Living in San Giorgio di Pesaro and Kingston

During the week I turned on the computer to have a black screen and the information that that the windows startup file had been corrupted. The sytem told me I would have to restore using the original disk which came with the computer. When I put this disc into the cdrom drive it told me that the sytem would be restored to the original factory settings. But not to worry as all the data would be saved.

I pressed the “R” for recovery button as requested and after about 30 minutes the computer was back to its pristine state – i.e. no Realplayer, no Adobe readerr etc. Unfortunately there were also no data files. Not to worry as of course I have a back up. Unfortuneately time seems to be getting faster with each passing year and so I discovered that the last back up was further back than I thought.  We have never had such a serious crash from the computer before and so a valuable lesson learned and so no doubt we will in the future be doing a backup at least once a month.

Bill goes walking three times a week. He has 3 or 4 different walks but last week I decided to start doing the “Spicello Walk”. The walk is from San Giorgio down into the valley and up the other side to the hamlet of Spicello. From there it is a walk along the valley ridge and coming round again to San Giorgio where there is the choice of walking down the main street, on the flat, to the house or coming round the back route which means you end the walk panting up the hill behind the house. I opt for the easier route.

Mr Berlusconi often says that Italians are heavily taxed and that he will not add to the burden. So some months ago they announced that there would be a tax of 1 euro on every cinema ticket. In recent years he number of people going to the cinema has been increasing and we have been regularly adding to the number. So putting the ticket price up from 7.50 to 8.50 wasn’t welcomed by the cinema owners or by us. The extra euro was to go towards supporting the Italian film industry.

However, before the new increase became law there was a lot of protest from cultural bodies about the lack of government funding for spending on culture – buildings, art, music etc. In fact over recent years, and despite governments saying how important culture was to the tourist industry, the budget for the Ministry of Culture had been steadily cut. To show that it took culture seriously the Government decide to increase the budget. It did so by scrapping the idea of a tax on cinema tickets and instead put extra tax on petrol. A government spokesman said that he thought Italians would be happy to absorb the increase as it was in  good cause.

So now getting into the cinemas stays as before but not the cost of getting there.

Our internet had been down for over a week.

One morning I tried to make a phonecall but the phone was dead. A few minutes later it was working again. However, when we tried to get on the internet we failed. We contacted Telecomm who said there was a fault on the line and that it would soon be repaired. However, even after the repair the system didn’t work and so we went to Trony near Fano to buy a new router/modem. When we plugged it in we still couldn’t connect to the internet. We spoke to Telecomm again who sent a couple of engineers to investigate. They could get a signal on their modem to show that adsl was working but couldn’t get through to the internet. One of them went to the local exchange and did something and using their modem google appeared. However, when we tried our new modem no connection was possible. They suggested we return to Trony to change the modem.

When we arrived at Trony I spoke to Marzio who had sold me the modem. He was sceptical about the modem not working and asked if it had been installed correctly. I stammered something about “plug and play” at which he smiled and said that the modems needed to be activated and showed me the instruction sheet that came with the modem. I had misunderstood the instructions (even though they were in English) and so Marzio linked my modem to a computer in the store and went through the setting up prodedure. Having gone through the procedure he asked if I had someone to install it at home. I replied that now I knew what I was doing I could manage. He smiled gently and said that as he had the modem linked to the computer already he might as well activate it for wireless internet access. Within a few minutes it was done and when I returned home I plugged in the modem and here we are back on the internet. What great customer care from Marzio.

Yesterday, Sunday 6th March, was a beautiful, sunny day. Cold, but after what seemed like weeks of damp, wet weather it was a real tonic. We decided to drive to Torrette and go for a walk on the beach.

On the beach it was cold and windy and not quite the weather for swimming costumes. But we had, apart from the gulls, almost the whole beach to ourselves. We walked for about an hour.

At first sight everything seemed OK. There were lots of shingle, bits of driftwood and seaweed on the beach which is normal after windy periods. However some areas had been damaged e.g. behind Bagni Lori where we normally go in the summer. It looked as if some of the land surface had given way and there is obviously lots of repairs to be done before the tourist season begins in June.

