You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘house’ category.
Snow arrived yesterday (the two photos are the same view 24 hours apart). Carletti, with his farmer’s ESP for weather, had been making noise about the snow for at least a week before it arrived. He kept coming down to the house to inspect my tile laying on the terrace (he used to lay floor tiles as his profession) and as he left he’d say smugly, you better hurry up or the snow is going to put a stop to your tiling.
He was right about the snow. And looking out at the terrace now under its unbroken white blanket I’m asking myself what the hell I was busting my ass for in the first place. When our families arrive on Friday I could have just told them there was a beautiful terracotta tiled terrace under there, they’d never have known.
In addition to covering up my tiling, the snow has pointed a blinding spotlight on the empty place where all our winter preparations are meant to be.
The stultifying heat has finally let up, so yesterday afternoon I strapped on the kneepads and laid clay tiles on the terrace. It got me thinking about how much time I’ve spent on the floor in the last year.
Even at the beginning of this restoration project, when there was still so much to be decided, we knew we wanted terra cotta floors. The price seemed reasonable, the clay is quarried and fired locally, and they look fantastic – nothing would be more appropriate to the house. But the reality was much more complex and it involved a hell of a lot more time, expense, and stress than we imagined.
On a hot evening a few days ago I was bored and listless. Tessa had a tummy bug and had gone to bed so I took a pad and paper up to Lino and Gianna’s to write down some of the stories they often relate in passing. I found them at the table in the kitchen finishing dinner and watching television, Lino in his undershirt and shorts, Gianna in the usual housedress. Here are some points that came out of the conversation, supplemented by a bit of research afterwards:
For generations, all the agricultural land in this area was concentrated in the hands of a few landowners and the Church. Under a system called mezzadria, peasants worked parcels of land in exchange for accommodation and a portion of the resulting crop. It was a good arrangement for the landowners but an extremely hard life for the peasants, with little hope of changing for the better. Then in the early 1960s the situation changed.
We live a couple of kilometres from town in a neighbourhood that is very typical of this part of Italy: agricultural fields stretched out between gravel roads, punctuated with brick and stone farmhouses.
Elsewhere in the world in the mid 1950s, the Russians were about the win the space race, Britain joined the nuclear club, and the first commercially manufactured computer had already been on the market in the US for 5 years. Here, the picture was very different.
…life ain’t nothin but tractors and cows.
With it’s symmetrical façade and double bank of arches, this house is an aberration in the local countryside, nothing like the traditional Marchigiano farmhouse. We keep meaning to look into its origins but the investigation continues to slip down the to-do list (below paint the bedrooms and install shower surround, for example).
At Lino’s request, today I went to see Nunzio, the ex-owner of our house who lives in a straight-edged 1970′s palazzo just outside Loro Piceno. We sat at a table outside and he recounted to me what he knew about its history.
After isolated appearances in the past, it’s now becoming an epidemic. More people are moving out, making the conscious choice to value quality of life over career and job security. There have always been dropouts but this time the demographic is different: 30-ish couples, usually with kids, around 8 or 10 years of job experience, owned your own house, sick of commuter hell. We’re looking for a vegetable garden and a place in the countryside, a village you can walk to, more time to spend on things we love, with life and consumption on a more personal scale.
The myths of our parents’ generation are dying fast and no one believes the ads any more. Making more money than your parents isn’t the key to happiness. There are no more jobs for life. No one selling anything has your interests at heart. Life doesn’t start the day you retire and in the meantime the right car, gadgets, and soft porn aren’t going to make the waiting any less painful. Read the rest of this entry »
Tess is back from Kazakhstan tomorrow and not a minute too soon. Not only will it be great to see her but I think I might be developing a facial tic and a speech impediment. I’m going stir crazy in this house. To top it off I’ve got a deadline looming tomorrow. Every day this week has been jam packed but it’s a frenzy of activity completely isolated from the outside world – get Henry up, fed, dressed, clean and off to nursery, work, pick H up in afternoon, dinner (if he’ll eat it), bathtime (if I can catch him), water garden with H’s bath water, dinner, more work, sleep. There’s no time for anything resembling adult life. Where’s the bar? Where’s the FAP? I’ve got shepherds to hunt you know – and I know where to find one if I can get there fast enough.
Seriously, how do single parents do it? I’d go insane or get a prescription until the kid left for university.
There’s another fridge discussion at No Impact Man, where he’s asked for ideas on how to keep milk fresh. In one of the comments, someone pointed to a passive ice box that freezes about a cubic meter of ice in winter and keeps your food cool the rest of the year. Kick ass. Unfortunately it looks like it requires much colder winter temperatures than we get here in Marche.
Someone else mentioned the Mitti Cool, a passive clay refrigerator invented in India. That’s more like it!
This week Teri Garr is played by my missus, who has gone to Kazakhstan for work. And I suddenly realise that it takes two people and a Macedonian cleaner to keep this house running. What chance have one man and a toddler got?
Time to stop chippying around and kidding yourself. Dig out the flannel shirt and let yourself go, mate.
Tell him I don’t make a move without Larry and Stan.
Recent Comments