Porca Miseria

Misery is a pig

Porca Miseria! (Misery is a Pig)

Let’s start by saying we love guests. No, we really do. We love the guests- well friends actually- that stay at our invitation. They entertain us with their world view.

For example last week we saw a strange lumpy and untidy thing amber across the road at the dead of night and were very, very excited to realise at the last moment that it was a porcupine-

An old friend was visiting from SPQR land (Rome, not some deviant cult as Gianna hoped) and I almost burst with excitement telling her the news.

‘We saw a porcupine! A PORCUPINE!!! Have you ever seen one’

Awkward silence. Enduring pregnant lingering pause heavier than an inadvertent fart.

‘Erm yes. I came home to find one in the sink with its paws in the air, my (ex) husband shot it. We ate it with roast potatoes’

Tuscan Crested Porcupine. Do not eat.

We love the home exchange guests who allow us to house-swap wonderful homes around the world and evolve into friends. I gravitate towards arty houses shared by writers and artists so am immediately at home and inspired.Home exchange

And Gianni loves the paying guests who contribute to the costs of running the villa as a necessary evil. It is difficult to make friends with paying guests as a good guests have a wonderful time and leave us in blissful peace and ignorance whereas other guests leaving us groaning. But every thing scales up with a big villa and it gets too hot for us in summer so let them enjoy say I. (I don’t actually know how the royal family cope with all those castles and palaces. As I say, houses want to fall down, gardens grow up, and ships sink)

Anyway, despite a surprise visit and blessing by the local priest (or possibly due to divine intervention as neither Gianni nor Bronte expected a surprise ecclesiastical visit and therefore were not prepared for a donation) the villa can be a bit…capricious and so can some of the guests.

For example earlier this year, the villa burst a pipe such that a hidden underground geyser (the Italians charming called it as ‘occult’) was draining the local water reservoir at a rate of approximately £2500 a week. As it was happening about two meters beneath the path, and that path is next to a noisy fountain and anyway were were in England, we didn’t know. The succession of weekly bills hit us with something of the subtly of a cannon ball to the nethers. That caused blind panic which was solved by The Lawyer at marginally less cost than the leak.

Last month Gianni optimistically bought a new battery for the pool cover remote as it wasn’t shutting, an investment of a few pounds. Ho Ho Ho, as if.

We arrived to find that someone had nicked off with half the swimming pool water. This was not due to the valiant effort of the swimming pool to commit hari-kari trying to save the villa from burning down from a forest fire (as happened to our friends) Oh no. Gianni had asked the poolmen to give the pool its annual service. Bronte, who was her with her Squeeze enjoying the last of the November sunny days, watched as the pool chaps (their modesty no doubt easily concealed behind Speedos in the November chill, and prevented from recognition by googles) splashed around in the pool tinkering with the mechanism. This hadn’t worked, so they had another idea. Half empty the pool. Try topping up a swimming pool from the tap.

Capricious guests? Well we’ve had forest fires blazing on the hill to the extent that the local villagers were embracing the Blitz spirit eating pizzas en masse in a church hall having been evacuated for their safety. Our guests chose not to evacuate. Unconcerned by the Last Hours of Pompeii fire tearing down the hill faster than runny lava, or clouds of ash silting up the pool system or air-conditioning, they were ceaselessly complaining to Gianni (in England) that there were ants. Not inside the house but outside. Ants! I don’t like wildlife in the house, but I do feel that it is entitled to live in peace outside. We had to beg our lovely villagers to prise themselves away from the safety of their sanctuary (and pizza) in order to dust sufficient industrial strength ant powder outside to make it look as if snow had fallen. The ants didn’t care. These are Tuscan ants.

We have three species of ant- microscopic ones will sneak in and hide in a loaf of bread in seconds, medium sized ants that march around in organised lines like an episode of Dad’s Army and F.O HUGE ANTASAURUS ANTS WITH ATTITUDE that- I kid you not- have eaten the hot tub. They have literally eaten the hot tub. If it wasn’t pitch black and about to snow outside I would take a photo.

Then we have the guests that act as if a poltergeist convention has been held here- broken loo seats, all the glasses bizarrely moved to the shed, plugs moved to the one bathroom and furniture placed on different floors. It takes us a week to find every thing and put it back.

We love drama, but it can be stressful and expensive. So, Gianni finally spat the dummy and put the villa on the market. Villas only appeal to an international market, so few buyers are around, and those that are, are sensitive to world political events. Thus putting it on the market was more an act of defiance than intent to sell, a warning to the Villa Gods to stop messing around, or else.

But today, is black armband day, as it is second viewing day for an Anglo-Italian family.

We were toying with leaving the viewing to the estate agent, but of course we are curious as to who is looking as anyone who is looking to invest in an historic villa in the Lucca-Pisa area is likely to be someone we would love to crack open a few bottles of Segreto with. I was planning on looking the part on behalf of the villa- the full Downton Abbey, hair done, slick of lippy, shake out the diamonds, slink around in something silky looking as if any moment soon it will be time for a cocktail, darling, Isn’t villa life wonderful?

But before we did that we had to clean the villa. After several hours of sweaty and increasingly frantic stuffing away of things, hoovering and mopping, we had a cup of tea and then, happily I drew a deep bath and submerged.

I was mid hair shampoo when the door opened.

‘-And this is the-’

‘Haw, haw’ I laughed as I could see Gianni was alone by the reflection in the mirror.

‘Yes but they will be here in ten minutes’

‘WHAT?’

It turned out he wasn’t joking. I frantically rinsed off my hair and catapulted out of the bath, instantly skidded over the ice rink that is the marble floor when sprayed with water. I tried to throw make up on my face - that achieved nothing- and couldn’t find the hair brush I’d stuffed away. So it was that I met our potential buyers in bare feet, looking as if I’d applied the mascara with a sling-shot Jackson Pollock stylie, with hint-of-Medusa wet and tangled hair. But diamond earrings and the expensive aroma of er… stick deodorant.

Anyway I am not the only one to have tarnished our Downton Abbey credentials. We were out to dinner with our lovely Anglo-American friends at one of our favourite haunts in Lucca - Cafe des Arts. I was very happy because our lovely friend said that the (somewhat chaotic but arty) interior was entirely very me.

That afternoon they had just had a 250kg DHL delivery of art. They couldn’t even get it off the truck plus they live at the top of something approaching a rampart/cliff that mountain goats would think twice about. Ideally you need delivery by crane, helicopter or sherpa.

‘Couldn’t they have split the load?’ we asked

‘No, it’s a diptych’ said our friend. I was immediately grateful for my Renaissance Art module at University. I’d read this word, even if I’d never spoken it.

‘It weighs 250kg?’ said Gianni, his eyes widening.

Seeing Gianni looking mystified and desperately attempting to think of one, anyone, done by a famous painter to flash my arty credentials I explained-

‘It’s a screen- two screen diptych, three screen triptych- they are quite often altar pieces of early Renaissance master’ I said

‘Oh’ said Gianni with a twinkle in his eye. ‘I thought you were saying ‘Dickpic!’

He’s so naughty.