"The defeat of the Spanish Armada changed the course of history. It induced a rush of patriotism in England ... it gave England the confidence and power to command the seas and build a global empire." ("Shakespeare" Bill Bryson)

Le Marche is enjoying the hottest June in over 200 years.  What is it with the weather this year?

Pete and I have been choosing bathroom fittings this week.  Three long, hot sessions of three hours each choosing loos and taps!  What is wrong with us!  Our saleslady, now friend and confidant, is patient and knowledgable.  She flicks through the glossy brochures with the hermetic zeal of an ancient archivist.  This is a family run business.   Her brother sits at a desk at the far end of the shop, seemingly busy, staring at his computer screen.  Every now and then she shouts across to ask further about some product.  Every now and then he shouts over, unprompted, with further information about yet another product.

There is no one else in the shop, though the telephone rings often and she breaks from us to have  a detailed discussion and archive ruffle for some other demanding customer.  At one point she takes a break to collect her two year old from nursery, at another to lead us through back-room labyrinths to look at some product that is actually in stock - this is rare.  Other frequent breaks to shoo away her ten year old who, with precious entrepreneurial skill is trying to sell us his own home made lemonade at 50 centesimi a plastic beakerful.

During one session another customer walks in, sits behind us.  After an hour or so Pete turns to her to apologise for keeping her waiting.  "No problem" she replies genially, "I've spent weeks choosing a tap for my kitchen sink and I'm no closer."  If she'd told us that last week we wouldn't have believed her.

By 7pm Friday evening we are satisfied (as far as one can be) that we've chosen almost everything to fit out two bathrooms, but we have been known to change our minds.  We make an appointment to come back next Tuesday.

Outside, entrepreneurial son has set up  a lemonade stall in the car park.  There isn't another soul about. I feel for the lad and stop to buy, "One lemonade please, but 50 cents is too much, I think".
"OK, 25..."
"A deal!"  I can't decide whether the boy's not such an shark after all, or whether I should have bargained harder.  The tepid water with a squeeze of lemon and a sachet of sugar with the local bar's logo on it tasted quite good really - I tell him so.  His smile is inscrutable.

I am writing this as Italy is playing England in the quarter finals of the World Cup.  When you read this you will know the result.  Pete has gone for a boys' night at Paolo's agriturismo to watch the game on a big-screen TV.  He'll be the sole Brit there.  I felt a bit like Sir Walter Raleigh (playing ... bowls was it?), when the approaching Armada was sighted.  Goodness me, look what happened when England won on that occasion, but that was Spain, wasn't it?

In the garden here, one lone flower on the prickly pear has bloomed.  It blooms for one day and then it dies.  But what a day!

"A child said, What is grass? fetching it to me with full hands; How could I answer the child? I do not know any more than he." (from "Song of Myself" Walt Whitman)>

Summer has finally arrived in Le Marche.  The balers are making hay and creating fever pitched frustration amongst the drivers on the narrow roads.  Vineyards are being weeded, sprayed (for bugs?), and prayed over.  One way or another the countryside is a-buzz.

And then there are the odd, few fields where, it seems, time has stood still.  Here men drive their womenfolk in the early morning and leave them to their day's work, harvesting the crop.  The women wear long, flowered dresses, with dark scarves tied over their heads and as they work they chat to each other loudly and unceasingly.  The crop (for what it is I do not know) is gathered into little stacks around a wigwam-like,wooden frame.  When the frame has been covered with the dried grassy/hay-like crop, a little canvas "sail" or "hat" is tied on top and each corner fastened with string which is staked to the ground.  These little stacks have something medieval (almost primeval) about them.  Something one of the Breughels might have painted.  We have gleaned that the stacks are called "cavalli" (horses) because of those little hats tied on top like saddles (?).  The idea is, apparently, that from the stack, seeds, or perhaps beans? (or perhaps magic beans?) will fall - this is the harvest.  It looks as though this method of harvesting has not changed for centuries.  I don't really want to know what the crop is;  that would break the spell.

At sunset the "luciole" (fireflies) work their own magic as they ignite, flicker and frolic in their unchoreographed dance across the parched lawns.  The chemistry which makes them glow is the stuff of science - thank goodness no one's told them that.

Yesterday we went inland to Acqualagnia, the land of the "marmisti" (literally - marble-mason). We finally found an artisan who will make my little wall mounted fountain to my own design.  It's not an essential part of the house , we shouldn't really be bothering with it right now, given all the other things that have to be sourced and chosen, but right now this is my little bit of magic and mystery.


Today, at il Gelso there were two groundbreaking events. 


