Christine - Hunters: 1-0!!!

This morning we woke up a bit later than usual. It has been a very hard couple of days on the digestive side. Friday evening we hosted a very copious dinner because we wanted to show our Italian friends that the Belgian cuisine is quality-wise a very good match for the Italian one. And yesterday we were invited for an extensive lunch ourselves. So after two days of hard labour at the table we thought that we could do with a small break. I opened the curtains around ten and was thrilled to see that at least we'd have a white Boxing Day. The past couple of days have been quite warm and a bit rainy so the sight of the snow-covered trees and fields was quite a lovely surprise.

But then came the shock. Christine was raising the curtain at the side window of our bedroom and suddenly screamed that there was a car parked in the middle of our garden! I couldn't believe it at first, but indeed, there it was. Someone had driven by our letterbox and the pillar which will one day hold one part of our entrance gate, made a 180 degree turn through our rose beds and parked his car just there. We immediately sussed that it must be one of those bloody hunters again. I took the camera and went outside to take a couple of pictures as proof, while Christine called the Carabinieri. Who obviously didn't feel like driving half an hour through the snow on a holiday, so they advised us to call the Provincial Police (who's responsible for hunting issues) the next morning. So that was that.

Suddenly, Christine had a brilliant idea. She asked me to go and park our car at the entrance gate in such a way that the stupid idiot wouldn't be able to leave anymore. Which I did right away. That should come down as a shock to that bastard! A bit later we saw him, walking across our field. Again we took a couple of pictures. This man was in breach of the law no less than 4 times:

- Parking on private property

- Walking through a private garden (I'm not even referring to our field because this would be regarded as "agricultural land")

- Hunting in the snow (only allowed to a very select group of special licence holders)

- Hunting less than 100m away from a house

So we prepared ourselves for the confrontation, which obviously wouldn't be far away anymore. It was nearing lunchtime and the guy certainly wouldn't want to miss his hot tortelli. And indeed, Christine shouted at me that the man was headed for his car. Showtime! Just to be on the safe side, I quickly installed a very powerful studio microphone by the window just above the front door. In the not unlikely event that the man was going to utter threats to Christine, he wouldn't be able to get away with it so easily.

But eventually, the man turned out to be very... apologetic.

- "Private property is private property and this should be holy to everyone!", he exclaimed with a big, shining halo above his head. He probably realised that Christine was not the person to mess around with and he certainly didn't fancy walking home several miles through the cold and snow. His tortelli would probably also be cold by then. So he suddenly was the holy pope himself and assured us that he would make it clear to everyone that they're not to come onto our property!

Victory!!! :-)

BTW, if any of you speak Italian and fancy a big laugh, the recorded audio file is available on request in mp3 format! hehehe...

Merry Christmas to you all!!!

With this picture of our first Italian Christmas tree, I'd like to wish all of you a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year. You've all been such a big support to us and you've contributed so much to our survival through this horrible year. Therefore Christine and I would like to say a big "thank you" and we wish you lots of happiness for 2011. May all of your wishes come true!

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow...

Do you remember that you used to love playing in the snow when you were a little kid? Our children seem to love it too! With "children" I obviously mean our cats of course. :-) Especially Blu and Thomas, our two Norwegian rascals, truly live up to their breed and adore rolling and jumping about until they're totally covered in snow. It's so delightful to see them at it. Why does anyone still need a television, we often wonder.

Canelle, our oldest, prefers to stay away from all that juvenile violence and is carefully threading on the big, white carpet, stearing well clear of the other three...

Here's Blu. She's just had a couple of rolls and a big shake to get all the cold snow off her. And then she lays down in the hole she's just made in order to enjoy the warm sunshine which is shining abundantly on her thick fur.

Flora, our Maine Coon kitten and the youngest of the pack, tries to follow Blu's example, be it a little less enthusiastically...

Thomas, on the other hand, doesn't need any convincing to go out in the snow. On the contrary; he just loves it! Just look at him... He can't bury himself deep enough in it! :-)

Flora eventually returns to a spot where she can rest high and dry while she's watching the two Norwegians making havoc.

