Where have the buzzards gone?

I’m not a birdwatcher. Most of them look and sound much the same to me I have to confess but I was taken this summer by the display of a pair of buzzards which suddenly appeared in the church woods adjacent to our land and which seemed to view our 20 acres as their territory.

The sheer speed with which they hurtled to earth would be enough to terrify even the most hardened pleasure rider and it was a good spectator sport sitting in a chair watching them swoop and climb over the ‘Magic Valley’ as Damaris calls it.

We found them one day sitting in the walnut tree which is not 10 metres from the house – they rarely come that close to humans.

I haven’t seen them now in a couple of weeks which was about when the hunting season began. I daresay some geriatric Rambo clad in his camouflage and armed with a double-barrelled rifle thought that they would look good in his pot. It is easy to imagine them in the ‘Rootin’, tootin’, shootin” shop (Hunting and Fishing) showing off their prizes to other likeminded individuals. Of course, the bounty bag closes abruptly as soon as any ordinary member of the public passes – it wouldn’t do for them to know.

I have to be the last person anyone would call a ‘greenie’ but these people just haven’t caught on. To them, if there are no more buzzards, they will just shoot something else and go on and on until there is nothing but they cannot conceive of that day so they just carry on.

Maybe I’m wrong and the buzzards have just taken a holiday somewhere but I have a horrible feeling that they both ended up with a nasty case of lead-poisoning.

Darker nights

The clocks going back an hour really make a big difference here – particularly when combined with the extreme speed of sunset. I was sat outside on our bench at 4pm watching the dogs play on the gravel drive; 30 minutes later it was pitch black.

My wife grumbles at the expense of the driveway lights. I had a dozen put up with 6 of them being double-headed. I realise that this uses a lot of electricity (although they all have saver bulbs) when you run them from sunset to 11pm but it does send out a message to hunters and other trespassers to keep off. It also goes some way towards scaring off wild animals until at least well into the night.

I’m very conscious of how isolated we are out here.  Although this part of Italy is quiet on the lawbreaking front (well as quiet as anywhere is, these days), we are a fair way away from anyone else and I remember what it was like when I had my house in England broken into by a gang of junkies. It was my then girlfriend’s birthday and I copped a brick in the face breaking my nose. The dogs scare off most Italians so that helps.

As I think I put in other posts, I could happily play my saxophone here at 2am and I doubt anyone would hear me.

The dogs made a racket last night chasing some animal down the drive. We couldn’t see or be certain of what it was but my guess is that it was a porcupine. There is a hollow down in the lower orchard where one sleeps at night so it could well be him. Pascal, the dog that died, had a run-in with one. He came back to us with a spine just below his eye. Apparently when cornered, the porcupine can fire off his quills and woe-betide you if you are in range (as Pascal found out).

Yes, it’s great fun dog-hunting at 3am when all you know of their location is a distant growling and woofing. We try not to let them out that late but it’s hard to separate a ‘call of nature’ from a desire for a moonlight adventure.

I often lie in bed listening to the owls hooting, often closely-followed by some poor creature’s shriek of surprise as it is swept up by the bird’s talons. Sentimentality is to be avoided, though – the last thing we need is to be over-run by voles and mice. Let the owls, buzzards and snakes have them.

Modern Languages

I’ve decided to start work revamping the modern languages section of our website – www.anysubject.com/modern-languages.asp and have already done www.anysubject.com/afrikaans.asp and www.anysubject.com/french.asp

At the speed I am moving, I anticipate this taking several weeks but I hope that the end result will bring in a reasonable amount of revenue that will make the effort worthwhile.

We had an excellent plug from The Times – http://www.timesonline.co.uk:80/tol/life_and_style/education/student/article4962966.ece

The lost dog

Damaris came back from her eye appointment (she has Glaucoma) and, as she turned off the main road onto the steep narrow local road that leads to our hamlet, she had to brake suddenly because there was a dog flopped out in the middle of the road. This was not a case of some creature choosing an inappropriate place to sun itself (for starters, there was no sunshine to be enjoyed). The animal looked very sick and ill-at-ease and Damaris even wondered if it was rabid – a disease which we have never heard of anyone contracting anywhere even vaguely near us.

