Buon Natale!

Merry Christmas everyone!  

Yummy advent calendar courtesy of Mr RR!

A few days before the one year anniversary of our buying the Italian property, we entertained our first guests.  There were four kids and a new house for them to explore, so I set up a little treasure hunt including clues I'd written in Italian!

Yarrr!

Doing that last tidying up and unpacking before playing hostess gave it a homely feel for the first time and I am finally nearly ready to unveil a year's hard work... check back soon!

Monopoli's Madonna della Madia

Remember when I briefly introduced you to Maria/ Madonna della Madia in Hurrah! We're in! We're actually living in Italy!?  She was the painting on the ground with what I deemed rather "undignified" Christmas lights!  Well 16th December is a holiday in Monopoli to honour the day she arrived in the town.

I understood that the locals always re-enacted the story which sounded to me like a quaint little tradition that I was excited to try and see.  I was less excited to be woken at 5am by a noise that was anything but quaint and sounded to me like some inconsiderate so-and-so dragging their wheelie bin over the cobbled streets!  This was my first thought, despite there being no wheelie bins out here - a 5am wake up will do that to your logic!  Mr RR's first thoughts were that a building was falling down nearby, followed by the idea that it was a hell of a lot of gunfire!  (He probably wasn't too perturbed by this notion: he's quite prone to fantasising about the zombie apocalypse!)  So when it became clear it wasn't going to stop any time soon and that we were both definitely not getting back to sleep and that actually it sounded like fireworks, Mr RR got up and headed to the balcony where he said the sky was all lit up down by the port and they were indeed coming to the end of a 30 minute firework display!  (In these times of austerity?!  I guess you can't put a price on showing appreciation for Jesus' mum!)

Still around 6am, there were two long sets of the church bells normally reserved for Sunday mornings, and when Mr RR returned from his early morning run, he said there were loads of people up and about, where normally the streets are deserted.  So I guess we missed the re-enactment!

So why all the fuss?  The story of Madonna della Madia is without doubt the most important story in Monopoli's history and has been immortalised in 4 paintings, so here's my understanding of what went on!

Around 900 years ago, Monopoli started building a church but stopped when they ran out of wood for the roof.  10 years passed with the church remaining unfinished, until one night a local man had a dream in which he was visited by an angel who told him the wood for the church roof would arrive into the port.  

Nobody believed him, dismissing him as a drunk, but after 2 more dreams with the same insistent message he headed to wait by the sea.

Incredibly, a huge raft appeared on the sea which, visible as it drew closer, had atop it a painting of the virgin Mary carrying the baby Jesus.  

The wood and painting were taken to the church in a grand procession...

... and the work to finish the church roof recommenced.

The end!

That initial church grew too small for the expanding town and was replaced over 300 years ago with the stunning cathedral that stands today, but some of the wood from the raft remains on display.  (Madia is taken to mean raft, though in modern Italian it means trough - Madonna of the raft sounds a little more dreamy and poetic than Madonna of the trough!)

And the painting has pride of place, illuminated and visible even from the very back of the cathedral.

(Wikipedia has just filled in some gaps of my understanding: apparently the church bells rang as the raft came ashore all those years ago despite no-one being there to ring them, so that explains the bells this morning, and apparently it is traditional that's it's 5am and that there's fireworks!)

It's an incredible story.  I can see why the people of Monopoli are so proud to celebrate it.  But 5am?!

More Christmas news from Puglia

Last year, I was here to sign the papers to buy our new place just days before Christmas and felt strangely homesick, listening nostalgically to Fairytale of New York and Driving Home for Christmas whenever on my own!  But this year, I'm really appreciating the atmosphere.

I bumped into a cute little market the other day.

There were lots of stalls with everything from the region's celebrated ceramics...

Look at the little piggy bank faces!

...to hats and scarves and, rather randomly, sofas and sideboards!

Bright blue skies but deceptively nippy!

And standing room only as the Christmas congregation spilled out into the street outside the church.

The town has that delicious combination of cold but bright weather and cosy indoors, plus there are lights up everywhere.

This last photo above is of our neighbours' balcony.  We have often admired it but even more so now it is wrapped in fairy lights!  They asked Mr RR if we'd be putting lights up on our balcony but while I love Christmas and in the UK usually go for a big tree that takes hours to decorate, we're leaving here in a few days so sadly our new Monopoli home will remain un-Christmassified!

Something different here due to the number of balconies is the number of climbing Santas!
Check out these daredevils!

P.S. Yes, it is not just in old films that Italians use their balconies to hang laundry to dry!
P.P.S. Bonus points to the perfect Italian balcony complete with tomatoes!

Piano piano (slowly slowly)!

The house is at a funny in-between stage right now: full of belongings and with the bed made up but missing handy things like door handles, kitchen door handles, sofa, tv (okay, I never said they were essentials!).  We're a level or two above squatting but not really moved in!  For weeks, I have been daydreaming about sitting on our sofa with a good film on the telly and a home-made chilli hot chocolate and although the room looks like this right now (warning: no tidying up done for these photos!)...

