AGRI WHO?

This year was the worst. Most of the cows behaved nicely but the same does not hold for the visitors. People tried to walk off with our chairs, bags, cakes, sweets, drinks, the lot. So we spent three days policing the stand, on the lookout for weirdos.

The big let down of this year's edition is that the farmer from Spoleto was not there - he is literally the most gorgeous herder you have ever seen :)


What a beauty!


The first generation.


Gab and Pa got roped into clearing the stand on the last day - only afterwards were they allowed to have an apero!

SNOW MANIA & CHOCOLATE FRENZY


De toute facon, c'est de la tarte aux pommes!


No, pas fatigues du tout...

The more it snows tidly pom, the more it goes, tidly pom, the more my toes, tidly pom, are freezing. And did it snow! Powder well above the knees. Fab stuff. Fun time. It was well worth the eight and a half hour drive up to GVA where we had a fondue with the Barcellinis in the Café du Soleil and then on to the chalet where we spent Easter with Mate and Fox, as well as with Alex and Isa, the girls, and their friends Olivier and Laure, Manon and Loic.


"Mother, vomit, kitchen!," squealed Jandro.


A resistant sofa.

DUTCH INVADE CASTLE


Eva and Katja, the two Dutch conquerors


No, we were friendly :)

A long long time ago, the Dutch were great travellers, and then they started getting drastically lost. Eva and Katja, having planed to catch a single train from Florence to Castiglione del Lago, managed to end up in Perugia. Several hysterical phone calls later, they decided to explore the town Eva’s sister JJ had lived in with Cristian, some 15 years earlier. Our first house guests eventually made it back in time to witness Cris being very sick at the Grotta restaurant in Cortona (not because of the quality of the delicious food, but because of the projectile-vomit-virus that I had suffered from a few weeks earlier). On Sunday morning, after a late night in Pepe Rosa where mein Freund Lukas joined us – and took several hours to return home with three police checks – I dragged the girls round our castle. We checked out the boats and I wondered if I should take up sailing now we have moved close to the lake.


The Tuscans attack from that side.

DO YOU THINK YOU CAN WALK FOR FORTY MINUTES AND COME BACK?


A rounded house on a circular hill.

Il Caberlot, Sessicaia, Cennina and Solata, si si si molto bene cappuccino! And yes, I can walk for well over an hour, without stopping and still make it back. Surprising? I have the butt of a bull after the removal and the arms of a horse (che?) and so it was that I trekked from Sessicaia, where Bettina’s (who? But I feel I know the women) Il Caberlot wine is produced (one of the best in Italy – excusez-moi!) to see an old man called Fritz (who was in the US) who lives in the most amazing half castle half church half hamlet. It felt like a trek through time and I wanted to go further. Unfortunately I just had to get back to try the cheese and wine. E vai!


Just through that door and round the corner.

MOOSE MEAT, GINGER BISCUITS AND ARM MUSCLES

On Friday morning, I took the longest car I could get my hands on and headed down to Florence to raid Ikea. A good shopper, I followed the flow and jotted down the reference numbers of the pieces of furniture I intended to buy. Back on the ground floor, I directed my trolley towards the isles, only to realise that I wasn’t strong enough to get fifty kilos worth of cupboards from the top shelf into the trolley. Back I went to find help. Pushing over 150 kilos, I realised there was no way I would be getting all the stuff I needed, so I made my way to the cash point, only to find that there was nowhere to leave the trolley whilst I drove closer to the entrance and no one to help me load my heavy boxes into the car. Gingerly, I sweated out of Ikea and was saved by a Senegalese chap who offered to help me in exchange for a little cash. Thank goodness for extracomunitari!

A MORNING TO REMEMBER
The rescue team went to Cesena on the Friday morning in an advanced state of exhaustion. The following day, we moved in – we slept in Via Vittorio Emanuele for the first time! The night went by in a flash as we were awoken by screams and cheers just under our window. We leapt out of bed to find the Trasimeno Marathon had set up the starting line right under us. And that was one. The following Sunday, Palm Sunday, Don Gianluca went berserk with the church bells, swinging on the rope like a maniac, until he made absolutely sure that everyone was out of bed in a radius of about 100 km.

HOW TO REMOVE A THOUSAND COBWEBS




Mum and Dad, aka the Imbianchino and Donna delle Pulizie (DdP), arrived a few days after I had seriously started to panic about what a stupid idea it was to have rented a flat with not even a sink and in such a filthy state.

After sweeping the ceilings, the DdP valiantly stood atop the ladder to spray the window frames with disinfectant. She started to gag, threatened to throw up because of the putrid smell coming from years of accumulated bird pooh and had to retreat to another area of the flat. I started wondering about guano and the energy that is gathered from the combustion of seagull excrements. Maybe I could set up a business harvesting our windowsills?

Having spent much time on the floor painting the skirting boards, we decided it would be safer to call in an industrial cleaning company to pulverize the grossness stuck to the tiles. And so, one morning, our floors were swirled clean!

The Imbianchino killed his arms and knees painting our four meter high ceilings and all the walls of the 105m2 flat, after having carried boxes down 97 steps and up 48. By the end of the week, both our saviours were so in their respective roles that the landladies walked passed them, totally ignoring both.


DdP - ghost busters!


Mr Imbianchino on stage.


The new fridge contains only the essentials.


and so they celebrated!

FROM TUSCANY TO UMBRIA

Cristian nearly fainted as the door to what was to become the flat we would move into opened. He hardly dared put one foot inside. The cobwebs were thick against all walls, even hanging from the ceiling like in Morticia’s house. Pigeon pooh caked the floor and most windowsills. No windows could be opened to let the light in as scaffolding blocked both sides of the building. The only free ones gave breathtaking views of the internal courtyard (a glorified way of saying a gap in the building to let light in) and its towers of bird dung, sprinkled with a variety of dead animals. After a bit of convincing, we signed the lease with the coldest and most bizarre landlords ever. I immediately called the renovation team from Switzerland and the cleaning began.