Last winter, we saved € 280.00 by not ordering any firewood from the local woodman; instead I invested € 120.00 in a very scary looking chainsaw and proceeded to cut down the trees in our garden. With a loud cry of timber, down went 2 huge walnut trees, 5 hazelnut trees an apple tree and I think an old pear tree. Mrs Sensible called a stop to my tree felling activities when she pointed out that the orchard was beginning to look more like a cricket field with tree stumps than the lovely orchard that someone had taken the time to plant.
On Monday I drove to the local woodman and asked him if he would deliver 20 quintale of wood (2,000 kilo) Mario the woodman agreed and said the price was €14 / quintale and he would phone me tomorrow to organise when he would deliver it.
Tuesday at around 4pm Mario called me.
Mario: Are you in?
Me: Yes here now! (In very bad Italian)
Mario: Ok I am on my way. (He also said some other things that I didn’t quite understand, mainly because he didn’t use the key words that I understand. IE: wine, grappa, food and can I buy you a drink)
I checked my wallet and counted out my money, and by stealing some money from Mrs Sensible I managed to raise €160.00 a short fall of €120.00. I jumped into my little Mini and went haring off to raid the money machine.
On the way back to the house I received another phone call from Mario.
Mario: I can’t find your house!
Me: Ok, waiting please at Gullivers Supermarket, you me I find.
Mario couldn’t find my house because my house has two completely different addresses, (see link) this problem has managed to confuse Telecom Italian, The Gas Man and DHL. Mrs Sensible and I have had one or two discussions as to which address we should use. Personal I use both; I think it’s cool to live at two different addresses at the same time.
Mario was patently waiting in the car park of Gullivers Supermarket. As I drove up to his big shiny tractor I was immediately shocked to see it wasn’t towing a trailer stacked with wood.
Me: Hello where wood is?
Mario: I will bring you the wood tomorrow; I just want to see where you live.
Me: Please speak you slowly, I understand.
Mario. TOMORROW WOOD !!
Me: OK
Mario arrived the following day with his big grey tractor and an enormous trailer filled overflowing with wood. The Italian words I used as he tipped the wood onto my garden are not printable here, besides I am not sure I could spell them properly.
Mario: It is difficult to calculate how much wood is in a trailer until I have weighed it on the weighbridge, so you don’t have 20 quintale, you have 26 quintale.
Me: Who erh! What?
Mario: 26 Quintale not 20 Quintale.
Me: F€##%@, &#%!@?!
Me: How cost much?
Mario: €364.00
Me: &#%!@?!, F€##K
While I was searching in my pockets and my wallet for the extra money, Mario tried to reassure me that the wood was worth every penny of the €364.00 that he was demanding.
Mario: (holding a piece of wood in his hand) This piece of wood is called Rovere.
Me: OK
Mario: What do you call this wood in England?
Me: Hardwood
Mario: Ardvood ?
Me: Yes Ardvood
Mario: (Picking up a different piece of wood) This wood is very good it is called Quercia, what do you call this in England.
Me: I was very nearly tempted to say Ardvood, instead I said Heavy Wood
Mario: Evy Vood?
Me: Yes Evy Vood
While Mario was searching in the enormous wood pile to find another piece of wood to show me, I was crying inside as I realised all this vood, erh wood would need stacking by me, helped by myself and I
Mario: Ah now this lovely piece of wood is called Bujer, look at the yellow core of the wood.
I was slightly miffed, when I realised that not only did I have to stack 2,600 kilos of wood but the money I was going to use to restock my wine cellar had vanished into Mario’s pocket.
Mario: And what do you call this piece of wood in England
Me: Cost a lot
Mario: Costalott?
Me: Perfect, yes Costalott!
Mario: Thank you, for telling me the English names for the different wood, next week I am delivering some wood to another English customer and now I will be able to tell him exactly what wood he is buying.
Mario’s a trusting soul. The guy who delivers our woods won’t dump it till he has the cash in his hand. Not that I blame him.