The rescued chairs are coming in handy for now!

Mr RR's office door on left of pic, balcony doors on right!

...I have confidence that tomorrow evening I'll be able to indulge my sofa, tv and hot chocolate desires!  Let's see if the sofa delivery guys and electrician play their part and I'll try to find skooshy cream!

Something I hadn't taken into consideration but is glaringly obvious right now before the sofa arrives is that we have nothing absorbing sound.  What a difference carpet usually makes in this respect!  Currently Mr RR's sneezes echo round the empty stone rooms and make the glass in the windows ring!

Another aspect of the exposed stone ceilings is tufo dust, or as I think of it, house dandruff!  Even though it's been coated with a treatment, you do from time to time wake up to find a fine sprinkling!

Don't judge me!  There's more to life than housework!

And to make up for some posts that have been a little heavy of late, on a bit of a tangent from house dandruff, I thought I'd share what always helps me: the view from our roof terrace kitchen...  

Oh my days!  Love love love our starlit backdrop!

...and in Crediting my inspiration Aerosmith, I mentioned I had a song that kept me focussed and feisty, especially in the first few weeks after making the decision to buy a place in Italy.  I used to listen to it on repeat on my early morning jog (Ooh: it's been a while!) and it was a great start to the day.

So here it is: a bit of a change of genre from Aerosmith (bear with it, the song starts proper around 1:15), but powerful and goose bumpy all the same:

Anyone else inspired by this track?  Have favourite lyrics from it?  If only Italy were in the Western skies from UK it would be just about perfect for me!

You know on Property Ladder or Grand Designs...

...when a couple are up to their eyeballs in debt, saying things like "We have no choice: we'll just have to find the money from somewhere" and "We've just got to keep going: we can't stop now or we'll lose everything", and then they take out another credit card to pay off existing credit cards, loans and mortgage and maybe you think "What idiots, taking on more than they can handle!" or "Jeez, I could not handle that level of stress!", but then it all works out and they have a beautiful home and maybe you think "Wow!" already having forgotten the torment they went through just 10 minutes ago on the show?

Well we're that couple right now and we're not at the end of the show yet and it's horrible.

This is the first post I've written and then been unsure about publishing: maybe because we're British so we don't talk about money or maybe because I worry you might question my motivation for sharing this on a blog.  (Trust me, it's not because I'm proud of it or looking for sympathy: I'm mortified that so many people will know how tight money has got for us recently.  Plus I'm bound to hear from my mum that she can't sleep for worrying now she knows!)  But my original reason for writing a blog was to document this whole process, not just the physical transformations to the buildings involved.  And perhaps I think it's worth explaining that although I put together spreadsheets and flow charts for financial projections and cash-flow and worked through "what if" scenarios, we were let down big time by someone who made promises they couldn't keep and these things happen and there's no point complaining about how unfair that is or how they could have caused us to lose everything: I just thank goodness I'm as cautious as I am financially (no, really!  Another lesson about preparing for the worst case scenario and being one step ahead!) or we would have been in way over our heads long, long before now.

We're a week from getting building control sign off on the big UK project, which means agents can start marketing the flats, but we won't see any money from (fingers crossed) sales for at least 2-3 months with Christmas and New Year in the way, and all our "free money" 0% credit cards start charging interest from January, so with invoices piling up and nothing in the bank the best way I've found to keep going is to not think about it too much but just keep plugging away at what you can to push the projects forward...

...and then if a cheeky, ridiculous, utterly speculative application for the max loan your bank offers comes back not with a "Yes", but a "Yes, we have just transferred the money into your account", you might giggle like a schoolgirl because although it is another loan and debt is bad according to 90% of people 90% of the time, you know that the interest on the loan is way less than the crazy interest on the credit cards coming up for payment in just a matter of weeks and that lump sum has just bought you some breathing space and the chance to enjoy Christmas without having the awkwardness of giving home-baking as gifts when the recipients really wanted something less, well, home-baked!

We're still that couple and we're still up to our eyeballs, and maybe you're still thinking "What idiots!", but I remind myself that

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all"

                                                                Helen Keller

and then say a big thank you to whoever is up there for this little reprieve.

Guilty secret!

Tonight we spent €24 (£20) on McDonald's!  It's kind of our reward when we do an Ikea trip as it's just next door, and it's only the second visit since we started coming to Italy, but £20?!

I'm now too curious as to how much more expensive that is!  I have checked the UK McDonald's site but they don't have prices.  Can anyone tell me what it would cost in UK for 2 filet-o-fish meals including a chocolate shake and an orange juice plus 20 chicken nuggets (Mr RR gets kinda insistent on buying too much food when he gets really hungry!)?  

And since when have McDonald's been calling their shakes milkshakes?  I'm sure last time I checked they were still thick shakes.  Have they upped the dairy ingredients?!

I'd like to share a story that demonstrates how Italian efficiency can pervade even the most stringent of systems!  We used the drive-thru and by the time we got to the collection point they had just our chicken nuggets ready but all of the next car's order so they asked us to wait in the car park.  It then took them 3 separate trips (in torrential rain) to complete our order correctly!  Luckily I got an itemised scontrino (receipt) when I paid or I might have thought it was my Italian to blame (as if!)!

