The C.O.S.I Group or to use their full title Crazy Observations by Stranieri in Italy have decided to blog about spring or festivals at Easter. The dead line date for publishing the post was yesterday. At the moment I am having an ENEL week, absolutely nothing is getting done on time. I’ll explain about ENEL later.
So what does springtime in Italy mean to me? First it means I can legally start to wear my flip flops outside, well providing Mrs Sensible isn’t clothing monitor for the day.The old ladies will put their fur coats away for another year, however springtime does not mean scarfs are put away. In Italy they are worn throughout the year, this is to prevent the onslaught of cervicale which can strike any Italian at any time.
Springtime also means builders start to work on houses. We have the builders digging holes around the house and tying the walls together with long metal rods in a vain attempt to stop the house from subsiding and moving, next week they will start digging up the garden while they search for our elusive poo hole.
You won’t find the septic tank up there
Can you see the little orange light on the wall? It means our house is officially catagorised as a emergency recovery vehicle, this allows us to park the house anywhere which is just as well as it might be parked somewhere down among the vineyards if it keeps sliding in a southerly direction.
One of the builders used a impressive looking jackhammer to dig up the concrete path, I managed to bribe him with grappa and espresso to help me to remove the damaged safe in my office. You may remember during August last year a couple of ‘not very bright’ burglars broke into my house and ruined a perfectly good but empty safe. Well one of the nice builders excavated around the safe and removed it.
I now have a rather large hole in the wall
At the moment springtime is about cleaning, because we have the builders digging holes and drilling in the walls, the whole house is covered in dust, I did remember to close the office door while he used the jackhammer to dig the safe out, but the dust is everywhere. Mrs Sensible has been very chilled and laid back about the mess and the various holes around the house, to be honest I am a little worried about her calmness, this could be the calm before the storm.
Spring also means my local bar has run out of decent tea, this morning they served up something called Liptons, it was insipid and tasteless. I mentioned to the owner that I might bring my own tea bags in future.. But I think he might not have understood my fantastic Italian. By the way what is Italian for bags of tea? I bet it isn’t borsa di tè
Would you like lemon or milk in your dishwater?
Springtime also means I should now take my car to the garage and have the winter tyres removed and normal tyres put back on. Unfortunately last October I had another ENEL moment and completely forgot to have my winter tyres put on the car. They are still sat next to Mrs Sensibles Peugeot which is in storage in the outside shed.
One good thing about spring cleaning, is you find things you have lost for example when I was cleaning the bookcase in my office I found the plug adapters that no Italian house can function without or Italian grammar books, nice but not much use to me.
Its amazing how useful things such as glasses and electrical adapters can migrate next to useless things such as Italian Grammar books
I have to get back to cleaning the house, but I promise I will write a post about the very scary kids at my karate club, and why if you live in Italy the chances are you will have two or three jobs…..
Please go and say hi to the other C.O.S.I group member, they managed to get their posts up yesterday..
Surviving in Italy Spring Break Italy
Rick’s Rome: Favorite Spring Destinations in Italy
Girl in Florence: http://girlinflorence.com/?p=12562
Sicily Inside & Out: An Early Easter in Sicily
Sex, Lies, And Nutella: Food Traditions That Win Easter
Englishman in Italy 
Will you help Mrs Sensible to clean every window in the house as well Pete, for that’s italian Spring too! So funny about the tea! Last I went to see mum she insisted I bought this Limpton thing saying it was “refined tea”. WTF……I frantically kept on looking for Twinning’s while she said that it was expensive and I so wanted tell her to zip it up and let me have my cup of tea! It truly was a moment of panic! Next time I shall take with me a pack of 100 bags!!!
Grace to you lovely Pete x
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There is dust everywhere, the cats are either hiding under cupboards or walking the dust and dirt all over the house. The cats are not allowed upstairs, but Mishmash was cowering under our bed yesterday…
Italian T bags are rubbish… truly rubbish
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Agree…but focus on the lovely biscuits you can have with the rubbish tea…:) :):)
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I love biscuits, there is a Japanese owned chocolate shop in Casale. everything is handmade, expensive but pwooh so good
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You can find 49 good uses for Lipton’s tea here but, strangely as it may seem, none of them involve drinking it … http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2011/08/15/4-uses-for-tea/
😉
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Great list, but Liptons is rubbish as tea, so it will be rubbish for preventing foot odor or bleeding gums….
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You may have a point there, but all the same, I’m now looking forward to discover that I have plantar warts on my feet, so I can experiment if Italian Lipton’s teabags heal faster than good old British PG Tips do … 😉
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Mike, we need to do this scientifically… we need a control group to use the Liptons teabags
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So funny! I can’t live without a PG tips bag or, failing that, a decent bottle of puglia primitivo in the house.
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Hi Francis, I love P G Tips, but there are some days when I would trade them for Puglia primitivo…. most days to be honest
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Oh no, I too would cringe if I had only Liptons tea. We have some PG tips in Florence and I can send you a box or two if you’d like! Hang in there Pete, those cranes look like they mean business..
