Singing in the rain

It's the wettest summer in Italy for 18 years, and the graph shows peaks in 2004 and this year - both when Mum came for a holiday. Jinx!

It only rains in the afternoon (so far) so I have been able to get photographs. We had massive printer problems which soaked up lots of time and energy, but have been resolved for now letting me get fully down to work. I've had a productive couple of days at last, so it's all good.

On Tuesday I meet a couple of contacts to go up Monte Camino. It usually has locked gates so it's a bonus. On Wednesday I go to the aerial photo archive in Rome for half a day, then join J and Mum for the other half. But before then we catch up with Lorenzo and Christina (and Rachele) for dinner on Monday night. It will be great to see them.

I haven't heard from the Convent about my request for access, so I will have to approach them myself shortly. That'll be fun.

I'll post pics later - J is better organised so follow the link to the left and read what she's been up to.

Arrivederci

Just a quick post

Well, we have made it back to Cassino, and are getting settled in. The Abruzzo was lovely, but as you read earlier, it was pretty full on for me. Make sure you read J's blog for holiday stories.

This week I'll be tracking down some more shots around Cassino; the final shots for my own article; and then into the Liri valley. That'll keep me busy.

Roccasecca, north of Cassino, is an archetypal (sp?) Italian village, clinging to the sides of a hill above the Liri. The house we are in appears exactly how it was the day the owners left - drawers and cupboards full of stuff, knick-knacks on the dressers, etc. It is like we are living in a museum. There are all sorts of historical bits and pieces, including some war-related objects. There are four German helmets, each with holes of varying sizes, and I fear the wearers would not have survived...

We have more access to Internet now so I'll keep you posted.

Ciao. A domani.

at last from P

Lizards, snakes, ants and mosquitoes

OK, enough natural history. It’s been a busy first week or so, and as you can tell, no regular Internet access to tell anyone about it. I’m into a routine of breakfast /drive to area /take ‘now’ pics /drive home /download and name ‘now’ pics/dinner/sort out next day’s ‘then’ shots. It’s pretty full on and the weather has been stinking hot (mid-thirties the last few days) so it has been pretty tiring and I haven’t seen much of J.

Overall it has been pretty productive and I have located most of what I’ve been searching for. A few have remained illusive which is frustrating but perhaps to be expected given the lack of detail we have about some of the photos. RMc, you may be interested to know we found one of your old billets, although it is rather the worse for the passage of 65 years. It was an easy find as we just looked across the valley above Hunter’s bridge and saw it straight away. I’ve matched a couple of your photos, so will post them, when possible, for you to see. Drop me a line – I want to know if your op went OK.

JP, you will be happy to know that I’ve found the Tiki/Heartbeat site to within 50m, Lobe to within 100m, the Messerschmidt (410? 260?) to within 25m, the ford to within 100m, Glossop and Sullivan’s Shermans to within 5m, and had a general good look around the Perano battlefield and the Sangro Valley. (BTW, was there a second ford used after these Shermans got bogged, as the pics and maps show the ford as being further downstream by ½ a km or so.) I thought I had the Toretta shot but am 100m to far down slope so if I get a chance I’ll go back and nail it. I spent a day in Castel Frentano getting matches there, and have a good selection for you to use, although you may not be happy with the originals. I’ll have managed a couple of days in Orsogna by the time you read this (all going well.)

I haven’t seen much of J with the above routine so we took a day off today. It didn’t work quite as planned but we had a look around Termoli on the same day I was reading of the battles for its liberation. Commandos landed on the beaches where about half a dozen people were bathing today. That was the easy bit as there was a large German counter-attack to recapture the town that came close to success, but not close enough. We found an Internet café just as it closed (sometimes mezzogiorno – siesta – is a pain). The towns are decidedly empty at midday, as all the Italians head home for lunch and probably a kip. Often we’re the only ones on the street. We wandered around then took the train back – through tunnels a lot of the way so not the best for sightseeing. The Italians are fantastic for transport engineering. Viaducts across valleys, tunnels through mountains: it’s all very impressive. It makes you wonder why Auckland can have so many problems. The trains are cheap, comfortable and run on time even without Mussolini. They beat the Pommy ones (and our own of course) hands down. BTW, can anyone tell me what’s up with Toll? Has the government bought the rail back?