The dog was a huge Italian sheepdog and it turned out to belong to the goatkeeper who lives at the bottom of our hill. We knew he had a big female one – she is kept chained up outside the whole year long and even in the middle of summer (35C or above) and winter (-12C and below) she has no shelter or respite. Apparently she gave birth to three pups – one he kept, one he killed and this one which he allows to roam the countryside looking for food (as he refuses to feed it).

Damaris called the local Vigili (police) on their mobile (the guy is going to regret giving her that!) and he sent two dog-catchers around to collect the mutt from the road. How they ever catch a dog must remain a mystery because no matter how old and decrepit it might be, it would still move faster than them. Anyway, they arrived just in time for it to scarper off across the fields.

From the dog’s point of view this is just as well. Capture by the dog-catchers effectively means life (as in until death) in a tiny cage with very limited human contact. Damaris had offered to take the dog (although what we would have done with it, goodness knows). At one year old, it was far too badly set in its anti-social ways to fit in with our plans and, in any case, there is no room left in the back of our Nissan Pathfinder after our three dogs are in it.

This is how locals view animals. If they don’t work or don’t feed you, then they are useless. This is not just the English sense of ‘fair play’ nor our obsession with pets and their rights, this goes deeper. There is something very lacking in the education of the people here. Did you read my post on the hunter who shot a thrush? It was ‘OK’ because it was a migrant bird and not a native one. What has that spurious bit of logic to do with anything?

I don’t think that a single person we know has any idea of environmental changes, disappearing species, overcrowding, pollution or any of the long list of modern ailments. Is this just a lack of interest, an in-built arrogance or the product of a catholic education? For a people who are normally more caring to strangers than many places one could name their attitude seems incongruous and incomprehensible.

Is bene well?

Just because I don’t speak much Italian (there’s no point when nobody makes the effort to understand you), it doesn’t mean I don’t understand it. What gets me is that most dialogues are so cliched.

If you went to school in the seventies or before then you probably remember the old language-teaching text books we used to have. The content was so heavily-structured that it was almost impossible to read with a straight face, nevermind believe in or learn from. For example, our old French book began with:

“Bonjour, Pierre”, dit Adolphe.

“Bonjour, Adolphe”, dit Pierre.

“Bonjour Pierre et Adolphe”, dit Claude.

“Bonjour Claude”, dit Adolphe.

“Bonjour Claude”, dit Pierre.

But no-one really talks like that, or do they? Well, they do here although it’s more like:

“Ciao, va bene?”

“Ciao, si, va bene. Va bene anche?”

But who the hell is Bennie?

Everything is ‘va bene’. The guy we bought our first Italian house through is a ‘va bene’ addict. I’m not going to say his name but if you know this part of the world, think ‘Shakin’ Stevens’. Anyway, he (not Shakey, that is) can’t say a sentence without ‘Va bene’ in it.

I don’t care what people may say, the reality of it is is that the Italian language is impoverished the way it is spoken. On a more serious note, we had terrible problems specifying the concrete for our swimming pool. We needed it to be a particular grade – ie over 300kg of cement per cubic metre of concrete but how can you do that when the word for both concrete and cement is ‘cimento’? What does it mean when you say you want 300kg of cimento per cubic metre of cimento? Absolutely nothing!

… and then we wanted it laid on mesh. Mesh is ‘rete’ but then so again is ‘fence’ and ‘grid’ and probably a dozen other things, too.

There is only one word for ‘paint’. That one word has to cover emulsion, gloss, enamelled paint etc etc.

Prunes, plums, greengages etc are all called ‘pruni’. Dogs are dogs (they don’t have breeds) and cars, tractors, lorries etc all get called ‘una macchina’.

I can’t stand the way every phone call begins with ‘Pronto?’ meaning ‘Ready?’. I can’t help hearing the English, “Oy, you. Are you listening to me?” instead. No-one says ‘Ciao’ – just ‘Pronto’. Ciao itself means ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’, by the way.

