July 2016

Mach1 was back at the vets with his poor bitten tail. The vet was pleased there was no infection of fever and gave him a booster shot of antibiotics and didn’t charge us. Boor little lad is terrified of going outside and sleeps on the pillow starting at the slightest noise. Making for a very disturbed night. Back at the vets again as sir's tail blew up again. Our vets on holiday so we went on to Castiglione Del Lago where the young lady vet shaved his tail and part back to clear the wound site. There are several bite sites and despite me cleaning there is obviously some infection although not temperature. The vet said he's fat and needs to diet and wrote a prescription for some new antibiotics, pills alas, and said he must stay in at night as the ferule cat might have feline HIV or leukemia and its passed by bites or sex and its incurable. So keep him hungry, a small mouseful of savoury, smelly, food for lunch and 40g of dry food with pill for supper. He's going to leave home at this rate. Do not feed the stray! Do not leave food around for Mach1 either. We have to collect the pills and special disinfectant to clean his dignity this afternoon as the chemist had to order it in. If this 20 day course doesn't fix it he'll need an op to cauterize the wounds.

The pool lads came and opened it. Small excitement when we found a snake in the pump box. Sadly it was dead but 3 strong men and who gets it out? Recovered the pool robot from the upstairs hallway and as we lowered it into the water the front buffer split. As we only bought it late last August and it had been carefully used for 3 weeks and stored we were disappointed and contacted the supplier at once, who quickly sent a replacement that went AWOL the other side of Rome. Their computer had merged 2 Ponticelli addresses, it turned up 5 days later and we struggled to get it to fit, brute force did it in the end and all was well once more. That said had quite a shock as we have a large snake living in our pool pump house making the weekly back wash very interesting. Fortunately it’s very shy and hides under the filter when we open the lid. the tile band we had put on about 5 years ago started to peel off in earnest so we removed it and spent 4 days scrubbing the left behind glue off the walls. Never a dull moment with a pool.

The saga of the kitchen continues. How anyone makes up their minds and gets one fitted in less than 4 months we’ve no idea. We had people round for lunch and asked their opinions and one remarked that having all those floor cupboards they hoped our knees were good as we’d be on them a lot getting plates and things out of them. Point taken we asked another friend about her deep draws units and she said they were wonderful and held all her plates, bowls, saucepans etc. So on to plan Q, 2x deep draw units instead of 2 cupboards. Changed our minds and decided all draws if we can. Then we thought we’d like a top mounting double sink to replace the inset single one we have. They are rare as hens teeth, used commercially or medically as there is no edge to collect grime plus you don’t pay for a top that has 90% of it cut away to have the sink fitted in as far as we were also concerned. We found a second hand one that was perfect for just 100 euros so snapped it up. As we were going round in circles a friend took us to her kitchen supplier and they got down to designing and suggesting ideas for our budget. They were wonderful and even apologized when we had to go back as their computer had added bits we didn’t need and charged 2 different prices for the same set of draw units. In the end we came in well under our budget despite the drawer units costing 100 euros more than the cupboards, they were 600 cheaper than anyone else so will call them in to measure correctly in late October early November with the idea of fitting after Xmas.

Plus the tiles take off or not? A great idea was suggested that we remove 3 layers and use them to retile where the tiles are missing. This means we have to bring forward our plans to have the time to repair the wall and paint, now we are moving the larder around so when the time comes we can get the big dresser shifted and the tiles fitted before the new units arrive. We dedicate just a couple of hours each day so we can keep up with the other chores and not feel under pressure but it took the whole month to reorganize and the dining room floor was stacked end to end.

We decided to have a large wall clock to break up the vast white wall so popped over to Deruta and bought the numbers for noon, 3, 6 and 9 plus little decorated squares for the in between spots. On line we ordered large battery operated clock hands. As we were going to order from the net Mike decided he’d like a super graphics card and a transmitter for a gadget that will allow him to fly virtual radio control planes using one of his plane controllers through the computer port. Its too hot to fly, its going to be a spring and autumn hobby realistically so this enables him to enjoy two of his interests no matter the weather if its too hot, cold or windy.

Robert, whom we’ve not seen for 14 years picked the hottest week to visit, it hit 45c in the shade several times, Rome and came up by train to Orvieto where we met him. He galloped up the long haul to Bagnoreggio and down again and we did a short tour of Orvieto and had a simple lunch there. It seemed that the time flew by and that the years apart simply weeks not years. It was fun to catch up.

Finished the novelette and had mum edit it.

Last week in the month and a storm, not forecast, hit late afternoon. The wind hit the front of the house from two directions topping over our large lemon trees across the doorway, blew down a section of fence, OK the central support was rotted off the bottom but impressive to take out 2 sections and filled the pool by an inch. Knocked the Internet connection off plus phones so suspect he electric at the Mount Cetona site had a power failure for 24 hours. The wind also split the car shade material in half length-ways, we “stitched” it together with cable tiles. On the plus side we didn’t have to water for 24 hours.

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