J’s been watching the trabocchi in action - this is the Costa Trabocchi after all. She has some lovely photos to show what a trabocco is, so check out her site. These things have been working the same way for hundreds of years, though they can’t make much of a living if tonight’s catch was anything to go by. She’s had a couple of swims while I’ve been gallivanting about and has kept Mum company.

We had some sad news from home, so our thoughts are there.

To finish on wildlife, I no sooner cleared up my blood-poisoning from an infected ingrown hair, than a mosquito bite has gone septic and also appears to be tracking up my arm. I’ll have to keep a careful eye on it. The old body is packing it in – I wrenched my big toe climbing a hill in jandals, my UV allergy rash is back, I think I have carpal tunnel in my left wrist and my shaky hands are starting to effect my photographs. Sigh.

Ciao to all in Brizzle, and everybody make sure you go to J’s blog to see what a real Italian holiday is about. (What would someone who doesn’t drink coffee or wine know?)

A presto.

Perrys Blog

Perry is soooo busy up in the hills of Abruzzo matching photos that he has not written his blog yet.
He is having a wonderful time filling 2 memory cards on his camera each day and then downloading them at night.
Highlights for him I think are the fruit pies, gelato, and finally being here after all the research.

My blog has been updated the link is on this page.

Is seagull shite random?

I suspect it's not after suffering a near miss from an anti-personnel bombing raid yesterday morning. Shrapnel wounds only, but a close thing. Certain cars seem to be targets as well, so what gives? Are they cunning little emissaries of Osama Bin Laden, or innocent flying rats?

Mum arrived on Tuesday and is settling and getting over her jet-lag. We have her locked in the bathroom to do the cleaning, and let her out for dinner and when we need to dirty the room again.

J has started packing and we're already concerned about whether we can fit all our stuff in the car. We didn't think we had bought much until we started this little exercise. We've been trying to get everything done, and we have new insurances, a forwarding address, the packing, storage, etc, to get organised.

We each had interesting days at work. J discovered the final date for a major funding application had been and gone for the year, so there were a few upset people there. I have had problems with the report I look after. I am handing over to a new woman, and she is already dispairing. It's a shame that the bank couldn't get their act together to have this project completed while I was still around, but we could only extend our stay for so long...

We'll be letting Mum out of her box so she can come with me to London and be my photocopying slave for a day at the IWM. It'll be very useful having an extra pair of hands so we might let her have the rest of the time off.

Actually, she had a day looking around London with J last Tuesday, taking the hop-on-hop-off bus around for the day. For the last couple of days she has been quietly exploring Bristol, and this weekend we'll try to get out of town for a taste of Little Britain. The weather has been lovely, so she'll have the completely wrong idea of the place...

J and I passed the one year milestone a fortnight ago. (That's why all our insurances, etc, have expired). Only four to go... Bristol has been a great home for that time and we will miss it when we go. Let's hope Scotland is as easy to live in.

More English than the English?

So, I'm not dead, just resting. We haven't been up to much except planning the big trip. I haven't been back to London for a fortnight as there were too many people away at work. It's going to put some pressure on over the next few weeks though... So little time left.



I won the St George quiz on St George's Day at work. It's a bit poor when a Kiwi beats all the Poms in a quiz on their own national day, so perhaps they should all go home and learn how to guess as well as I do. I've suggested a quick sing-along of Land of Hope and Glory might be in order at the next meeting (non-English excepted of course).



It's been pretty busy for the others at work as they've been testing changes for Quarter 1 reports that haven't worked. I carry on with it all happening around me, a bit like those TV shots you see of a person standing still while the crowd moves in fast-motion around him/her. My own report gets run this week and again next week, but I'm away in London 3 of those 10 days and another is a 'bank holiday' so it could get busier. Of course, my report was supposed to have been automated way back in December, and while I'm grateful for the extra work, it's a little disappointing I won't get to see the finished product!



Mum gets in tomorrow week plus a day, so she's quite excited. We've got a house-sit in Glasgow for a month when we get in from Italy, where we have to mind two dogs and a cat while the owners go to Aussie and, somewhat ironically, to Christchurch. Mum could have done a houseswap! So we may end up settling in Glasgow rather than Edinburgh, but it really doesn't matter as we weren't committed to anywhere in particular anyway.