But what gets me most of all is that there must be a dozen or more words for pasta when it’s all the same thing, anyway!

The ‘thrill’ of the hunt

Since Damaris asked the chief honcho to give us warning before he and his calvary come charging across our land in search of some unfortunate creature, it has been relatively quiet on the hunting front. A few days ago, though, we started noticing a regular group of cars parked just off the last stretch of public road (before it becomes our private drive). From the rifle-shots, it was clear that they have taken to hunting in the woods belonging to the Church. These woods abut our land but are at least 100 metres from our house so we are out of range, at least.

I wouldn’t mind if they concentrated on shooting pigeons, the rabbits and hares which find our orchard so nutritious, wild boar and crows but they insist on shooting thrushes, woodpeckers and anything which is foolish enough to think a tree in the middle of the woods is a good place to live.

These hunters are a funny lot. Mainly middle-aged to elderly men, they dress up in camouflage gear, smoke the Italian equivalent of ‘Capstan Full Strength’ cigarettes and creep furtively from bush to bush. They will also take the liberty of throwing their rubbish down in your field and even building a hide from corrugated iron sheets and anything else at hand.

From time to time we have to go to the ‘Hunting and Fishing’ shop (also an ironmongers). We’ve renamed it the ‘Rootin’, tootin’, shootin’ shop’ for obvious reasons. It is usually full of the aforesaid old men hanging around boasting about (presumably) the smallest bird they’ve ever shot. Apparently it’s ok to shoot migrating birds because they aren’t native. You can never be too sure what they are talking about because the nose-tapping and whispering stops as soon as you enter the shop.

Fortunately there is a growing movement – particularly among the younger generation – that finds hunting unacceptable. Unfortunately, the government makes a great deal of money from license fees paid by hunters so it is not about to throw that revenue away. This leaves each individual land-owner to attempt to come to some agreement with the local hunters group.

October health update

The colder weather has seen the pain reduce but my feet are still sore and it doesn’t take a long car journey before I start getting searing spasms. The left one is favourite but they happen in my right one, too, although just not as often. I’m forcing myself to wear slippers around the house although they make my feet more sore than if they were bare. Unfortunately they also get very cold without some form of protection and also (if you read this blog), you will see we’ve had scorpions and hornets about. They aren’t life-threatening (the scorpions are very small – not the sort you find in the desert) but it would give a very nasty sting (about equivalent to a bee’s I would guess).

The problem lies with my paunch. For some reason my belly sagged and just got bigger and bigger. I can hear the brainless ones out there saying ‘don’t eat so much, then’. It isn’t a case of food intake, it’s a case of water retention. That’s why I weigh more than a typically fat person of my size would do. At over 250kg, I guess my time on this planet is very limited which is why I’m hoping to raise cash from my websites to pay for some form of help.

Unfortunately, the only thing the doctors want to do is an ‘intervento’. This is a gastric bypass or roux-en-y operation. It is designed to reduce appetite by making the stomach smaller so that it ‘fills up’ more quickly. Yes, but I only eat twice a day and I don’t drink, eat fatty foods, take sugar, eat sweets, smoke etc. One young lad (who clearly needs both a brain and glasses) called me ‘Fat American Boy’ (not bad for someone who is half-way to their 49th birthday! The relevance being that the American diet is seen as being the root-cause of anyone who is overweight.

You get branded with the dreaded word ‘obese’ – it even sounds offensive. An obese person (in the eyes of the world) is someone who eats inappropiate foods to excess, presumably in the full knowledge of the damage this is causing. Consequently, you are not only ‘obese’, you are also mentally defective and have the same status as someone who regularly attempts (and fails) at suicide. That is why I object to the word. I am neither suicidal nor mentally defective.

The problem started when I had to tie myself to the desk. Our company was having problems after an ex-director helped himself to cash as well as throwing away many clients. Our staff turned a blind eye, too. I had to work double and even triple-shifts (along with my wife) to save ourselves from going bankrupt. We succeeded but my health failed. The doctors did nothing and the condition deteriorated.

