Author: lolabump

Spent some good time with Lola and Neve while in via delle venti. Read them macbeth as bedtime story. Kept alive the legend of the Barabek, who still lives in the dark space above the cantina stairs. Neve and I would put a banana at the top of the stairs so he’d eat that in preference to any passing humans. I’d sometimes come down the stairs, pretending to be the Barabek and they’d have fun being scared.

Went on early-morning bike ride with Lola — one thing which she’d been desperate to get in. We rode up to Camalo’ and had a brioch at the bar.

And then we made the birthday cake for Mr Monkey, and later the cake for Dedi. But still I felt like I was often short-tempered and fobbing them off because I was working on some DIY, or checking email or whatever.

It’s all so gosh-darned tricky. 😮

Travelled evening of Maundy Thursday: taxi, train, plane — all straightforward and hitch-free. Dedi met us at Treviso. Had some dinner when we got to Nonna’s — minestrone and some meats; then to bed pretty sharpish.

Friday seeing some of the family. Perhaps we went to IperLando, or maybe that was Saturday. Stefi, Bruna, Renzo, Selena, Alvise, Morena, Assunta, Giada, Marco, Claudio…  I went down to Tasca and bought some sockets to replace some of Cesarina’s, which had blown (some of them over ten years ago!). Fitted those.

Saturday, the girls helped Nonna and Bruna make pasta and put the pasticcio together. Lola particularly good with the mixing and then the putting through the machine. Saw Francesca, Elena, Marina…

Sunday, of course, the big Easter do. 13 at the table for lunch – no Selena or Alvise though, as Selana was worried by the fact that Morena has shingles (though she’s had chicknpox, so no actual risk). Selena is significantly more risk-averse now she is pregnant. Even when it’s demonstrable that there is no risk.

Monday — pasquetta — went with Selena and Alvise and Bruna and Renzo to a bonkers place in the montello, “Pioppi”,  which would give UK health and safety fans a series of major heart attacks.  Adventure playground run out the back of a big trattoria; huge great “homemade” slides, roller-coaster things, and various ingenious but potentially lethal Heath-Robinsonesque divertimenti.

Tues Isa feeling a bit wobbly – albeit not sure if this was an illness or just an adjustment…  Weds, though, saw high fever and a day in bed; same for much of Thursday.

Weds Dedi took the girls and me to Jeselo (Lola and Neve’s vote). They had a lovely time paddling and collecting shells and rolling around in the fine sand. Beach was pretty much deserted; some tractors working on the sand; dog walkers; a couple of groups of teens playing beach games…

It’s a great drive out to Jesolo – Dedi takes the old route, following the Sile out to portegrandi. Including that series of old “named” houses that, Dedi was saying, were commissioned by Mussolini.

Thurs, Fri. Some short bike rides; got skirting board cut (by Stefano) and stuck it up where missing in the kitchen. Must have gone to Tasca to get glue the day before… (Unfortunately, this was not the “no-more-nails” type I had assumed it would be, but a smelly impact adhesive. Still, seemed to do the job.)

Saturday, Isa up and about. We went into Treviso after lunch. Dedi dropped us off at Via Montello and we hung around outside the wall a bit, watching the ducks and rabbits. Then a stroll through town, window-shopping and chilling. Stopped at a bar  by the fish market and had a spritz.

Sun we went out on the bikes with Giada, geocaching – couldn’t find the one on the pista cyclabile, but found the one off Via Croce. Stopped off at Dedi’s gelateria on the way back where the kids tasted approximately every icecream flavour available.

Monday we went to Venice. Walked around cannaregio area (misericorda, insert viewranger link), art shop with family where wife from somerset, lunch near there but not so good, despite recommendation by said artists; then walk up to madonna dell’orto and caught vaporetto round island to san pietro del campostello, an amazingly wastelandy part of Venice. See the viewranger route here.

Tues went into Treviso, saw Susi. Isa’s hair, girls extensions. Bus home, Bruna interception at Ponzano, buy cake tin, got home, had dins. Then Lola and Neve made bday cake for Dedi.

Weds morning, I managed to get out for first (and last!) early morning bike ride. Did about 20k in foggy drizzle, across b-roads and dirt tracks up to the Montello and up a real hill through the woods before returning via a slightly circular route. Utterly fantastic: beautiful countryside, pheasants wandering across the roads, irrigation canals disappearing into the mist, ancient stone-built houses in the middle of nowhere (can I buy one for 20k euros and do it up? can I? can I? [No – Ed]). One year (next year?) we’re going to do huge bike rides every day, and Lola will be speeding around…

Weds also Dedi’s bday, doing icing, lunch, Castelfranco, Neve flagging complaining of tummyache, high fever by time home. Had been constipated a few days; and patatina still burny despite antibiotics… So she and Isa stayed at home while Lola and I and the rest of the family went out for pizza in Paderno. All back to Nonna’s house for coffee and the cake Lola and Neve had made. This greeted with great enthusiasm by all.

