A Tuscan View - from Umbria

Beams, boots and beans

9th November 2007

Now that the new/old walls are starting to ‘grow’, you can almost begin to see what the apartments in the old stables under the house might become. I squint and then close my eyes, trying to conjure up images of cool, clean, furnished spaces with new shutters thrown open onto shady terraces planted with lavender and pots of basil, the sound of laughter, wine being poured and enticing aromas wafting from the kitchens.
But it’s still difficult.

For a few days now we have had no builders here as they are rushing to finish replacing a roof while the skies are still blue. Valiantly, despite wearing two pairs of trousers and an unfashionable top, mio marito works on. He has cleaned and restored the old steels in the more ‘modern’ apartment and they gleam with an industrial shine. He has also uncovered a beautiful internal arch in the more rustic, beamed apartment. He works alone, only appearing for plates of pasta, the odd espresso and to check the head count behind the oven.

The best thing I ate today;

Zuppa di Farro e Borlotti

As a kind of mid-week treat, if we have both been working (because I do help – sometimes), we occasionally go out for lunch. The place of choice would be described, in England, as a ‘builders caff’ or a ‘greasy spoon’. The food is cheap and the tables are wipe-able, no cloths, no candles. There are usually 3 dishes on offer for each course and no written menu. The waitresses have attitude and it would be a very brave ‘muratore’ (bricklayer) who asked them to repeat the choices or lingered over his decision. They want to feed you, and feed you fast.

The soup is thick and swampy, the Borlotti beans a rich brown, the colour of the newly turned earth in the surrounding fields, its taste is earthy too. The farro has a nutty ‘bite’ and in its depths the subtle, rounded heat of peperoncino. Savour every steaming spoonful and wipe the bowl clean with a ragged crust of saltless Umbrian bread.
This is Italian soul food.

Farro, know as ‘spelt’ in English (a bit like pearl barley), is a type of hard wheat grown in Umbria and Tuscany and used in the distinctive soups of this region.

Where to get it;
Bar Pineta, Panicarola

Tip; The dress code is strickly builders boots and overalls.

Walls

31st October 2007

Trying to explain to a bricklayer that you don’t want straight walls is a conversation you don’t want to have in a foreign language. He probably assumed the real meaning was lost somewhere in translation, and it probably was, however, despite a fair bit of inexplicable muttering from both of us, we are getting what we want, we think.

As an antidote to the new/old walls palaver at the house, and as I seem to be (in the words of a familiar but forgettable song from the 80’s) ‘always running around, trying to find, certainty’ I went off to do a little research about some rather more beautiful old/old walls, in fact fresco paintings by one of my favourite Renaissance painters, Piero Della Francesca.

Piero is one of the greats, not just because of the ease with which he seems to achieve harmony, balance and concord in his paintings, but also in that his figures are all strikingly beautiful, whatever they happen to be doing. His most stunning fresco, the Madonna Del Parto, is in a little hill-top town about an hour north of here, and I have seen it many times, but nearer to us is the fabulous town of Arezzo, and in Arezzo is Piero’s fresco cycle, ‘The Legend of the True Cross’ painted around the altar in San Francesco.

The fact that it almost surrounds you on its three sides and having to crane your neck to follow the story from the Death of Adam to the Restoration of the Cross to Jerusalem means that you are drawn right into this colourful and captivating story and perhaps explains why they only allow you half an hour at a time for each visit.

Detail from The Legend of the True Cross - not my photo (not allowed).

The most magically theatrical part is the Dream of Constantine, set at night in a beautifully lit tent with the angel appearing in bizarre perspective holding a tiny cross of light and pointing with her little finger at the sleeping Emperor. It is truly breathtaking and is worth the entrance fee on its own.

Sadly, but reassuringly, many parts of this fresco have been lost over the years to earthquakes, damp and nearby building work, so my return to our crumbling house and to the builders, still seemingly uncertain about what they were doing, made it all not seem quite so bad.

