Today started off fairly uneventfully, my first lessons started at eight am at my favourite wine cantina. Is eight am too early to start drinking wine? If I can somehow manipulate the English lesson to include among other things, how different wines taste, can I please start drinking wine at eight am? After two lessons with the owner of the cantina and his right hand woman I went off to a local school to provide lessons to all the children. The primary school has five classes, three toilets, a dining room for lunch time and a grand, no an impressive number of children. There are a total of nine children in the school, the staff almost outnumber the pupils. Class five has only two children, so on any day they have a 50% chance of being the top of the class, or the bottom of the class. After two hours at the school, I really wished I had drank some wine at the cantina.

At 12:30 I drove down to the little house we are buying and had another look at it. Amazingly it still looks as if it was the right decision to buy it. The plaster I skillfully stuck to the wall ( I nearly resorted to using super glue to keep it in place) was still in clinging valiantly to the wall. Admittedly it was the ‘easier’ first layer of plaster, I haven’t yet told Fräulein that I have purchased 50 kilos of final plaster and I will spend Saturday morning turning the air blue with my language as I attempt to create a perfectly smooth final finish. It is possible I might have wasted some of our money on the 50 kilos of plaster.

Driving off to a lesson over the hills and far away I encountered a shepherd, a collection of motley sheepdogs and a lot of sheep. I managed to screech to a halt and the car behind me managed to stop just before he ran into the back of me. One good thing about meeting several hundred sheep, is my car won’t need washing for a couple of days, well certainly the front and sides won’t.

We are lucky to live in the countryside, Fräulein is a city girl and she is still getting used to driving down long winding roads in her monster truck. I sent her my photo of the sheep and she sent me back her photo of her last encounter with sheep.

My photo shows more sheep, however I have to admit two donkeys are pretty impressive. A couple of months ago, a wild boar ran across the road and attempted to head butt Fräulein’s monster truck, the truck suffered minor damage, bits of plastic fell off and the wild boar managed to run away with nothing more than a headache.

The repair of the monster truck cost €2,200 it seems bits of plastic are very expensive in Italy. Fräulein was really lucky, because cars that tangle with wild boars normally do not survive the incident, the weight of wild boars in Italy can reach 150 kg or 331 lb in real money.

There has been some progress in preventing car collisions with wild boars in Italy. Pedestrian crossings are being painted all over the place and hopefully more boars will learn to use them.

And as today is Friday and I refuse to work at the weekend, I can look forward to resting, reading books and relaxing with some wine going to our little house and trying to plaster the guest bedroom’s wall, swear a lot, and paint the lounge. Fortunately Fräulein is a good painter, maybe I can persuade her that it will look better if she does the painting and I just watch her.

Have a good Weekend

Pecora Nera and Fräulein.