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Hi Ellen, I never thought of that, I could have haggled with him
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What I want to know is… what happened to the ginger cat? It was in the fb wood photo… I fear for the worst…
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With any luck the scabby cat is at the bottom of the pile
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…having another litter of kittens…
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He better not be, Mishmash, Ruth (the butt ugly cat) hate him so he won’t be making kittens with them
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That may well be true… but it all depends on the time of month… hormones can make a girl do CRAZY things! (The evidence of which may often be found in the woodpile…)
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I know all about the hormonal part of the month, I tend to relocate to a bar and hide all sharp knifes and wooden spoons
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Quite the right place for a cat…
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Unfortunately the scabby ginger cat is alive and well.
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ah rats!
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looks like he set it up for a bonfire. don’t get tempted…. nice that you give him such a fine english lesson.
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I didn’t realise he was going to memorise my replies , I thought he was trying to distract me from the huge pile of wood. It is nearly bonfire night isn’t it
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You must be super fit after all that stacking, and wine drinking!
Hey, I’ve got 2 addresses in my new home also, and it created troubles with the phone and internet. I thought of you, fondly. And, drank more red wine.
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At the moment I am concentrating on the wine drinking, the stacking can wait
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Love the way you document your linguistic exchanges with Mario here – and the joke will be on the next Englishman he delivers to!
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Oh my Italian is a wonder to behold, it makes one gasp and stretch ones eyes
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So far we have been lucky in our cottage in Finland that we could just get our own wood by cutting down some trees. I also have the feeling that my dad went from time to time to other properties to “acquire” some trees…
I wonder just how many trees I had to saw, cut and later stack, just too many 🙂
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I too went out and cut down some trees, unfortunately Mrs S put a stop to it.
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This is the usual thing with women…as soon as my mother would hear a scary chainsaw all hopes for my father in defeating yet another tree come to an end.
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Last year the wood situation was getting pretty bad. Mrs S would ask what I was feeding into the fire, as innocently as I could I would reply wood. Mrs S would say, it looks very much like one of the shelves from the garage..
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Some unwanted chairs are also very usefull, especialy the legs are just perfect to feed the fire with
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ha ha ha! Mrs S was pretty Smart when she bought the kitchen chairs…. they are modern with metal legs
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That is every expensive wood… Perhaps you can find other ways to use it, to compensate for the price? 😉 Hahaha. Make wood sculptures and sell them (tourist prices of course). 🙂 🙂 🙂
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I have told Mrs S to cancel this weeks Pilots class, she could get by stacking the wood rather than running round in circles pretending to be a plane
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Nice to see you’re practicing Italian 😀
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I am not sure what I practice actually passes for Italian
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Once I saw the stumps and the pitch from the wicketkeepers squat I had to read it – one of my alter egos being LeggieLefty who writes a blog devoted to cricket ( yes, sadly he is utterly mad about the game and played it well into his ( my ? ) dotage ).
See, but now, you have the amazing potential of creating wood sculptures and letting loose your artistic self. Just drink lots of vino and go let it all out….
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The wood would be stacked but I keep taking a liquid break
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You know that you are going to be studying Italian a long time until they get to the conditional tense…would have, should have, could have. I’m just starting it now. It’s really not that bad but I seem to have more dedication (and fewer alcoholic beverage breaks) than you seem to have.
Si dovrebbe avere divertimento impilamento quel legno.
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but where would life be without beverage breaks?? and would somebody please explain a conditional tense 😉
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Conditional tense…
I would have learned Italian before moving to Italy if I thought I would have needed it.
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I have been here 7 years and managed to survive with a vocabulary of maybe 20 words. My advice is too forget about formal and informal and past tense can be signified by pointing backwards over your shoulder and the equivalent of and if a is are a total waste of time
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You could have thrown a couple of cats into the bargain. So I guess it’s a sober October for you – ha, that rhymes 😉
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Yes a sober October, My birthday is at the beginning of November (oops was that a big hint) celebrations start from the last week of October 😉
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I guess we’ll have to celebrate then 😉
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😉 we will
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I’ll think of something 😉
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I do envy you your lovely pile of wood. I have yet to part with 360 euros for our 6 “stères” of white oak, which we manage to burn in record time then end up dressed like the Michelin man until we find someone who can deliver some more.
