What is a 'typical day' in Italy?
Oh, to have a 'typical day'. What a joy that would be for some of us 'type A' personalities (read: Niall). Alas, it simply isn't so.
We like to say that
you can and do experience every possible emotion all in one day, in Italy.
One minute you're sipping your amazing espresso in your garden, while looking out at the centro storico (historic centre) of Montepulciano (happy emotion), the next minute you're struggling to understand what the UPS courier guy is saying in Italian (frustrated emotion), the third minute you are dealing with some crazy documentary requirement in order to get your gas connected (unhappy emotion), the fourth minute you have just booked to attend the Jazz and Wine festival in Montalcino (excited emotion) and the fifth minute you're reeling from the emotions experienced in 1-4 (exhausted emotion). And so it goes..
To give our dear subscribers (we have subscribers - woohoo!) a flavour of what we're up to here, we've jotted down a summary of the things we had to deal with last week. A far cry from the type of week we used to have (client meeting, call, drafting, food, meeting, drafting, client call, client meeting, martini, martini, martini).
Not exactly the corner office we thought we'd have....
Monday | Wednesday |
Meeting with our Enologist to discuss which wines to produce in 2023. Obviously also exchanging 'can you believe we are doing this' looks. | Meeting with our Rodent Removal Company to discuss whether the dead animal near the pool at the agriturismo is really dead. (It wasn't - RUN!). |
Going with our dog, Max, to the vet for a checkup and hoping that Max doesn't freak out at the other (Italian) dogs who are so cool for school they may as well have Frank Sinatra hats and cigarettes. | Going with our Italian friends for lunch and hoping that they don't freak out at us having only 2 courses. Ma dai! |
Organising a new cleaning crew for the agriturismo, for the new season after realising that the old crew were more interested in our wine than the cleaning. Note to self: check wine inventory. | Organising an expat pizza party after realising that we have a 19th century wood-fired oven and can make our own damn pizzas. It's my oven and I'll pineapple if I want to... |
Arranging new furniture and furnishings in PG2 (the smaller villa at the agriturismo) and convincing ourselves that we do in fact have interior design skills. | Arranging a new appointment for the gas tank inspection check and discovering that the gas tank inspector and we have the same favourite restaurant in a nearby town called Monticchiello. Test passed with flying colours! |
Finalising the bottles that will be used for the 2023 vintage of our wine by using the only test we know: lift bottle, is it light enough? We have a winner! | Finalising a contract with gardener number 5 (gardeners 1 to 4 said 'it's not me, it's you') and pretending like we do worry about the Cypress trees as much as he does. |
Responding to a guest request for a private chef at the villa, while trying to keep tab of their dietary preferences - who knew there was such a thing as 'flexitarian' (basically anything goes depending on the mood)? | Responding to a call from Sky who insist on reading the entire contract for our subscription service over the phone, not realising that if we knew that much Italian we wouldn't be getting Italian TV to practise our Italian. |
Giving up and going home to a nice bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, made by one of our new neighbours/friends, and thinking maybe just maybe everything will turn out alright. | Giving up and going home to a nice bottle of headache medication aka Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and thinking what have we done. |
Toodles,
Paari & Niall