Kepler’s shoes

I don’t mean shoes that Kepler wears, but ones he steals from the neighbours and brings home.

Each time I see him proudly displaying the prize catch of a shoe (which he will never let me have without extensive subterfuge), I phone the neighbour to say I’ve got it, and each time the neighbour laughs and tells me to throw it away because it’s an old one they don’t want.

They’re women’s shoes, probably from the same person as they’re the same size, and by my standards (which admittedly aren’t everyone’s) they’re in pretty good nick.

So far I have one pair - from 2 separate raids – and one single.

The stolen shoes

My feet are quite a lot bigger, otherwise I’d be well away with this supply of free shoes!

It’s less funny when he runs off with mine though …

Wood felling continued

The saga of the wood felling continues as the team moves to the steep slope that shelves down to our drive.

When I emerged from the house this morning, I was hailed by the ‘boss’ (an Italian) who kept asking to speak to my husband.

“You can speak to me,” I told him. There was no point in saying my husband was an in-patient a thousand miles away!

The drive, he said, might have wood piled on it. However this would only be for a brief time as he recognised that it had to be kept open.

“Who uses the drive?” he wanted to know.

I told him the postman might need to get up it.

I took a mobile number for the man and later used it to air my concerns about there being a landslip onto the drive (which would effectively maroon us). I had been particularly upset by the fact that the men were gratuitously chopping down conifer trees and juniper bushes which were of no use to them but which might have helped retain the soil.

“We have the authorisation to cut and we are doing it according to regulation,” he said. “There won’t be a landslip.”

“But if there is?”

“There won’t be. But if there was, we would come and dig it away.”

He went on to explain that the trees are expected to sprout again, and therefore the roots stay alive. In other words, the men are coppicing.

Most of the bigger trees are hornbeams, which is a standard coppicing tree. I was further reassured to notice the scars of old cuts on the ‘stool’ (specialist word for stump) next to the new cuts.

Old and new cuts on a stool

Let’s hope he’s right and the trees will sprout. Coppicing is in fact supposed to be beneficial both for the longevity of the tree, and for biodiversity.

Felled wood

The wood after the cutting of the trees

Until very recently, there was a tall wood beyond the wall which marks the edge of our land. Now it’s been cut for firewood. A tree has been left standing every so often – by law it’s supposed to be every 10 metres - but otherwise everything has been razed to the ground.

When I went up to see the situation today, I was struck by 2 things: one was that some of the logs had been piled on our side of the wall, and the other was that huge quantities of twigs had been dumped on our land as well.

Although it was lunchtime, I found 2 woodcutters busily at work a bit lower down.

I hailed one but he was Albanian and spoke very little Italian. His companion was also Albanian but spoke much better Italian and we were able to communicate.

He told me that someone would be coming to check the boundary later on, and he agreed to throw the unwanted twigs back over the wall onto their side.

As an afterthought, I got him to phone my mobile back in the house so as to lodge his number there, just in case.

It’s so sad to see mature woodland reduced to such a state, and it’s set to get worse as work progresses to areas more ‘in our eye’, but forests here are a commodity like everything else the land produces.

Very expensive ham

Small packet of ham

Yesterday I went into one of the major supermarkets in Foligno and bought, over the delicatessen counter, 2 ‘etti’ (one fifth of a kilogram) of their most economical cooked ham.

The girl who served me put the label that came out of the weighing machine to one  side, and stuck another label on my packet. She made a slight flutter as if correcting a mistake, and I thought nothing of it.

Today, Clive noticed the rather bizarre price of €12.50 on the very small parcel of ham. The label had neither product name, nor purchase weight, nor weight per kilogram. The price had been ‘manually imposed’. My till receipt confirmed that I had indeed paid €12.50 for the item.

I phoned the supermarket and asked to speak to a manager.

“What’s it about?” asked the man who answered.

“A complaint. Well, a mistake,” I said, giving the benefit of the doubt and going on to explain.

“What’s the time of purchase on your label?”

“15:15.”

“Come in tomorrow afternoon.”

“I may not be able to come in the afternoon. I have to take a dog to the vet …”

“Come in the morning, then.”

“It might not be the morning …”

“You have to come in! What do you expect me to do over the phone?!”

“I’ll definitely come in. But it’s your error, and I can’t give a precise time. I think it’s likely to be at lunchtime.”

“Come at lunchtime, then, and we’ll sort it out.”

“Will you be there?”

“Yes.”

“What’s your name?”

He told me.

Clive, who listened in, will vouch for the fact that there was not one conciliatory word, let alone an apology however conditional, in the whole conversation.

We noticed subsequently that my till receipt records 14:40 as the time I went through checkout. There’s obviously a time warp in this supermarket.

Siege

View over the valley

I’m mesmerised by the falling snow: I could watch it for hours.

It’s now about 10 centimetres deep, I suppose. Any footprints are quickly covered by new snow.

Our nearest neighbour phoned this morning and asked if it was all right for him to clear the road because the Comune had seconded him to do it.

I told him it was fine, but please to be aware that we had oleanders along the drive …

“Oh I won’t be doing your drive,” he said.

“That’s OK, don’t worry about it,” I said. “It’s just that the people who’ve done it before have come as far as the big oak by the house and turned round there.”

“The big oak, eh?” said our neighbour.

So we waited for a snow plough to appear, but it never did.

Finally I put on my hat, coat, wellington boots and mittens and went to look. The road had been cleared, but only just our side of the neighbour’s house – in fact as far as the turning place there (which had been used – you could see the tracks of the vehicle).

He hadn’t even cleared all of the public road before our drive begins. If he had, it would have helped quite a bit because it includes a steep slope.

So it looks like we’re not going to get out in a hurry.