Thurs, Neve still with high temp. In bed much of day. Isa went to supermarket with Nonna, and later to sign a document with the lawyer, finalising some of the division. Earlier in the holiday, we’d looked at the papers listing how the division was made.

Fri and Neve’s temperature is the on way down. Isa and I went to Treviso after lunch–Isa driving Dedi’s car. We wandered around window shopping; went to Pietrobon but their stock not what is used to be. Isa bought two pairs of jeans at Sisley, then we stopped at the optician and caught up with Grazia, and booked an appt for Lola the following day for eye test.

Thus, Saturday saw us heading to Treviso to give Lola’s eyes a polish. Stefi gave us a lift in her tiny little car. While Lola was being tortured with little letters, we went out for a drink and snack at a local bar. Then back to pick Lola and Isa up, and goodbye to Grazia and out for another quick pit stop in a lovely little bar/pasticceria for a coffee and snack. I had a black croissant — make with ‘carbone vegetale’. Very nice.

Finally, we are over the various illnesses and have acclimatised, destressed and are beginning to relax — ready to begin our holiday only… drat — tomorrow is our last day!

spedicolata – Renzo’s word to describe Selena’s driving… Actually, I think I misheard, he must have said spericolata (daredevil)

It’s one am and there are nine children in a tent at the bottom of our garden. Lola, Neve,  Teo, Louis, Natalie, Isla, Tilly, Rosie, Eleanor.  They watched The Gods Must be Crazy in the garden. Barbie first. Then to bed in the tent.  They’re still chatting away now. Laughing; torching; telling horror stories and jokes. We’re in our bed, listening to them through the window. Going to watch a Grimm now — see you after. Or not.

And we’re having a heatwave much like the one when she was born. Party on Saturday — sleepover in tent in garden with outdoor cinema. Neve is off to Hunstanton with the school (KS1) today; it’s a perfect, cloud-free day and could get up to 30 degrees. Lola got v upset that Neve’s packed lunch was much better (had jelly and pretzels) than the one she had the other day to take on her West Stow (Anglo-Saxon village) trip. Funny (not necessarily in the sense of hilarity) how much these little things mean at that age. I certainly have a reasonably tangible memory of the “sibling got this but I didn’t” feeling. And it’s not softened by the thought of, eg, a big birthday party next day.

Neve and Lola both very lovely and loving. Prone to niggle and argue, often with Neve lashing out. Both capable of teasing and winding each other up; but also spend a great deal of time playing together, making up stories with their pets and cuddlies. Lola continues to have a passion for cataloguing, and is often filling notebooks with details (name, age, DOB, favourite cake, isRoyalty?) of her pets/cuddlies/

Neve still very cuddly. Still says “Pemember, whole-tire, aminal, …”

Lola gets up early in the morning and is often already dressed and in the sitting room when I get down at 6am.

 

Well, that’s possibly a little unfair as a title for this post.  But, while Neve is a phenomenal wit with a deeply loving core and one of the brightest lights in my life, she is also, at least currently, a highly-strung, emotional creature who is prone to react hyperbolically to context-change in a manner which is very hard to react to in a sanguine, rational manner. In fact, she quite often makes me one to bop her one on the nut.

Dinner-time is a good example. As is stop-watching-tv-time. Or tooth-brushing time. Or… well, like I said: context change. It really is best to factor in a ten-minute gap between $thing and $next_thing. She screams and shouts in a supremely irritating pseudo-language composed of goos and gahs.

 

She is just amazing. A sharp, sharp, deeply loving girl with a powerful imagination and the ability to narrate it. Which she does, incessantly, around the house with her dolls, or her pets, or with whatever props are to hand, or with none.

She is kind and thoughtful. And her capacity for remembering things (yes: her memory) is phenomenal. [citation needed] (Which is not to say that the fact is in doubt but simply that I should add an example to liven up an otherwise verbose and dreary text.)

 

 

Not going to be able to call her “Tiny Neve” for very much longer, given that she’s now six year’s old.

A week’s stress and anxiety over party preparations resolved, amazingly enough, into a fairly relaxed and focussed day. We all got up early and worked quietly and with concentration at our various tasks: Lola made the “pin the ice-cream to the cone” drawing and blew up balloons; Isa prepared for the art session – gathering inks, brushes, paper – and prepared the ice-cream parlour; Neve ensured that everyone was doing the appropriate job, otherwise engaging herself in playing with her new Sylvanian family; I prepared ingredients for cake-making and blew up balloons.

Isa went out shopping while we others continued with the in-house prep; the girls’ attention dwindling, they wandered off to play. The rest of the preparations all came together well and without explosions of emotion. A win!

