Day 1

We woke up excited on the first morning after very little sleep.

First things first. Coffee. Slight problem. No water. We searched around the house and garage and while there were plenty of stopcocks to turn, they all seemed to be on already and the water stubbornly refused to flow. Searching outside finally revealed the main water meter and stopcock so we were in business.

Coffee made and consumed, we looked round the house which appeared to be in pretty good shape but smelling a bit of damp on the ground floor. We threw open windows and doors. We worked out what the keys we’d been given were for and found a bunch more.

We soon realised that we’d not just bought a house with furniture, we’d bought a house with stuff – and plenty of it. Every cupboard was full of stuff. Every store room was full of junk. It seems that it’s quite normal for Italians to leave everything in the houses they sell and that certainly happened here.

The simple plan of attack was to concentrate our efforts on weeding and cleaning the kitchen and the two bedrooms we’d picked (all on the first floor). We decided to move all the stuff we wanted to get rid of down to the ground floor and then out to the stable for removal once we were out of quarantine and able to leave the house. One problem, however, none of the big rusty old keys we could find would open the stable door. We emailed Domenico to ask how to get into the stable and continued to accumulate junk on the ground floor.

We also both reported in via the Toscana health service web site so that they were aware we were here and quarantining. They phoned back pronto and told us to stay at the house till Monday and then go and get a test.

We had our first meal here at lunch time in the outside seating area.

After lunch I checked out the gas bottles for the cooker. One was completely empty, but the second seemed to have gas and I could light the cooker. Turned out different come supper time. Fenella had done the prep for our first cooked meal here. She switched on the stove and the flame lasted a few seconds before dying completely. Hugely frustrating and upsetting. We had 5 days of food in the fridge and no way to cook it.

We checked out the local pizzeria online. It does takeaway, but not delivery. We called and explained that we couldn’t leave the house and they very kindly agreed to deliver. The owner and her daughter came up about half an hour later with two pizzas. We had met the daughter when we ate at the restaurant last year. She was studying at Nottingham then and this year had just come home after finishing her degree.

Disaster was averted and we had a fine supper of pizza and salad. No leftovers.

We still had the problem of no gas however. I checked my emails and Domenico had replied. He had the key to the stables and said he’d pop over from Lucca to deliver it in the morning. We asked about the gas situation in case I’d just connected it up wrong and he offered to drop into the local agricultural supplies shop and order us two new gas bottles on his way over in the morning. What a lovely guy!