"I'm the king of the hill", Thomas squeaks. Apart from me he's the only man in the house. Well... err... was apart from me the only man in the house. :-) And indeed, there's nothing "macho" about him. On the contrary, he wants to be friends with everybody - humans excluded because apart from Christine and I he doesn't want to get to know them at all.


Blu quickly follows Thomas onto the "throne" he's just discovered. Isn't she a lovely lady?

So you can see that our cats are absolutely happy in their new home. For Christine and I our new Italian home is a dream, but for our cats it truly must be paradise. So much space to play, so many trees to climb and so many things to discover... They've had a very difficult move from Belgium which must have scared the living wits out of them. And after that they still suffered for months because when they were finally getting used to the small house we rented at first, they had to move again to our new house. But now, if you ask them, they never want to go away from this place anymore. Just like us... ;-)

I'm going to be a teacher!

That's right! A real teacher teaching real students. Well, kids actually, which is probably even worse. Remembering the good old days of my own childhood I know what a cunning horror children may be to a teacher. That being said, poachers make the best forest keepers, so to speak, meaning that my own experience as an inpertinent little brat will certainly have me prepared for a situation in which the tables are turned.

Now, what is this all about? This morning I received a phonecall from the head master of one of the local schools. She's a very friendly lady (well, she sounded very friendly over the phone anyway) and she's very much concerned about the level of English that Italian children are being taught. I already told you the story about that little lad who's had five years of English in primary school and who can't even say something basic and simple like "How are you?". The head master wants to do something about it and heard about me as an "English mothertongue" teacher. Even though the word "mothertongue" is a big exaggeration, I was honoured to receive her request for help and I assured her that it would be a real pleasure to become a part-time teacher at the two schools for which she is responsible. She offered me a contract for 16 hours a week, 8 at each school, and for a very interesting salary too. The details still have to be finalised of course; for the moment she only had to be certain that I was interested. In any case it would be just perfect for me because a part-time job will allow me to make myself useful to the community without (hopefully) overstressing myself. It'd give me enough time to recover and to remain my "normal" self. She'll contact me later this week in order to sit together and discuss all of this a bit better and to share some ideas about a better approach at teaching English. Since I completed this TEFL course I have quite a lot of them, such as games and other fun exercises which will let the children assimilate with the language in a much more pleasant and above all effective way than simply learning words and grammar rules by heart. Oh yes, I'll be very well prepared and motivated! :-)

The lessons should start in March so I'll keep you informed about how well it goes! Oh... I'm so excited! Finally things really seem to be going our way now. I think that we deserved it after all the hard times and I'm sure that you'd agree with me on that. So... on with OUR NEW LIFE IN ITALY!!!

A new home for my mother-in-law

Last week my mother-in-law received dreadful news. She'll be thrown out of the cottage she rents because the owner's daughter cast an eye on it and fancies living there. She has until summer to find a new home.

This news didn't come totally unexpected. The owner's father had promised my mother-in-law she could live in that cottage for as long as she wanted. But when he came to die two years ago, this promise died with him. My mother-in-law had already picked up some rumours about the daughter wanting the house a couple of months ago. So she wasn't totally unprepared for it. But nevertheless the official announcement came as a total shock which was even aggravated by the blunt, careless and truly arrogant manner in which the owner came to tell her.

He barged into the house with a big cigar, polluting the air with the foul breath he belched forth. Then he asked for a drink. He didn't wait to be offered one, oh no! He wanted a drink.

- "Allright", my mother-in-law said, "I have water or orange juice..."

- "Don't you have anything else?", he asked.

- "Well...", my mother-in-law wittingly replied, "I've still got a bottle of Champagne in the garage."

- "Oh, that'll do nicely!"

And he meant it! Upon which my mother-in-law exploded and asked him whether she should really serve him a bottle of Champagne when he came to tell her he would throw her out of her house.

But there it is. Christine and I have already offered her the room of our B&B, even if it's only temporary. But in the end we believe that she prefers to stay in Flanders where all of her friends are, in stead of moving to a foreign country where she'll be much more isolated and where she doesn't speak the language. Today she's actually living in the same street as her other daughter and her two grandchildren, so that must hurt very much too.

