Taxis Family at Il Pero

Man's Best Friend

This is Molly our dog  – the question is, is this man’s best friend? I don’t think so ….

THIS is my man's best friend Mr JCB.

Of all his toys, this is the one that he loves the most, it’s the one that all his other friends, of the human variety, wished they had. Little boys of 3 up to big boys of 83 all have a huge desire to have a real live digger. For little boys, when they see Mr JCB in his glorious rusted, used look, it’s as though their toy box just came to life. For big boys it’s very similar though they are big enough to actual think about driving this giant toy.

Joking apart our JCB has saved us countless times.  When we arrived here in Italy, William thought he wanted a lorry with a crane on it, then he thought that perhaps a dumper truck (doubling up as motorized, oversized wheelbarrow) but then he also thought he wanted an Ape and he didn’t get one of those either.  Instead we found and bought Mr. JCB.

He does everything from imitating a wheelbarrow, to digging holes to

build swimming pool – or at any rate our swimming pool. He has landscaped and re landscaped the land around our house. He has dug holes for animals that have departed. He has lifted the safe, the wood burner, various pieces of unmanageable furniture, water tanks and even the solar panels up into the house. He has moved boulders from places where we didn’t want to them to places where we did. He has even been to our friends' rescue and hauled them out of watery ditches when they misjudged or perhaps misplaced the road!

Every home should have one! Like a lawn mower (we have lots of these) ordinary, much used house hold machinery. Long live JCB in all their unforgettable yellowness!

Hot water

Phase TWO

With solar water heating it is, of course, necessary to have the solar panels, and generally the most effective place to have them in on the roof. Gravity and all that!

Out come Mr JCB once again to the rescue. But he can only help get the panels to first floor level.  This is of course where the BFG comes in very handy!

Between them, William and BFG, manage to , with the help of the scaffolding to get the panels up onto the roof.  Not forgetting of course that they have, Blue Peter style, already prepare the landing place for the panels. Large sheets of copper taking the place of the roof tiles that were there, with the fixing frame and plumbing all in place.

Heave ho and hey presto everything fits perfectly - I am unable to think for a moment why it wouldn't after all William is the project manager! Though I did notice a bit of head scratching up there on the roof - perhaps he was wondering how it all turned out to be so easy!

It won't be long until we have hot water running out of the taps in our house and I for one will be VERY happy!                                                   

    Now we just have to wait for the Gas man to come and hook up the back up system just incase the sun doesn't shine over Tuscany which, as we all know is impossible!!! At least that's what they say isn't it - somebody should have looked at the winter weather here. The sun may shine over Tuscany, but quite often there is a big fat foggy cloud between us and that famous sun!    In the meantime, the panels are all ready for connection and are already huffing out warm air from their empty tubes.  May they enjoy all the sun they can get! 

   

Hot Water

Phase ONE

Over the past few weeks William has been working hard to get a hot water system up and running in out home. Not that there isn’t any anywhere in the house you understand – our apartments at the eastern end of the house have had hot and cold water and heating for some years now. It’s just our end of the house that has been lacking in hot water for some time.

We decided to go ecologically friendly here with Solar panels – after all in Tuscany you get a whole lot of sun all year round so it seemed the obvious thing to do.

The reservoir tank had to go up into a corner first and this was a  feat in it’s self, I say first… actually there was a whole load of plumbing to go in first which took a fair amount of time, and then there is the wiring for the control panel and regulator and electronic switches … at this point I become lost in techno speak of which I know nothing about!

The tank weighs and enormous 130kg when empty and so it was with much sweat and heaving that it  was manoeuvred up into the house. First with the digger, (who said the dog is a man’s best friend, William’s is the JCB –his biggest and best toy!) making it look easy getting it up the first 20 feet onto the first floor of the house, followed by brut strength as William and Dave (the original BFG) dragged in through the ‘soggiorno’ and on through Annie’s bedroom and up the stairs into it’s resting place.

Finding it’s resting place was no mean feat either – at just under 2 metres tall, it was shoehorned into position and onto wall hooks and a sub-frame invented by his ‘cleverness’ William. It is now in place and woes betide anyone who decides it needs to be moved again!

Bats

Bats.

The other evening, one of the colder ones, William was finishing off for the day in his playroom when he noticed some brick dust falling from the ceiling, he looked up and found that the brick dust was followed by something bit larger which drop heavily to the floor. This dropping thing was not a brick, thankfully, as those ceilings are vaulted and it would be a nightmare to have to start rebuilding, it was in fact a bat. A very bewildered and sleepy bat. Not just any bat either, when he picked it up in his hands it picked up is weary head, pricking it’s ears up to hear about his surroundings, William saw that it had extremely long and large ears. A long eared bat. I am told these are fairly rare theses days, so we are honoured that it chooses to live in our house.

Not knowing exactly what to do with said long eared bat he brought up stairs to show the family. We all looked on in amazement, well it’s not that often that you get to see a bat close up like that and he was very cute, in a long eared sleepy kind of way.

The heat of the room and the 10 minutes in William’s large hands seemed to have woken the bat from his relatively dormant and supposed to be hibernating state and suddenly he took off again into the rafters above our heads, hiding again in the corner where the main beam of the typical Tuscan farmhouse type ceiling meets the wall. Here he stayed for a while regaining his equilibrium, this is where we thought he might stay cosily for the rest of his ‘letargo’. 

He remained in the house, or at anyway visible for a further four days, each day, however, in a different location, attached to different joist or beam. Obviously not content with his present loggings he has moved, not house I hope, but room, a colder one, which in this house in not so hard.

I dare say in the spring when things warm up a bit we will be seeing him again, but if will be difficult to know which bat he is as we have so many!

The Ape

The Ape is a icon of Italian civilization. This three wheeled beast of the road can be seen popping it's way down any road in Italy.  Driven by youngsters of 14 with flash paint jobs, through to the old couple who are gently leaning towards each other in the cab - this leaning is not generally the loving need to be close to each other - it  is the result of not enough space and the steering column being central to the cab. Though that dear old Signore and Signora Rossi do look so very cosy and in love the way they are forced to lean each other heads together as that the puttle along the road.

At full throttle these amazing beasts reach a high speed of about 40 kmph which would be around 20 mph (not an exact calculation by the way) and you can guarantee that you will be behind one on any road that has more curves the straights and is IMPOSSIBLE to over take even a pedestrian due to poor visibility.  They are, in fact, one of the things I dread seeing most when I am in any kind of hurry and  especially if they are going the same way as I am.  If the children are in the car, on first sight on an Ape on the horizon and there is a chorus of 'Oh no not an APE!' from the back seat.

Yesterday, in Bologna we caught sight of the ape to beat all Apes for a make over. I don't suppose we will ever see one to beat it.

To think that before we moved here William wanted one!