absurd. I always heard the wing was on the bird." Spike Milligan

Trees that a week ago were still laden with snow are now abundant with pink and white blossom.  The season of the snow plough is ended - bring on the diggers!  Well, one digger actually, owned and operated by Stefano - a modest fellow, but so sought after for his skills that we (we are assured by Paolo) are very fortunate to have him working on our house.  Fortunate indeed!  Stefano and his little digger can move heaven and earth in a six hour shift and, if the mountain won't come to Stefano, god help the mountain!


Earth has been removed inside and outside of the house to depths where you can feel (nay, see) the heat rise from the earth's core.


As we approach from the roadside the house is almost invisible behind mounds of displaced earth.  The grounds around the house look like an alien breed of giant moles has invaded, whilst the house itself rises like a little jewel in the midst of all this activity.  The whole team is there.  While Stefano digs and twirls, others scoop and "bob" in this carefully choreographed dervish dance.  Paolo is measuring depths, grinning and growling alternately, but mostly growling: deeper, deeper!

Our dogs sit patiently in the open doorway, watching and wondering: Surely with this much digging someone will come up with a bone or two soon!  If any treasures are uncovered neither we nor the dogs get to know.

This is not all.  Around the walls even deeper trenches have been dug so that cages can be fitted into which concrete will be poured to secure the foundations of the old walls.  The floor levels have been grazed to the required depths.  The house itself will have 3 levels as it cascades down the hillside, and ceiling heights will be... anyone's guess.  The area for the kitchen has been gauged, levelled and concreted.  All is ready for the "igloos" to be put in place.  Igloos are igloos.  They sit on the concrete under the floor and are there for ventilation.  In case you're wondering, they're made of plastic!

For the first time we can walk freely around the ground floor.  Now we have a true sense of the dimensions of the rooms.  This is not a big house - where will we put all our stuff in storage?  Stuff that worry, where will we put anything at all?


The whole of the first floor ceiling has been demolished and until it is reconstructed, we look up from ground level to the top floor roof beams - cathedral-like.  We had better make the most of this illusion,  the new ceiling, i.e. the whole of the first floor goes in next week.

"Round its roof hung a gutter as wide as a human thigh. Here whatever fell from the sky fell in abundance. There was no other man-made structure in sight. ("Anatomy of a Disappearance" Hisham Matar).

And now the snow has gone.  It is hard to believe that such snow ever fell here at all.  Though in its wake much has been ruined.  Towns are impassable, where the structure of palazzos in their centre, has been weakened and threatens to collapse.  Young olive trees planted last spring, have withered entirely, having been buried in snow.  Much older, well established trees have been bent and broken by the weight of snow.  Fallen branches litter the roadsides; men are at work everywhere lopping precarious branches or repairing road surfaces ruined by over eager (perhaps inexperienced?) "ruspe" (snow ploughs).


Our structure has proved itself sound.  The roof has held solid and the chimneys stand proud and valiant.  The new copper gutters gleam in the sun.  These gutters have a dimension and an almost-beauty which English houses, their roofs wired with sorry strands of black plastic, can only envy.


The next stage of the project will be the re-construction of the kitchen.  Men are already at work!

“The mass of anything is made of round, cushy atoms hanging together like strangers, waiting for a noon bus. Precarious solids are worrisome.” (From “Half Life” by my favourite YouTube poet, tinySpectacle).

I like these two images.  One of the “strada bianca” after the snow plough and the second, taken at the same time, of the cloud formation overhead.  Who’s imitating whom?  A reflection perhaps?  Or simply a coincidence, like the one that finds us here this particular winter.

“The others leap, shout: Freedom! The moving water will not show me my reflection. The rocks ignore. I am a word in a foreign language.” (“Disembarking at Quebec.” from “The Journals of Susanna Moody” by Margaret Atwood).

“Yes, Officer, I’ve got the snow chains, trouble is, I CAN’T FIND THE CAR!!”

It has been snowing for five days.  White on white.  Outside, with each step, your leg sinks hip-height into the snow.  The electricity is intermittent and today the water pipes have frozen.

Yesterday on TV news we saw the Pope looking out from his misted window onto the snow which St. Peter’s Square has not seen the like of since the middle of the last century.  Rome’s public services complain they can’t cope; its Mayor is saying his prayers.  People are skiing on the streets of Naples.

We are lucky.  At seven a.m. whilst we are cleaning teeth with melted snow, a trusty fellow from the Commune is chugging down the hill to our house with a makeshift snow-plough attached to his tractor, clearing, as best he can, the roadway to the village.  He leaves mountains of snow and ice ridged up by the roadside.  Fortunately, Peter’s Land Rover has been in and out and we have a tyre track thoroughfare.  Also, I had opened the electric gates on seeing the first snowflake, thus saving Peter from half a days digging in order to get them open.  Paolo calls that “perspicacia”.  I looked it up in the Italian/English dictionary; it said “perspicacity” but, my English dictionary is in storage.

Yesterday afternoon Paolo phoned, worried, from his house in town.  He believed his younger son (30+) to be marooned in his agriturismo B & B 5k away; he is not answering the phone and Paolo cannot get his own car out of the drive.  Peter offered to drive Paolo over to check things out.  The Land Rover is maneuverable, just, with snow chains and the “diff lock” on.   Paolo, anxious, was at his gate and as we drove up he exclaimed, “The English have come to liberate us!”.  He must have a long memory!