Well, mum, the room's still available if you want it. It's up to you. In any case, Christine and I would like to send you lots of courage and support, even though we're 800 miles away. We're sure that in the end everything will be ok. Remember that we told you that you'll certainly find an even much nicer home? Just like Christine had to do two times in a row. When she left her ex-husband for me, she also had to leave the house of her dreams behind. But then we built an even much more beautiful house together. Which we sold in order to achieve our Italian dream. And now, we're living in this Italian paradise which you visited only two weeks ago. So if we can do it, so can you. Never give up hope. Keep believing in yourself and keep repeating that you've deserved a nice place of your own. And everything will be just fine. Just trust me! :-)

The following picture was taken last September. Do you remember that I told you that Christine had won this private concert from one of Flanders' most renowned artists? Well, here's Christine on the left, Paul Michiels (the famous singer) on her right, then Christine's mother and on the right is Jeroen, Paul's pianist...

Fear of confrontations

What a busy weekend this was with my mother and sister in law staying for a couple of days. Christine and I very much enjoyed this visit and it really was a pity that they had to go back again so soon. But there it is. Back to "normal" life again. Today life really became back to "normal".

Someone knocked on our door this morning. I was a bit surprised because we've had a lot of snowfall last night and you'd have to plough through at least half a metre of snow on foot to reach our house, along a steep uphill entry road of more than 100m long. Not the sort of thing someone would endeavour unless it was absolutely necessary. So I opened the door, curious about who it might be. To my horror it was... the Nasty Little Man. He wanted to know when we'd pay him. I was a bit in shock and luckily Christine immediately came down and took over from me. There was a brief discussion about the origin of the water in our walls. According to him the water now comes from the top of the entry road because from there the slope goes a bit downhill again towards our house. And on the sides there are still a couple of holes from the unfinished ground works which according to him accumulate the water and send it to our house. Christine asked him why the water is not in our kitchen then. Obviously no reply. The Nasty Little Man even said that the drainage behind the house had become obsolete since we've had the wall constructed to stop the hill behind our house from crumbling down. Yes, you read it right: "obsolete". Nonetheless we've had to pay thousands for these drainage works and the Big Bad Wolf still wrote in his letter to court that he had drainage works done around the entire house "to the benefit of the entire structure". This means that he, our so-called "expert geometer" had us pay thousands for "obsolete" drainage works and then afterwards told us we'd need to have a wall built behind the house - yet another five thousand - to stop the hill from falling down. Oh yes, this'll look nice in court! Definitely it will!

Sadly... I can't take it anymore. Last time when the Big Bad Wolf and his Nasty Little Creep paid us a visit to inspect the damage, I already had to hide behind Christine's (very slim) back because I couldn't face those two bastards anymore. I was a total gonner for three days, trembling and totally in shock. I've got a feeling that after today it will not be very different. I can still get my thoughts together and hence I'm still capable of writing this blog post. But at times it feels as if a knife is cutting straight through my heart. My head starts spinning and all I can think of is escape. Escape to a place where noone can ever find me. Especially those irritating voices in my head. They're driving me insane and I wish so hard that I could shut them up forever. Why can't I just leave it be? Why does such a small event, an event that once again clearly demonstrates that we were in the right from the beginning and that we shouldn't pay that ghastly man the rest of his money until all problems with our house have been solved, have such an impact on me? It's even more surprising because especially my former colleagues will remember that I could be very ad rem and assertive during the meetings when I had to defend the interests of my clients. Sometimes even a bit too much... Without the slightest blink of an eye I could tell directors and even state-secretaries what I thought of them. And now, I can't even look a stupid, incompetent builder in the eye anymore. It makes me realise that what I did at work was only a front. A very good acting game, perhaps even worthy an Oscar. It was the enormous firewall that I constructed around me in order to protect my true inner self from the outside world. A true inner self that noone must ever discover. Today, it feels like this firewall has been torn down completely. I can't pretend anymore. All that's left is a shy little boy that just wants to be left in peace. Autism has caught up with me at last. I just have to accept it. Fortunately, Christine won't have me any other way. She's so sweet... I love her so much for that. And at least she takes my defense whenever necessary, like today. I can't thank her enough... She really makes me happy. When I got to know her, it was the first time in my entire life that I enjoyed true happiness. And it's still lasting, strong as ever... :-)