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I am thinking of setting up a Baconpal donate button on my blog so readers can donate either T Bags or Bacon.
It’s a win win situation, readers get a great feel good sensation and I get a slice of bacon or a T Bag.
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T bags hahhaha! Well I’m not sure you want that Pete but then again English and American slang may be different.
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Oh lord, I better go and google it.
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Same here.
Oh! Now I know! Thanks Girl … my education never ends!
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Life is scary, also yesterday I was stupid enough to write about flip flops Spring and not changing my winter tyres….. today it is snowing!! And just to prove a point it is also thundering and lightning
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that’s not your home! would you reallyhave Lempicka’s Road Less on your wall?
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It’s a fab print it is on the wall of my office, it has survived 4 house moves and is due to be packed again.
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I hve a bag of 1500 PG tea bags. It’s damned heavy.They are not for myself ( can’t abide tea unless suffering with a particularly distressing gastric upset episode). The tea is imported for Him who has been persuaded by outside agencies that too many coffees will instigate a premature coronary.
Anyone have a useful idea for recycled T bags?
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They make great fertiliser for tomatoes 😂😂 I have heard they are also great for tired eyes, I prefer mine with milk and no sugar.
Coffee = heart attack!! I am glad I normally drink wine
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Don’t remind me on lipton tea bags. Many bakeries here which offer breakfast as well usually only have lipton tea and charge several euros for that rubbish!
This post also (sadly) reminded me that spring cleaning stills needs to be done here….
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I shouldn’t have tempted fate by writing this post!! This morning I woke up to thunder and crazy lightning and to really push the point home it was also snowing
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Winter is coming…again. Here it snowed few hours as well, crazy weather
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What are you going to do with the hole in the wall? Sounds like great fun at your place. Mrs Playmo is ferreting through her accessories box, she wants to come and organise your builders.
The French serve that Liptons muck too. They claim that it is English. I tell them that no selfr-especting Brit would consider it tea, let alone drink it.
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I haven’t decided what to do with the hole yet, maybe I will turn it into a shrine for my favourite bottle of grappa. Last night I threw the cat outside and went to bed ten minutes later we heard strange noises coming from the lounge, I quietly tiptoed downstairs and prepared myself to meet some big hairy burglar and found my scabby cat taking the opportunity to climb where she is not allowed to climb.
She climbed through one of the many holes the builders have created, into the cantina, up the stairs and into the house..
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What a shame, you could have walloped the burglar with your flip-flops. I like the shrine idea. Alternatively, Mrs Playmo suggests tuning it into a holiday flat for her and Mr Playmo. She suggest all mod cons and a flat screen TV.
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How big a flat screen will Mrs Playmo need? Will she bring me some wine?
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so when spring comes, it is tradition for workers to show up and make holes ? kind of like giant rabbits. with big tools.
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Well let’s hope the giant rabbits return on Monday and dig up the septic tank
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If you can persuade anyone coming from Ireland to being you Barry’s Tea you’ll never want for more…. but persuadin your ‘local’ that you want infuse your own tea may be a little more difficult.
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Barry’s Tea sounds interesting, I like Yorkshire Tea because it is strong. I need to think about the bar issue
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Good to see you are limbering up for Spring. Spring cleaning and house renovation sucks but I’m sure you’ll get through it all. I gave up long ago trying to drink tea in Italy, I think the tea they sell in the supermarkets here is probably made of dirt any way. I always try to have a secret stash for the winter (I don’t mind a little bit of Twinings english breakfast myself, does that make me a snob?!?)
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When I go to the UK I normally return with several thousand t bags, and we go crazy… a cup of tea on the hour
And normally just before my next trip to the UK we are sharing a T bag, I have even considered hanging them on the line and reusing them a second time
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Lipton is actually British, it was founded in Glasgow in 1871. So you guys are the ones to blame for selling us rubbish tea, and getting us accostumed to it, just like probably Italians are to blame for getting the British public get used to rubbish pizza and pasta. BTW, tea bags in Italian is bustine del tè.
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Ciao Ermanno,
You are correct, it is English tea but I honestly think they provide a different type. The manufacturers know the Italians normally drink tea with lemon and the tea needs to be weak, in the UK we drink tea with milk and it should be strong.
I think the Americans are to blame for getting the British to accept rubbish pizza, Pizza Hut is the big chain in the UK. While I was living in the UK we found 2 good pizzarias both were Italian owned
The British are responsible for everything else… we make dreadful cappuccino in the UK
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I love the idea that your house is an official recovery vehicle!
Doesn’t Lipton’s do ‘normal’ tea? That stuff in the picture is green tea – which is certainly not normal by my standards. 🙂
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I haven’t found any normal tea in Italy, green or black.
It’s a pity it wasn’t a blue flashing light, an emergency vehicle is much sexier than a tow truck 🚔
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Good point – and would uniforms be supplied with it? 🙂
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Funny! But it could be even worse, how about una bella camomilla?
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