Firstly, the kitchen walls have been finished, the wooden beams have been fitted and this morning the "pianelle" (the ceiling tiles) are being put in place.  They are old tiles, I don't know from where they were sourced, but they are the last set of ceiling tiles to go in the house and they are the most beautiful; all shades of rust and ochre.  The kitchen is beginning to look like a habitable room at last. 


Secondly, this morning, Paolo became a grandfather!  A girl!  More magic and mystery.  He'll be in a good mood for a while; I must make some of the important, impending choices on the house before the euphoria wears off.  Suspect there's no rush though.

   

But humans had fought a long battle with nature. In London victory was almost complete. Acres of bricks and concrete and steel with only the tamest sprouts of green. In London a man could really feel he was master of all creation." ("Grace" Maggie Gee)

Our "house in the making" has been progressing apace.  The "ripostiglio" (utility room) has walls and a roof.  The walls of the kitchen are going up: new walls all around, including a double wall around the original building, necessary to hold up the roof and to establish the kitchen as a separate entity should the earth move.  This wall between the living room and kitchen will be over half a metre deep, almost a corridor!  On the side of the master bedroom there will be a "loggia": a little gallery or walkway.  The cement for its floor has been laid and already a cat, perhaps wild, or perhaps a fox, has left its prints.  Our neighbour had four of his sheep killed by a wolf the previous night.  Our paw prints may be those of a wolf, he suggests.  I think he was joking.

But the most impressive piece of construction, a tribute to Paolo's strategic planning, took place last Friday.  At present the annexe is a rectangular stretch of land with four little poles marking out the four corners of its area.  The main house is far from ready, but Paolo is thinking ahead.  The foundations of the annexe have to be prepared well in advance.  Early Friday morning a digger with a hydraulic boring screw arrives and begins to dig out the first of fifteen holes - each more than 5 metres deep.  Every strata of the clay soil comes out darker and heavier the deeper the bore goes.  The final layer is almost black.  It looks heavy, but it is deceptive, it is light and and slightly moist and crumbles as you clench your fist around it. (It has not the slightest smell petroleum.)

A host of rusty, tubular weld mesh wire cages have been lying around on the site, weeds have twined themselves around them.  I hadn't really noticed them, thinking them part of the flotsam of a building site.  Once the holes are drilled, Paolo and his helpers carefully lower the cages into them.  This manoeuvre requires strength and precision, it is feat of... heroic proportion (?)

As if by magic a cement lorry, its revolving drum turning like a barber shop sign, arrives as the last cage is in place.  The cement is carefully channeled into the holes..  The cement lorry, with the ability to turn on a penny (like a London taxi), positions itself precisely before pouring its load.  Not a drop spills.  That is, not until the job is done , when the driver tips out the remains of his load on a bare patch of ground nearby.  Paolo studies this dollop of cement incredulously, he hasn't yet worked out his strategy for disposing of it.  He's got a month 'til it hardens completely.  He's knows this, it is why he has filled the holes well in advance.  The buried cement pillars will form the foundations of the annexe.

There were two earthquakes in neighbouring regions of Italy over the weekend.  Major quakes - quite devastating in their effect.  Thinking of them brings home the fact, like nothing else so far, that I am truly in a foreign land.

Drilling the 5 metre holes for the concrete posts

Carrying the wire rod for the concrete posts

Heroically raising the reinforcing rods

Filling the post holes with concrete

"Breathe out the sense of place, the sense of humour, and the sense of despair that fill the air...". (Donna Leon commenting on the work of Camillieri)

We are currently living on one side of a valley and our new house lies on the other.  The ridges on either side are divided by the river Cesano, which lazily flows into the Adriatic, about thirty kilometres  away.  Few bridges cross the Cesano along this end of its journey.  One such bridge has recently fallen down;  reportedly by a flash flood.  It was a historic bridge with what must have been beautiful stone arches.  Now it is a crumpled heap of masonry scattered across the seemingly benign waters of a mild Spring.

Being one of the few, this was an important bridge for transport across the valley.  On all the approach roads the Commune has now erected unmissable and unmistakable "No Through Road" signs ("Strada Interrotta") in wild orange and black.  For none is this more inconvenient than for the cement company whose quarry blots the landscape to the north of the river.  But theirs is the stuff that constructs and their multi-ton lorries need to get through, and they know that the Commune is not going to rebuild the bridge in a hurry - not in a year, not in a decade perhaps.

So, the cement company has built their own bridge.  It seems kinda logical, doesn't it.  It's a low bridge, a bit boring maybe, maybe prone to flooding, but it's functional and it must be sturdy enough to bear the weight of those lorries, for now.