The stupidest thing I did today;
Asking my wife what that funny noise was, coming from behind the oven in the kitchen. Our deaf cat and stupid dog having shown no interest whatsoever, I am now obliged to assume the role of ‘man of the house’ and deal with whatever is lurking there.

Rubble, rubble, toil and trouble.

October 14th 2007

You can go so far with a digger and a shovel, and feel that you’re getting somewhere. We can put in a good day’s work and be pretty satisfied with ourselves, knowing that we are further along than we were the day before. Then you have a meeting about progress with the builder or the geometra and suddenly it’s all gone horribly wrong.
It might seem rather naïve or hapless, but it has honestly taken this long (about 9 months) for us to get a true picture of how much this is all going to cost. And it does always come down to cost.
So, we have had to take a deep breath and reassess our plans, moving not-so-smoothly to plan B, not a radical re-think but another series of compromises. I imagine that when it’s all finished we’ll have forgotten about plan A, and probably plan B too and will be happy with plan X. That’s what the wise heads tell me anyway.

So, I have been limiting myself to what I know I need to do, and hoping that the new drawings I am doing will work, or at least will save us enough money for us not to have to start looking at the Ryanair schedules quite yet.
Sport has been another issue with which I am struggling at the moment. You get the odd weekend in England when the national side is playing rugby, football and cricket all on the same day. These used to be exciting days for me, I suppose like those days for an Astronomer when planets are aligned on a moonless night. But then try to get excited about ‘watching’ it on a text printer via the BBC web-site. No commentary, no video, nothing except a refreshed page every 2 minutes, hoping that your dial-up internet access doesn’t crash, again.
There is an alternative. Sky. It can be done. But there is another problem. Right now England are doing well in rugby, football and cricket and I am strangely convinced that if I get to watch it all on Sky, something will happen and it will all start going wrong, and it will all be my fault. Sorry, can’t explain it, but it’s true.

The stupidest thing I did today;
Tried tuning in to Five Live for full commentary on the rugby just in case they had changed their mind about overseas broadcasting rights, or maybe my friend at the BBC had persuaded someone to not pull the plug...no chance.

Jenga

26th August 2007
Most of my knowledge of, and confidence in building comes from being undefeated in all forms of Jenga (including ‘human size’). So it came as no surprise when the builder encouraged me to take out all sorts of huge bricks in important and strategic locations of my wall. I knew it would still stand.

My newest job is to make the holes for the air pipes which go under the floor which, according to him is apparently quite simple, but the walls are about three feet thick and made of solid stone. This is obviously another challenge set to make me realise that he’s the top dog around here, and that his team is making fast progress and I’m not allowed to hold them up. So soon we will have a concrete floor which will look almost exactly like it did before we started, but this one will be flat, damp-free, reinforced and expensive.

Trouble is that when you then have a big empty space there are just too many options and I’ve been spending the sleepless hours between 4 and 7am fretting over how we can divide the space so it works best; where doors should go, where windows should go etc. But most of the fretting is, as usual, about budgets and the bottom line…

The stupid dog is settling into a nice routine of an early morning walk followed by breakfast, a quick play and training session, and then I just sit back, relax and wait for the inevitable, “Daddy! The dog’s done a poo in the house again!”

Anyway, however hard his latest challenge, and despite the fact that he probably thinks I’m an idiot, I know that I could still beat the builder at Jenga.

The stupidest thing I did today;
Rather pleased with myself today - stupid-free.

Three little words

10th June 2007

It had to happen sooner or later.
I thought I was prepared, but you never really are.
When the builder tells you to ‘clear the site’ he means business. Suddenly all the pretence is over and I have to start doing some real work. I had told him that I wanted to do as much work on the house as was possible, and he gave me a rather withering look as though he’d heard that one so many times before. Now I know that I need to impress him during the next two weeks before he comes back to check on my progress.
He also reminded me that every brick counts, as the old ones cost up to 4 euros each from a builders merchant and so, if I can carefully excavate each one I find, I can save myself thousands of euros. But brick is as nothing when compared to old stone, every one of those counts too, and sections need to be arranged for the builders in careful piles; stones (called ‘baby heads’ for obvious reasons), full bricks, half bricks, one-faced bricks and rubble. Finally I’ve found a use for my sledgehammer.
I have also now bought an angle-grinder, despite mistakenly translating it as ‘ankle-grinder’ in the DIY store. It is the most ferocious and scary piece of equipment I have ever used and I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it or even begin to start enjoying it, but it has its purpose and makes for an impressive photo at least.

