The drive

The top of the drive

The photo is of the top of our drive before it dips down to run past the piece of woodland (on the left) belonging to the Church. The house is behind us, a little way back.

The woodland was dark and mysterious until very recently when it was ‘harvested’. Some of the stacks of wood jut out where you have to drive, which is quite annoying as you need to do a slalem round them.

In the foreground on the right is one of the apple trees which was already there when we bought the house. Just beyond it is a little clump of grape vines that re-sprouted after the drive was widened.

On the left are the oleanders which we planted between the lamp posts we’d installed.

It was essential to widen the drive. Only now, 4 years later, are we beginning to outgrow the prejudice which had accumulated about the house. Couriers refused to come; the Council rubbish lorry complained; deliverers of building materials, garden items or pellets for the stove were wary; the GPL company tried to insist on using a smaller lorry which didn’t go out much so you had to wait ten times as long for your delivery, etc, etc.

When these various people did come, they were always very complimentary about how easy it was to access us. The problem was getting them to believe us!

Fire extinguisher check

One of our fire extinguishers

Today the fire extinguisher man came.

Having an outside GPL tank (‘bombolone’ as it’s called) means it’s compulsory to own at least one fire extinguisher and to have it regularly maintained.

Maintenance of fire extinguishers is obviously a lucrative business rife with ‘customer poaching’ and general sharp practice .

After engaging a particular company, through recommendation, to supply and maintain our 2 extinguishers, we received a visit last year from a technician in a van with the company logo. He offered a discount as per the laminated notice inside his van if we paid up front for the next visit as well. Which I did.

Then, lo and behold, a different technician turned up a month or so later. He knew nothing of the offer, assured me he was the real deal, and said the previous one was a rogue who’d been fired by the company.

I was thoroughly confused, and called the previous technician (whose mobile number I had taken because he had said to trust no-one else) AND the company. Each argued vociferously in favour of themselves and against the other party. I was so fed up with them that I did something I’ve never done before nor since: I put the 2 receivers together and let them get on with it.

In the end I was convinced by the technician who was actually on the scene. He told me that if I’d peeled the logo off the van that made the last visit, I would have found the details of a completely different fire extinguisher company underneath.

Cloak and dagger in the fire extinguisher world!

I never recouped the money paid up front last time, but I’m confident we’ve got it right now. Till the next time, that is!

Gas

Site of our GPL tank

No, this isn’t a white cat against a whiteboard or something similar. It’s the area, surrounded by a wall a couple of bricks high,  in which our underground GPL tank is situated. Even the yellow markers at each corner of the enclosure have disappeared under the snow which fell with renewed vigour last night.

Our main heat at the moment comes from a pellet stove, but we have a gas-fired central heating system upstairs which, in order to stay in good condition, will need to consume a certain amount of gas. This will be over and above our usual low usage for cooking.

If the manometer in the tank is giving us a correct reading (which in itself is questionable) then we are only ‘ just above the red’. We will doubtless need to fill the tank up soon, when the snow has cleared.

We talked today about looking around for the best GPL prices, and I remembered that we had some sort of restrictive contract which I thought might have expired.

I looked it up and this is what I found.

We are under contract, to the company which installed our tank, to receive our GPL supply from them for 2 years from the date of our first fill-up.

On expiry of the 2 years, the contract is tacitly renewed for a further 2 years, and so on.

We can choose to terminate the contract provided we send a cancellation letter BY REGISTERED POST (this is a standard term in most Italian service contracts and is rarely substitutable by fax or email) 3 months before its expiry.

On termination of the contract, we must repay the €550 + IVA cost of the tank, reduced by 12% for each year that the contract has been in force. It’s therefore 10 years before we’re free of the automatic financial penalty.

It doesn’t seem we have much of a choice.

Bandwidth

This morning Clive went online with his dongle (‘chiavetta’ or ‘little key’ as they call it in Italy). His connection was so slow that he couldn’t navigate at all.

Speedy Gonzalez in comparison

I phoned TIM, the telecommunications company, on their central number.

A woman answered and I explained the predicament.

“You’ve exceeded the bandwidth allowance of 10 Gig for the month and your connection will be at this speed until renewal on 7th February. No, there’s nothing you can do about it.” 

This was puzzling as Clive’s screen clearly showed he had used up 3 Gig and had 7 left.

I carried on questioning her, trying to get to the bottom of it, but after a couple of tragic sighs she put the phone down on me.

After double-checking with Clive, I rang again. Another woman answered.

“No way have you used up your bandwidth. You have 7 Gig left.” Ah, sense at last. “Where are you in the country?”

“Umbria.”

“Umbria, Lazio and Abruzzo are experiencing service problems. It should be cleared up by tomorrow morning.”

Now WHY couldn’t the first woman have told me this instead of spinning tales about our bandwidth?

I got my revenge shortly after when I was able to label her help as abismal (‘malissimo’) in a customer satisfaction survey over the phone.

Lost spring

Right now, what with the rain we’ve had and the recent snow melt, our spring should be gushing, and the pipe that takes it into the artificial pond should be running like a tap.  Instead it’s just dripping.

Joules drinking at the pond - to his left the inlet pipe with green stain below

I’ve checked the Blue Pig, and all along the length of the pipework, and there’s no leak that I can see.

The pipe doesn’t catch the whole of the spring where it comes out of the hillside; some of it escapes and there’s a basin there to catch it. The basin is dry.

Something must have happened to make our spring reduce so dramatically.

We know that the earthquake of 1997 took away much of its flow. Could there have been another, minor earthquake recently that went almost unnoticed?

We think so.

In about mid-October Clive observed some landslips in the immediate vicinity for which he could think of no other explanation. 

The stream which goes under our road just where it climbs up from the valley, and the waterfall above it, have a lot less water now.

So maybe some fissure opened in the rock shelf that supports our spring, and now most of the water is draining through.

It’s a real shame. I hate to think that the pond won’t be continually replenished and refreshed in summer, but at least we’re not losing our only or our alternative water supply as would be the case for some houses.