Can all the McDonald's goodness have gone to my head?!  I see I'm punctuating like there's no tomorrow!  Time to stop typing!

Hurrah! We're in! We're actually living in Italy!

Yesterday we moved into our new Italian home.  Finally!  Yay!

It is a lovely feeling, despite being without most of the furniture we need and discovering that heating such tall rooms in such a tall building takes a really long time and waking with a start at the 8am bells calling us to Sunday mass (cue simultaneous jokes about "that's why it was so cheap!")!

Still we are working hard at unpacking which keeps us warm!  And you can see the pizza box evidence that we had takeaway as we do the first night in any new home!

A few empty boxes!

There is however a far bigger problem than lack of furniture or a slow to heat building:

There might be a problem with some of the windows!

Even the leaking skylight the builder swore he'd fixed

It has been raining non-stop since yesterday evening and the house is the worse for wear.  Damp stains near far too many windows and pools of water where we made no request for an indoor pool!  It is disappointing but not dampening our spirits.  Even had we known, we would have made the same decisions regarding paying the lump sum in order to be in, so thankfully, no regrets.

But it does serve to illustrate a very important lesson: the lesson of the retention period!  We made a calculated decision to pay more than we were obliged to (according to our contract), in order to get the builder to release the gas certificate and the keys for the new lock so we could move in comfortably and securely, but we didn't pay as much as he wanted, even though most people involved were suggesting we should.  You just have to hold enough back incase of problems.

I could just post pictures of pretty things...

...like new sparkly chandeliers and old tufo arches

... and tell you nice things like how the shadows made on our bedroom ceiling by the streetlight swinging in the breeze at night and shining through the gaps in our shutters reminds me of shadows from swaying palm fronds in some exotic destination, but that wouldn't be the whole story.  If nothing else I'd like to think the horrible photos I've posted of windows letting in serious amounts of water might make a few of you think twice before handing over the final payments on your next renovation project.

Unfortunately it isn't the first time I've been let down by builders who assured me I'd have no problems with their handiwork.  Thankfully that time too I stood my ground as I had to replace the roof!

Incase I sound like a nightmare client, I should clarify that I always stick to the terms of the original contract when it comes to how much to pay and when, but it's surprising how often I've been told that's being unfair!  (I should also point out that I have worked with some contractors for project after project who I can still call for advice or to give quotes, so I really don't think it's me!)

I don't think in this instance or the one with the roof that the builders were deliberately doing bad work or setting out to rip me off, but irrespective of good intentions, accidents and errors of judgement and sloppy work happen all the time.  You have a properly planned payment schedule to make sure there's always more work done than money paid so the builder has a reason to turn up tomorrow, and you have a decent retention agreement so they come back if their work isn't as good as it looks.

In the last stages of the work when you can see that you're 99% there, it's easy for a builder to say "Look around you at all the work I've done.  What problems are going to come up now?  We've fixed them all as they've cropped up, we've been here so long."  And then when they stop being charming and get intimidatingly angry when insisting you give them money - the last guy threatened me in my own home: he could "do it the nice way and take me to court or do it not the nice way", and two days ago the builder here went into an unbelievable rage at me and the project manager: in Italian so I didn't understand much at all, but enough that she later told him to his face he acted maleducato (rude/ impolite/ ill-bred/ underbred according to google translate - take your pick!) - it's far easier to hand over the thousands of pounds/ euros they are demanding.  But of course you're also giving away your security that if they won't come back you will at least be able to pay someone else to fix their mistake.

I'm going on a bit, I'm sorry, but I'd rather share with you the good, the bad and the ugly than have you think this renovating lark is easy or that it's normal to be lucky and land on your feet.  I have friends who've had the idea that I spend my days picking out cushions and browsing exhibitions and interior design mags for inspiration!  I have other friends now starting their own projects and crediting me as inspiration and couldn't bear to see them or anyone else kind enough to show an interest in my stories by reading this blog get into trouble because I never let on how tough it can be and how to protect yourself for the worst case scenarios.  This is tens of thousands of your hard-earned money (and if not yours, then the bank's and they will take it back even if it means taking the whole house!): you've got to be one step ahead and never leave yourself exposed (financially or otherwise!).

Hopefully tomorrow he'll be horrified at my photos and apologise profusely while getting it sorted within days, but just incase he's less honourable, I'm glad I have some money left in my pocket!

So to finish up with something a little more light-hearted, look what we found in Lidl today!

Perfect for homesick ex-pats at Christmas!

Too curious to leave these behind!

And here's some of the most popular streets near us in Monopoli, complete with Christmas decorations.

Via Garibaldi

Via Barbacana

Maria della Madia near Porta Vecchia (old port) beach

This last photo is of Maria della Madia, the most important story in Monopoli's history - more on that later! - but it doesn't save her from the indignity of overly colourful decorations this time of year!