The stupidest thing I did today;

Making the foolish assumption that sunglasses are an appropriate equivalent to safety-goggles.

The house

29th May 2007

The house stands solid and square on its own small hill ringed with trees; olives, walnuts, pines and acacias. Behind it a verdant wood, and all around golden, rolling fields and distant mountains. It is an honest country house, the arched loggia being its only real extravagance. The old red bricks saturated with years of sunshine glow rosy in the twilight and swallows dip in and out of the cantinas.
It seems strange now, and a little disloyal, but this house was not our first love. We had a brief and ill-fated flirtation with a melancholy farmhouse in the surreal and haunting Crete Senesi.
Ambrogio Lorenzetti - Allegory of Good Government (detail) 1338-40, Palazzo Publico, Siena
Now I can see it for the disaster it would have been; too harsh a landscape and too remote. But, at the time we were bewitched; a blind love, passionate and ill-advised, and when the sale became too complicated and ultimately the price too high I cried the hot, disappointed tears of an unrequited lover. Another year of fruitless searching followed and then, just as the old wives say, when we were least expecting it we found this house, and it was ‘the one’.

The best thing I ate today;
Pizza a taglio.
The Pompeiians ate pizza, without tomatoes of course, because it took another 1,500 years before the first pomodorini washed up in the Bay of Naples and the fiery Neapolitans claimed them as their own. It is an ancient food, directly descended from the Roman breakfast 'bread with relish'. In its primitive form, it is dough, tomatoes and mozzarella, the topping is sparse, the base thin and scorched with the flavour of the oven. It is a basic peasant food and a beautiful sight to behold.
It is these simple foods. so perfectly made, and the Italians' passion for them that make Italy one of the greatest food cultures of the world. For me the best way to eat pizza is as a street food, no fuss and no cutlery. Buy it by the slice from a 'Pizza a Taglio', the varieties are infinite; from the Roman style Pizza Bianca with onions or zucchini (no tomatoes) to the classic Neapolitana, the oily flavours are robust and savoury. Take your slice (I chose speck and radicchio) wrapped in wax paper to a warm stone step in the shade of a church and eat. If you're lucky the Pizzeria may also sell rough red wine in plastic cups to go with. Perfetto!

Where to get it;
Anywhere where you see the sign 'Pizza a Taglio'.

The fabulous fabbro boys

3rd May 2007

fabbro nm. blacksmith.
Once we had decided that we needed a ‘cancello’, suddenly I was aware of gates everywhere. It seems the Italians like a bit of ironwork; from the elaborate curlicews of the palazzi lanterns , decorative torch-holders and rings for tethering horses, to the gleaming new electric gates of the modern villas there is a plethora of wrought iron everywhere you look.
Marito and I career around the countryside, taking photos of ‘gates that we like’. We both like the old ones, his taste more simple and austere, mine suffering from illusions of grandeur and lusting after gates with intertwined rusty initials, crests and crowns. For once I am persuaded that ‘less is more’ and we settle for simple gates with curved tops and, just for me, some arrows.
Outside a house with some particularly fine railings marito asks the owner if he can recommend a ‘fabbro’, and he can.
Inside the foundry there is smoke and a ferrous smell mixed with some kind of powerful male pheromone. Then, through the sparks, I spot the ‘fabbro boys’, their huge blackened hands are hot and dry, and for some ridiculous reason I am blushing as we shake. In their tiny office, marito, fabbros and I talk gates. They show us portfolios of gates they have made, and we show them the photos of gates we like. Of the 20 or so photos we show them, they know them all, and have made most of them. They know their stuff these boys, they’re artisans.