We have two 150 year-old cedar trees in front of our house. We call them the blocks of flats – they’re full of wildlife all the time so it’s be a shame to chop them down, otherwise I’d call you around with your chainsaw and pay you in glasses of wine.
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My humble opinion is you should cut them down, there is nothing so exciting as waiting to see if the tree falls in the direction you hope it will or if it will fall backwards towards yourself (I can now outrun a falling tree whilst carrying a chainsaw) or more likely fall a squash 3 rose trees and hopefully the scabby ginger cat
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They are not my trees, so I can’t do anything about them at all… they are humongously ginormously big, and if they fall, my house will be as flat as a pancake. But PF assures me that cedar trees never fall over. They don’t drink wine. They are the Weebles of the tree world, they wobble, but they don’t fall down. At least I hope so.
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I will come and tackle them, at least you will have at least a 50% chance of them falling the right way. or is it 25% Anyway you can always blame me
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PS don’t worry about the wildlife they will make homes in the roof of your house
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The roof space is already taken by the bats and birds. They have a VIP suite for visitors in my bedroom chimney flu. Sometimes they get the wrong door on the way out.
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So no problem , it sounds like you have more than enough wildlife. MM cut that tree down, just remember to park the car out of tree reach, trees can be quite revengeful as they fall
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I will post about the trees just for you. You will see that it would take a team of professional Canadian lumberjacks singing Monty Python over a week to take care of it…
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post post post post
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I seriously laughed out loud while reading this! My train mates should subscribe to your blog because they’d understand why I crack up unexpectedly!
I am sorry you have to do all the dirty work yourself…But I sense another blog post will come from the log stacking experience !!
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Hi Lia, your mission, should you choose to accept it is to subscribe you train mates to my blog. This comment will self destruct in 24 hours
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Yipes ! I’ve got to get in it then, straight away:)!
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*on it:)
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Costalot got to be too much for me and I had a welder put a large piece of sheet metal in the flue. I bought an old Dearborn heater that was in excellent working condition and hooked it up to the gas jet that was used to light the wood fires. I have been enormously relieved and happy as a lark that I no longer need to carry in wood and scoop out the ashes. I am too old now anyway to carry in wood and gee the house is so much cleaner and less smelly.
I feel for you Pecora- really I do. If only you had access to piped in gas, you’d have it made and sitting with your feet propped up and drinking more wine. You’d also have more money. 🙂
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We have gas, we also have a gas boiler for the radiators, but the cost of gas over here is outrageous . The boiler is larger than my car!!! We would spend at least 800 euros a month in gas .. no kidding
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The cost of gas is highway robbery where you live. How do poor people heat their homes? Gas is cheap in ,I think, because we have the pipe lines all over Texas and I suppose because of the gas and oil that is still coming from wells in Texas and out of the Gulf of Mexico., I know that we, here in Texas, are very blessed and I’m extremely grateful for the bounties that come from deep with Mother Earth. 🙂
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We don’t we keep warm by wearing lots of clothes and shivering. .. Also Italian homes have tiled or marble floors so any heat disappears in the floors, walls etc
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It sounds like punishment or else you have thick blood.
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A little grappa, helps to keep out the cold
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Yes, I believe that to be so.:-)
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By the way, some years ago when I depended on wood for heat it was always delivered in a pile and we had to stack it ourselves. This was in the high desert of California (yes, we needed heat, it snowed there in winter) and we had to contend that possibly rattle snakes had crawled in there (the wood pile) while we were looking the other way. So your job could have been (conditional tense by the way) much more difficult.
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lol . the wood stack will become a home for wasps and hornets over the next couple of months, they become a tad annoyed if you remove part of their home just to burn in the fire
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I had visions of a Basil Fawlty sketch as I was reading this… 😀
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I have some more pictures for you 😏
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Looking forward to them!
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I hope your evil trick has worked!
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Hopefully, although at the time I didn’t realise he was memorising my translation. I need to find his English customer, I really can’t believe there is another Englishman close to me.
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