The car is back on the road, but we've spent as much again as its buying price I think. New radiator, new water pump, jerry-built gearbox linkages, new tyres, and we still don't know if it'll pass the MoT (WoF). We've both swapped our NZ licences for UK ones recently too.



This weekend we went to Hay-on-Wye (the Town of Books) via Gloucester. I liked Gloucester Cathedral, especially for its solid Norman style. It has the very first examples of fan vaulting don't you know? (See J's blog for the best pic). In Hay-on-Wye I spent a good 8 hours browsing the military book sections. One shop in particular had a fantastic selection of regimental histories and personal histories, although rather expensive. I could even have bought the British Official History if I'd had a spare large sum of money. We stayed in a nice B&B run almost on an honesty system (the chap was in the hills somewhere and his instructions were to choose a room, make ourselves at home and catch up with him later). It was a very pleasant weekend away, with so few weekends left.



J caught up with a friend from one of the schools she worked at. They are converting a barn into des res, but they have a hell of a lot of work to do even to get it to a point that you would consider the beginning of the project. I admire their vision, but it wouldn't be something I'd consider.




I caught up briefly with C after the family came back from Aussie, and we will see them for dinner next week. It'll effectively be goodbye I suppose, although they might make it to a farewell lunch...



The flat has had two viewers: one a friend of the Italians, and the other through an agent. The agent made two appointments and didn't show up so I got the landlord to give him a bollocking. Hopefully they'll communicate better now.



Anyway, time to go.



Distinti Salute

Quiet days

Well, another two weeks with no blog entry - you'd think there was no news, and you'd be almost right.



It's been quiet at work. A few people off sick but we still seem to manage OK. I've had the odd frustration as people failed to supply the data I need to run my reports, but at 5:00 it doesn't matter any more. My biggest wins this week were getting the drinks machine and printer fixed. Two weeks ago someone called the repair people about our tea/coffee machine. A week later the tech was in fixing the innards. He went away and still no machine so I rang them after a week to see what was going on. I think he had just forgotten to turn it back on because we saw no tech, just the usual maintenance/filling person and next thing it was going! The worst thing was that they seemed to have left the tea and coffee in for the whole two weeks so it was a fairly well brewed cuppa for the first day or two.


The printer was broken for half a day before I put the call in. By the time it was fixed there were two days of print jobs on it, which of course no-one bothers to pick up. Lots of confidential stuff lying around for anyone to pick up... The lack of security at the bank really has surprised me. They've recently had a push on security, including enforced encryption and so on, but you'd think the ideas were all new from the way they go on. OGHS was more secure than Lloyds in some respects.



The car park continues to provide some interest. Last week we got home to find a burnt out wreck in the next block. (We only went out one day in the whole weekend and that's when it happened.) The cars either side were scorched and had their trim melted off so they'd be a tad annoyed, but not as annoyed as the owner. Apparently it was an electrical fault, but there was very little left of the car and the scaffolding it was parked under was burnt. That scaffolding has been there almost as long as we have but we haven't seen any sign of actual work. It must be costing a fortune. Later that week there was a row of cars with wheel clamps on - one had two clamps for some reason. A while back they closed off the rough carpark so there are now 20 fewer parks in the street and the workers get desperate for somewhere to leave their cars. It's crazy because nothing has been done with the closed lot.



On motor related issues, we can no longer get reverse gear nor 5th. J has the car booked in for Tuesday, but I'm not looking forward to the diagnosis. From a quick Internet trawl it would seem the linkages are the most likely cause, as they are plastic and wear quite quickly. If so it won't be horrendous, but still money we don't want to spend.



The pound has dropped to a record low against the Euro which is probably good for Mum but a disaster for us on the eve of our trip. It has dropped from 1.65 when we went last year to 1.23 so quite a significant percentage. They are talking recession over here so it'll be interesting to see how that impacts on us.


We went for a walk around Hotwells, which we hadn't explored even though it is very close. I've put some pics here. There are whole quarters of the city we haven't looked at, but we haven't done too bad a job thanks to J.





I have to hurry up 'cos she who must be obeyed wants to cut my out of control full head of hair back to a no 3. She cunningly cuts it to make me look like a semi-bald 40+ year old.