Old gate.

They agree on the design and they agree to let the gates rust naturally, rather than spray them with the pale grey anti-rust paint that is so prevalent around here. They agree to make our gates. Outside in the yard we shake hands again, the ‘fabulous fabbro boys’ are smiling their handsome shiny faces slicked with soot, blue-eyed and brown-eyed brothers.

The best thing I ate today;
Pinola gelato – I love gelato and I love pinola, what more can I say except that in the land of good ice-cream, the more you try the more you get a feel of what is good and what is very good, and this is very, very good.

Where to get it;
Chiusi citta – Tip, look for the sign that says ‘artigianale’ unless you want a magnum.

Gates

2nd May 2007

It was rather a difficult decision to put a pair of gates at the front of the house, because we blend into the landscape and that, in itself, is a wonderful thing. But, having lived in cities and suburbs all my life, I also feel the need to establish boundaries; not to keep people out, or to keep the children in, just to mark the place.
In fact I imagine the gates will probably remain open all the time which makes them seem like a peculiar way to spend our money but, nevertheless, the other day I found myself in this blacksmith’s workshop, a huge place full of people who clearly had to know what they were doing.
Sparks flying everywhere, an old Alsatian sniffing suspiciously at my trouser leg, I managed to make myself look like I too knew what I was doing and strode purposefully into the office. Unfortunately all gates made in Italy are unique and so you have to make loads of really important decisions whilst trying to remain credible. I desperately looked around the room searching for inspiration (I imagine rather like Kaiser Soze must have done in The Usual Suspects) until I saw a picture of one that looked about right, casually pointed to it, and now we have ordered it to be made for us.

They didn’t want a deposit, they didn’t tell me how long they would take, and I’m not even sure if I left my phone number, but they seemed like remarkably cool young lads so I’ll just keep driving by their workshop slowly in the hope of catching their eye and finding an excuse to check on progress.

The stupidest thing I did the other day (at the blacksmith’s);
I asked them if I could take photographs of some fantastic rusty metal things in their yard, which seemed to instantly destroy my credibility, just when I thought I’d got away with it!

My mate's got a JCB

28th March 2007

When you first see a JCB up close, it's a pretty impressive sight, and you know it means business. And when the men riding it jumped off with bottles of water and sledgehammers, I felt at once that I had to put my big boots on and puff my chest out to help, even if it meant having to borrow one of their sledgehammers.
They were here to get rid of an enormous, 20,000 litre water tank, which was taking up loads of the space where work will hopefully soon start, and between them and the JCB they made light work of the wall in front of it. Within a couple of hours it was out, sitting on the grass in front of the house. Unfortunately it will have to sit there for a while, until they figure out where to find a lorry big enough to stick it on the back of. It was a big day for us, though, as this was the first time we've seen some real action around the house and a noticeable declaration of intent on our part to get on with the project.
Must go now and look at my tank, again.

The stupidest thing I did, later on that day;
Went out and bought myself a sledgehammer, just in case those men come back. Not sure what to do with it now.

My first blog

February 10th 2007

I have decided that the best way to keep warm is to do lots of manual work around the house, and to wear two pairs of trousers. Today is all about tackling the woodshed, finding out what lies beneath our fast diminishing pile of logs, and creating some much needed order in that part of the house. My previous experience of this sort of work amounts to knowing roughly on which aisle in B&Q to find whatever I need. Things are a little different here, and the combination of a specialist vocabulary and local dialect make every trip to the local DIY store a challenge.
I have also begun a visual diary of the small hilltop towns around where we live in order that, when the time comes to arrange a painting course, I know what I'm doing, where I'm going, and what places look like at different times of the day.

The woodshed

The stupidest thing I did today;
Bought a chainsaw. Thought I must have one, but picked out the smallest in the store because I was a little scared of the others. Someone later described it as more like pruning shears. Have learnt my lesson, though. To establish your credibility in a small town, always buy the manliest tools you can afford.