Young son was safe and well at home, and in the capable arms of his girlfriend, his mobile having run out of juice.  But, his electric gates were closed and not operating.  Peter and Paolo had to stealth their way in, on foot, under snow. Even if the gates had been open no-one would have been able to navigate through the seeming-iceberg left by the snow plough which had cleared the road in front.  Stranded son had a full larder; wood for the fire; a working TV, and a full bottle of whisky, a Christmas present (perhaps from a perspicacious friend):  everyone has their own idea of freedom.  Paolo breathed his second sigh of relief.  Too soon.  The Land Rover had become stuck, poised pivotal on top of the “iceberg” at the gate, in a vain attempt to bulldoze an exit for Paolo’s son’s Panda.  It took an hour for the three men to dig the Land Rover free.

The scaffolding enclosing “our house in the making” has been removed.  Not before time.  When the weather improves (...?) work will resume.  Meanwhile, if our water supply is not resumed soon, we may have to seek out alternative alternative accommodation for the duration; somewhere dog friendly.

"But there was nothing chiselled about it. In fact, it consisted of stones stacked one atop the other. Time had since taken care of binding and cementing them, camouflaging them with dust, earth, seeping water and saltpetre, finally transforming the rough surface into an almost natural wall." ("The Terracotta Dog" Andrea Camilleri transl. by Stephen Sartarelli)

Mid January and we are at the "house in progress".  Peter wants to climb the scaffolding to check the depth of the insulation in the roof, like some inspector from the grants department of a London borough.  He steps onto the scaffolding and even before his full weight is on it, the metal structure creaks and wobbles.  Whatever he finds up there, I'll take his word for it.

Heedless of this, on another part of the roof, Alessandro (our Michelangelo) is acting out a scene for a comedy film with intermittent fast forward (or so it seems to me at ground level).  First we see him pacing leisurely along a barren slope of the roof.  Suddenly he calls down below for some bricks.  The bricks appear on the roof beside him. 

Fast forward, Alessandro is placing the bricks wildly into a pile. 

Change of pace, he calls down to anyone within earshot: Does that look ok?  Someone calls back: No, take that yellow brick there, yeh, that one, and swop it for that bigger one in the other corner.  

Fast forward, Alessandro is juggling bricks again.  Then he stops, no more questions.  He just stands back and right there on top of the roof he leans against his brick structure (with more confidence than seems wise), hand rolls a cigarette, lights it, then blows thin strands of smoke into the the gentle breeze.  We ask a fellow worker what's going on:  Oh, Sandro has just built a chimney!  Of course, stupid question, as would be:  is it in the right place; is it the right size/ shape; will it work; will it stand the test of time?  I raise a hand up to Alessandro:  Nice chimney Alex!  He smiles, flings his cigarette butt down onto the earth below and wanders off casually to another part of the roof.  In the plans, the house has two chimneys.

The roof is near completion, and if the fine weather holds, work will soon start on the foundations of the kitchen.  This lies to the north west side of the house, it is part of the original building , but had to be demolished at the outset of restructuring as it was completely unstable.  The exterior walls of the new kitchen will not have the stone "faccia vista" of the rest of the house and will be stucco'd (as opposed to rendered and painted).  Our next big hurdle will be to decide which colour "stucco" and ...will our choice meet Paolo's (our geometra) approval?

“Time has no divisions to mark its passage, there is never a thunderstorm or a blare of trumpets to announce the beginning of a new month or year ... it is only we mortals who ring bells and fire off pistols”. (“The Magic Mountain” Thomas Mann)

And so the festivities are over, the sky is a clear blue and the sun warm enough to sit outside and enjoy a morning coffee.

Christmas was heralded in Corinaldo (just inland from the coast) with an impressive flag waving ceremony and a somewhat alarming fanfare of fireworks, set off in the town’s smallest square with its densest crowd of the year.  No harm done really, though one woman’s hair was singed.

Back to Corinaldo on Christmas day with our two eldest sons, who had managed to fly out for a few days; our youngest  at work in London in a 2* Michelin restaurant.  We, however, were booked into a restaurant carved into the fortress walls of this town.  An Antipasto of 5 separate dishes; primi piatti of 3 dishes including the Christmas special of gorgeous cappelletti in brodo; secondi piatti of 3 different meat dishes with contorni of vegetables and salad; dessert of fresh cream cake and pannettone, followed by a basket of fresh fruit, coffee and a glass of bubbly.  There were 3 bottles of local wine on the table and a generous “digestivo” of limoncello to complete and complement the meal which was quite excellent.  Not, perhaps, Michelin star, but then neither was the all inclusive price of 35 euros per person.  Three and a half hours later we walked into the sunshine and took a short walk around the historic town, quite deserted.

Between Christmas and New Year I went into the local hospital for three days to undergo a planned minor operation.  Is this experience different from the NHS?  Oh yes, in a myriad of minor ways, mostly to do with culture, family concern and common sense - a lot more of all three here.  But essentially it’s the same - you go in naive and nervous and come out bruised and baffled.  Feeling fine now.

New Year here is celebrated with a special meal on the eve and the inevitable fireworks at midnight.  We stepped outside to watch every little town, as far as our pivotal horizon could encompass, compete with a magnificent starry sky.  Surprisingly, the air the following morning is fresh and clear and the church bells are pealing, louder and more sonorous, it seems, this morning.

The Italian newscast tells another story of damage to property, life and limb around the country, caused by “careless” (euphemism) use of fireworks.  Essentially, much the same as “news” in England every November 6th.

Peter and I have completed our celebrations by visiting our “ruin” - now very much a “house in the making” !  Here are some photos of the new roof, minus the "coppi" roof tiles still to be laid, with perhaps a glimpse of that no.15 wood stain and the rather shiny new copper guttering.  A start has been made in grouting the stone "faccia vista".  The “Atto” has been signed, taxes paid to the commune, we are officially “established”!  We have great hopes for 2012, can, almost, hear that blare of heavenly trumpets.