Car, stairs and other bits of progress

In my normal one step forward two steps back mode, with a little bit of patience, things here turn right in the end.
I have completed the required forms for the insurance, and am assured by the garage that they will cover everything and that the car should be back in one piece in no time, without it costing me a penny.
The stairs, are, I see on my trip to Marche this weekend, unbelievably now finished. There is a distinct wobble to them once I removed the masking tape from the painting, but I think this just adds to their charm. After all it is not often that you get to have an addition to your house that is useful, architecturally pleasing and musical at the same time!
I am loading up the car tomorrow with armfulls of useful clobber that I can bring from Marche to Florence to the new apartment, which is currently furnished more in street style - as in person who lives on the street, and not actually in any way trendy. All of my possessions are scattered in plastic bags around the place in lieu of an emergency Ikea run to stock up on some furniture!
But slowly, slowly, I think there is progress...

Not a great start to a Monday

On the way to work this morning, someone rear-ended my new car. I was happily singing along to the radio to pass the time in the traffic when the girl in the Golf behind me, who was still some distance away, shot into the rear bumper - boom.
The whole of the back of the car needs replacing and the bumper is scratched and also needs attention.
It is at times like this that you realise quite how far away you are from the systems that you know. Meaning that I did not follow the processes that I needed to...
I grabbed the details from the girl, her phone number, name, address, licence plate etc, but when I later asked in the bar near to the accident they told me that I needed to do the CID. (Pronounced Chid).
It turns out that this is a form that you fill in when someone has smacked into you (or vice versa I suppose) to start the insurance process. The idea is that you do a small drawing, tick the box of who based whom and then the rest is sorted out by the insurance company. It seems like a great system, once you know about it!
The benefit of working for a company like mine is that we are big enough that someone comes to the office to give you a quote for the damages. There is also an insurance consultant who comes here to give us discounts on policies, and tells us what to do with any problems.
So looking on the bright side, there has been a heap of advice since the accident this morning. I am still hoping it will not happen again, but from now on, to be safe, I am carrying a CID in my car.

Botticelli, Boccadama and the breeze

Finally.
Today I made it to the Uffizi Gallery for the first time.
Created as offices for the judges of Florence back in 1581, (hence the name - uffici in Italian means offices) it was used by the omnipresent Medicis to show off their collection of art - making it the oldest art gallery in the world.
With all such galleries (think National Gallery in London, the Louvre in Paris etc) its a behemoth, and better perhaps not to follow the arrows from room to room with military-like precision with map in hand, or worse clutching one of the audio guides (there were a collection of miserable looking couples walking around with the black wands of extra information) but preferable to follow your interests. I make no apologies for enjoying the big hitters of the art world - starting with Botticelli's Spring, Birth of Venus (and more or less all of his others too - the man was a genius). Also much loved by me - Piero della Francesca's realistic portraits of the Duke of Urbino and his wife, with the Duke sporting the broken nose he really had - realism at its best.
Some of the sculpture galleries were fabulous too, and the ceiling of the galleries, flooded with light, and surrounded by stunning views, were gorgeous. The views from the terrace outside the bar were also pretty fab, and worth the trip outside in the cold.
But to paraphrase, man cannot live by art alone, and after sumptuous art, it was sumptuous food we were after. having tried and failed to get a table in the Lebanese restaurant I found the other day, and with the same story in the Birreria Centrale (we have booked for Monday) we ended up in Boccadama, in Piazza Santa Croce, a lovely little place that I found one day on my Friday afternoon wanderings. The meal was fantastic, and fairly priced - in the expected price zone - and the service was super too. Really recommended.
The only downside after being looked after so well in the warm for a few hours was struggling back out into the breeze which is currently cooling Florence down nicely. The weather forecast says it comes to us directly from the arctic, somthing that given the temperature I am not going to dispute.

15 nights in the Westin Excelsior

I'm finally actively improving my knowledge about wine by doing more than just quaffing noticeable quantities of the stuff. Tonight I started my sommelier course and so far so good! Held at the Westin Excelsior for a total of 15 weeks, the course is the first of 3 steps on the way to becoming a professional sommelier. The class was really interesting, and, although we were in 100+ people in the room, I managed to have a natter with the 2 guys either side of me – a gynaecologist and someone who used to be a waiter in a Cantine in Tuscany. After a lesson on how to hold the glass, what glasses to use for what, and how to use (or not) the corkscrew, it was time for the tasting. We sampled a champagne from a boutique French producer – toasty and smooth – a sweetish Italian white that would work like a chutney with cheese or salami – full of pineapples and bananas, just delicious, although I was missing a great piece of Parmeggiano or Pecorino to go with it – and a full-bodied red – from the Bolgheri vineyard, which smelt of cabernet and tasted of Merlot – full of stewed plums and raspberries. I have my blue leather Associazione Italiana Sommeliers wine glass box, with space for 3 glasses and the corkscrew, and 2 enormous books to study in Italian. So I look the part, even if I am not entirely sure of all of the descriptive words used by the teacher during the session. Next week, the biological side of wine producing, followed by tasting another 3 wines - surely my favourite bit of the lesson...

Have wheels Will travel

I am thoroughly enjoying my new-found flexibility thanks to my new Panda. It means I can start exploring a little bit at the weekends and it will save me a fortune in car hire too - expect shares in Europcar to take a plunge. The Panda is thankfully pretty fuel efficient so, whilst not exactly green, it does mean that there is not too much of a shock in adding diesel bills to my outgoings.

Pruning the olive tree

Today, back home in Marche, I decided that the time had come to give the olive tree in my garden a good trim. I googled for tips on pruning, and came to the conclusion that there is no standard way to do it. It seems to depend on the country, the location, the gardener/farmer/cultivator etc. One site I found said that if the function of the olive tree was to be a tree then you should let it be just that. Not something that I found entirely useful.
So in the end, I googled again for pictures of olive trees and tried my best to trim mine accordingly.
It has to be said that I am no Vidal Sassoon. I remember in the past trying to cut hair with clippers, and creating a kind of inverse mallet that no-one would be proud of. My rose trees are not exactly shaped into the beautiful balls of blooms that the garden centre promised when I bought them (in fact 2 are dead, and 2 of the others lean like a lamp post in a strong wind), and the hedge, which I attack with my electronic hedge clippers in a power tooled slasher film-type swinging motion, is thick, but with a perceptible wave along the top where a straight edge used to be.
So I started gingerly with the clippers - snipping off the smaller bits of branch crowding the middle of the tree. An olive, according to Pepe at the garden centre and Marco at the flower shop, is supposed to bear the form of a chalice or a wine glass - empty in the middle and bowl shaped around the edges.
The fact that I have always preferred wine glasses to be at least a little full did not deter me.
After plucking up a little more courage, I started to snip away at one particularly ambitious Jack-and-the-Beanstalk type frond that was almost as tall as Augustino's balcony.
But once that had come down, I realised that the other 2 similarly sized pieces looked a bit mad.
And so it started. Much to the amusement of all passers-by (it was church kicking-out time, so there were many!) I snipped and trimmed and tidied. Until I turned around and saw an enormous pile of leaves and branches behind me on the terrace.
So I stopped.
All in all, I dont think it looks too terrible - but was cheered also to see on the web another comment (from my friend who was so deep with the tree comment previously). Don't worry, he assures his readers, Olives are forgiving of even the most crudely attempted pruning.
Here's hoping!