The Commune maintains its rigid signs - "No Through Road".  They know nothing of the new bridge ;-)

The local community knows better and traffic flows regularly and smoothly over this stretch of the Cesano.  An occasional car stops, hesitates, sees the next car plough happily through, starts up again and, lemming-like, wagons ahead.  Long may it last.

One wonders what will come first - the reconstruction of the centuries old bridge, or the collapse of the new under the weight of those cement lorries.  Then again one wonders why the cement company doesn't construct a new bridge in the likeness of the old.

As in a glass house, we travel south across the valley to view the latest developments on our new construction.  The wooden frames where the doors and windows will go have been put in place.  We are here to decide which walls the bed heads will rest against so that those walls can be straightened.  Our choice is limited to those which are already relatively straighter, i.e. the one in each room.

Our bed will face south, I don't know if that's good feng shui, but it leads to Rome and so perhaps feng shui is a bit irrelevant here.

"At that moment he spotted the Traffic Department car parked behind his and the overalled warden jotting down his registration number. Harry crossed the street and held up his ID card. "I'm on police business". "Makes no difference. No parking is no parking", overalls said without pausing in his writing, "send in a complaint" ". ("The Leopard", Jo Nesbo).

The Italian newspapers today report that the "vigili urbani" (traffic police/wardens) in Rome have run out of official parking tickets.  (A case of "cuts" cutting off the nose to spite the face?).  No problem, with sound Italian ingenuity the vigili have printed off, and are attempting to present transgressors with, photocopies.  The question is whether a photocopy constitutes a valid legal document.  The wardens are consequently having to summon up all their "charm" to convince the lawbreakers that their parking tickets are indeed valid and that the on-the-spot fine must be paid forthwith.  How resourceful can a traffic warden be?   Disarmed, must be disarming!  as one resourceful journalist put it.  (The alliteration translates well).

Due to a "technical" hitch the amount of  real space for the staircase in our house falls somewhat short of that allowed on the original plan.  We are aware (sort of).  Paolo has been trying to worry us with this for weeks:  "But, I have to recalculate every step to the millimetre!" ...  "I have to redesign the entire stairwell!"  We smile meekly, sympathise, place a reassuring hand on his shoulder,  rue that there isn't one on ours.   Whether out of self-preservation (this was a problem too far), or whether out of absolute faith in Paolo's ingenuity (I prefer this one) we didn't take the bait, refusing to be reined-in to this potential nightmare.

As it turns out, Paolo has won through.  We always knew.

The base of the staircase has just been concreted.  We have access to the first floor as such, as yet.

There will be a first floor... won't there, Paolo?

"Marine atmospheres in search of colours, in the naturalness of materials and lines of horizons." (from the introduction to one catalogue of medium-range Italian kitchens, designed by their specially commissioned "poly-sensorial" architect. The english translation is theirs.)

Now that the concrete base of the kitchen is down, we have a clearer idea of its dimensions.  This means only one thing - we have to choose a kitchen.

When it comes to state-of-the-art kitchen design Italy has no peer.  At the top of the range the Tate Modern would be hard put to find worthier exhibits.  A few of these kitchens even look as though they might be fit-for-purpose (as functioning kitchens, that is).
But, as with all things Italian, for the modest man with a modest budget, buying a fitted kitchen is quite a different kettle of fish.  I think I may have moaned about shopping in Italy before - it's a nightmare!  (And you can forget internet shopping, Italian design is pre-Unification when it comes to web sites.)


There are hundreds of little outlets for fitted kitchens, one for almost every town in Le Marche alone.  Many are reasonably priced and Italians, it seems, will not think twice about ripping out and replacing a kitchen on a whim.  Styles range from the cluttered, impractical country-style with tile and grout worktops - what? -  a poor imitation of a gypsy caravan, through endless IKEA lookalikes (or is it vice versa), to copies of the modern masterpieces.


We think we'd like a country style kitchen of sorts.  But, when it comes to country kitchens you can't beat English design and workmanship.  I now know why endless repeats of "Midsommer Murders" (dubbed) are so popular on RAI TV.  Italians aren't interested in solving the crime (they've got Montalbano for that), they simply want to catch every glimpse of those quaint, english kitchen interiors.  Who can blame them!


I, however, have my sights on BIGGER horizons, neither of which fall within the fitted kitchen pricing category at all.  Firstly, I'd like a BIG fridge, with a BIG freezer - for ice-cream.  Secondly, a BIG sink - for washing BIG pasta pots.  And the third is, an outrageously  prominent, all singing, all dancing gleaming stainless-steel coffee-making machine for ...  "bella figura".  And, lastly, a cosy corner where I can drink my mug of Instant; eat my Marmite toast unseen; and with confidence, plan my day in the sun.

“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