I now have to find a cure – somehow. It will take a lot of money (my guess is around £50,000 or $100,000) and I will lose at least 6 months of my life in a centre somewhere. My doctors won’t give me any help and I can’t see any cash being forthcoming so I’m going to have to make the money online which is exactly the wrong thing to do for my circulation problems!

Work on the websites

I’ve been busy working on a joint site with a colleague – www.pals.co.uk – as well as my own sites. I’ve gone back to www.aaa-interiors.com and added a few new pages on interior design.

I’ve also added www.anysubject.com/tuition-fees.asp www.anysubject.com/english-school.asp www.anysubject.com/private-tuition.asp to attempt to increase traffic to my main earner. We had a good mention in the Timesonline – http://www.timesonline.co.uk:80/tol/life_and_style/education/student/article4962966.ece

Let’s hope that brings in some business.

Preparing the house for winter

We finally managed to get a plumber to replace our copper guttering which means that there should no longer be a constant stream of rainwater running down the face of the house from the dove-cote balcony. We had a few short words, first, though as the guttering was initially about 15cm short of the eaves it should have lapped under. Any rain, therefore, would have merely gone around the guttering and straight down the walls.

The guttering was organised by the painter whom we had given up on. No fault of his but we had made it a condition of his work that he organise a plumber to do the guttering – the last thing we wanted was two different contractors and two different lots of staging/scaffolding.

As always, our decorator went round in a whirlwind. None of his men seem to move particularly fast but turn your back for a second and they’ve done another wall. The house wall area is around 415 square metres and there are 25 windows (it cost a fortune to double-glaze). One coat of sealant on top of our fading and deteriorating paint and then two top coats of high-quartz, exterior quality emulsion in glorious pink!

It was a relief to see our repairs disappear under the new paint. If we had to sell in a hurry, the crack signs would upset a lot of buyers – unjustly so since the root cause was that the house is built on two separate foundation grids and they settled differentially when the house was constructed; six or seven years ago.

The new stove is gobbling up the pellets although now we’ve got everything automated, we use less with the fire on 100% of the time than we did when it was being switched on and off manually. It is a brute of a thing and cost us the best part of 4,000 Euros. It gets through 3 sacks of pellets every two days (4 Euros a sack) but in return it heats up the underfloor heating of the long-room (100 m2 floor area), the radiators, the water for the shower and the water for the indoor swimming pool via a heat exchanger. Unfortunately there is still some work to do on it and neither of the two side panels have been fitted on yet.

The insects and such are beginning to look for a winter home. Yesterday Damaris fished a drowned scorpion out of the indoor swimming pool and I killed a queen hornet in the long room too. Either would have been ‘fun’ to stand on.

The gardeners are coming less frequently now that the weather is turning. Although there is a lot to do, the colder temperatures make it less appealing and they cancel at every opportunity. They are a group of Moroccan brothers who alternate at weekends but have a tendency to take liberties – eg if it is raining where they are, they don’t come despite the fact that our microclimate is very often different to that in the valley where they live and it is commonplace to drive up the hill and out of the clouds (like on a plane) when going to our home.

We’ve bought a few more plants – climbers mainly – and these need to be planted this weekend. I can see Damaris struggling to do them if we get abandoned again.

Cure for doggie fur balls

Until recently we had two golden retrievers. The older one is still alive but is prone to fur balls which usually manage to manifest themselves at about 3am when he insists on waking us to do something about it.

We’ve tried all the usual stuff including letting him go out and eat grass to make himself sick. The best thing we have found is a stick of celery. This is digestible yet stiff enough to push the furball down into his belly and send him back to sleep with a full stomach! Accordingly, we try to make things like celery and carrots (another option but not quite as good) into treats. Like many retrievers, he suffers with weight problems and I can’t see that feeding him roughage like celery and carrots isn’t a damned sight better than high calorie ‘doggie snacks’.