I made the cake: a victoria sponge spread with Nutella (actually, an organic Italian hazelnut and chocolate spread called Nocciolata which is even more yummier) and whipped cream in the centre with a tasteful powder-blue butter-cream icing on top. We decorated it with mini-cones with a marshmallow plonked in the top. It was, in case I’ve not mentioned it, an ice-cream-themed party.

Anyway, enough plodding through the preparations. Suffice it to say we were ready and relaxed when the guests started to arrive. Emily Sutton, Rosie (of Erika and Chris), Sophie (of Jenny, whom I had not met and is friendly and interesting), Charleigh (pronounced “Charlie”, not sure why the spelling; has an amazing voice), and Alma (of Sarah and web-designy bloke whose name I don’t know).

Initial play with balloons (we’d blown up about 30) and mad screaming around the house settled easily enough into “build a huge ice-cream with a cardboard cone and a million balloons (OK, OK: 30)” which segued easily enough into having a snack (fruit, vegetables, mozzarella) around the table. Sophie was unexpectedly (and near shockingly) manic — Isa took her out of the room for A Word after she (lightly) stabbed Emily in the head with a cocktail stick.

Then followed a “design your ice-cream” activity which went amazingly well – they quite possibly spent half an hour in concentrated effort. Isa had some really nice acrylic inks that she rationed out by the drop as it was requested and this helped keep the palette small and strong. And kept the mess down!

Once the designs were in, they went off to Lola’s ice-cream parlour to get their design (or something else they randomly fancied) made up. Rosie had the spaghetti ice you see Lola making here. Raspberry/tomato sauce and grated white chocolate/parmesan: yum!

There were Coca-Cola floats and classic cups and wondrous cones with toppings a-plenty.

They spent so much time designing and then eating ice-cream that parents came to collect before we’d done the cake or played either of the games we’d lined up. The kids were insistent we played pass-the-parcel, so we did; with Neve running the music, rather than taking part. She knew exactly what she wanted and jumped onto YouTube to find the Horrible Histories songs about Henry VIII.

And, amazingly after all that ice-cream, cake was still wanted, as was the whole singy celebration, so (thanking parents for their patience) we gathered round the table and finished off in the traditional way.

Kids super-excited to come to Italy. Dad came down with acute flu/chest-infection which kept him immobile for first week. It’s a long while since I felt that bad — couldn’t even read, I was so enfeebled. And coughing was miserably painful. And I couldn’t sleep. Made mistake of going out on one day when I felt a bit better (we went to Chioggia — odd, sub-Venetian small town with slightly pikey feel to population). Next day I was utterly awful; tried to go and see a doctor but they wouldn’t see me – were told to go to Pronto Soccorso, but sod that! Went to the pharmacist in Paderno and lady there was extremely helpful and gave me a course of Amoxycillin (+ clavulanic acid). That helped, and by Easter Sunday I was just about clear of it.

Monday kept it quiet at home. Giada and Samuele offered to take the kids to the beach for a “quick walk”. We said yes, having to make a quick decision, and then immediately regretted it. We should, in hindsight, have called them back but decided it would be OK as they had said “a quick walk”. They left around 11.30 and we reckoned they should  be back by 4pm. We rang at 5, assuming they were nearly home, but they were only just leaving then. Not sensible, as they were at Punta Sabione — single-road access down a popular spit of land in the Venice lagoon. They got home at 10pm! Isa and I were complete wrecks; as, of course, were the kids…

Meanwhile that same afternoon, Marino and Duccio had come round to pick stiuppetti (or whatever they’re called) in the field. We went out for a walk around the fields with Bruna, Renzo, Morena and Claudio while we were waiting for Marino to arrive. Picked some bruscandoli (just enough for a risotto the next day). We saw Marino and Duccio from across the field and went to find them and then chatted while we helped pick. We left them picking: I think Marino put in another hour or two…

Then Tues, we went into Treviso for a bit of a wander around. Found a good wine shop near the wall carpark that sold wine into your own (or their) bottles. Next door was a bike shop full of highly desirable bits and bobs.

Weds Isa went in to Treviso for a hair cut. Thursday we went to Venice and spent nine hours wandering around. Bought all-day passes for vaporetti; went to Murano. Rialto, Zatteri,… good route, captured  in ViewRanger.

Neve has it.

 

I am NOT eating any of that.

I am NOT going outside today.

I am NOT stopping. I am only eating.

 

 

Lola is very loving; keeps telling us how happy she is. Incredible.
Neve will be six soon but still full of that younger innocent charm and fun. Still says, “pemember” and “giabamas” (pyjamas).
Lola still says, “hostable” (hospital).
This is Lola having a bounce while Neve is skating (with a lot of help from Sarah and a penguin) at Emily Sutton’s birthday do at the Christmas ice-rink on Parkers Piece.