The lovely sunny days of a couple of weeks ago are now a memory as in the last couple of days much of Italy, the Marche included, has been hit by terrible cold, wet weather. In the north the “Bora Wind” has hit Trieste with gusts up to 100 mph. In the South snow, wind and rain has caused rivers to flood and agricultural areas have been inundated.

The same has also happened in the Marche where 3 people have died after their car was hit by a wave of water, low-lying agricultural land is flooded and a state of emergency has been declared. At Senigallia the river is amost reaching the top of its banks. In the north of the Marche there have been heavy snow storms.

Here in San Giorgio we have been more fortunate as the only river in the immediate area is a trickle with the grand name of “Rio Grande” and although there was some snow yesterday it quickly turned to sleet. Our greatest inconvenience was not being able to get to the Ipercoop because the river near the store had burst its banks and flooded the area. Pam and John who had been here for 2 weeks were returning to England from Ancona. The runway at Ancona Airport was flooded and so all flights were switched to Rimini which meant delays for them.

Today (Thursday) the rain continues. It should abate over the next day and hopefully we will see some sun on Saturday. However, cold weather is forecast for the beginning of next week.

We usually receive the economist on Saturday morning. Recently it has been Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon. When I enquired at the post office I discovered that our excellent postman has been moved to Orciano and Barchi. His replacement covers Piagge and Barchi which means post will be delivered in the afternoon instead of the morning. I also discovered that there is now no delivery on a Saturday morning which then has a knock-on effect  for delivery in the following week.

This curtailment of Saturday delivery services is part of PosteItaliane’s plan to deal with competition from companies such as  DCL. The postal service is now concentrating on streamlining their business services and so the manpower saved in Saturday deliveries is now being used to man late night shifts allowing the postal service to offer customers the opportunity to specify a day and time of delivery.

Still we miss our postman and we miss not getting the Economist on a Saturday morning and settling down to read it with a nice cup of tea.

The Riace Bronzes are lifesize bronze statues of 2 Greek warriors made in c.460 B.C.. They were found in 1972 by some scuba divers just off the coast of Calabria and were taken to Florence for restoration where local craftsmen started to make copies for sale. While visiting Florence in 1981 we decided to buy one (photo). At the time we could only afford to buy one statue and have always thought it would be nice to complete the pair. Then a couple of years ago we went on a bus tour of Calabria and the highlight of the tour was a visit to the museum at Reggio Calabria where the statues are currently on display. We thought that, at last, we might be able to get the second one. Seeing the statues “in the flesh” was fantastic but the rest of the museum and the shop in particular were disappointing. The shop was tucked away at the end of a corridor and had almost nothing of quality to sell. There were lots of small plastic models of the statues, all made in China, and you would want to buy and keep. So our Riace Bronze remains all alone.

We are, therefore, not surprised by some of the statistics produced in a new book called “Vandali”. The book is a critique of how Italy fails to maintain its artistic treasures and also how it fails to exploit them. Among the statistics are the following:

• The Tate Gallery in Britain has an annual turnover of 76 million euros while all the museums and archaeological sites in Italy have ticket sales of 82 million euros.
• The Metropolitan Museum in New York takes in 43 million euros from merchandising while for all the museums and archaeological sites in Italy the sum is 39.7 million euros.
• The Metropolitan Museum in New York gets 19.7 million euros from its restaurants, parking and auditorium use which is 3 times the amount of tickets  sales in Pompeii

The hunting season finished on the 31st January. Hunting is not only dangerous for the birds in Italy but also for the hunters. For the 5 months of the hunting season (Sept – Jan) there were 35 killed and 73 people wounded. Not all the dead and injured were hunters. Some were just passers by, in the wrong place at the wrong time and of course one wonders how accidental some of the shotings are. A couple  of years ago at Mondolfo there was the case of the retired police inspector who was arrested for murdering his wife. He claimed that he was in the bedroom cleaning his gun when it accidently went off and hit her in the chest.  

If hunting is dangerous then crossing the street is even more hazardous in Italy. In 2009 667 pedestrians were killed. This statistic will not surprise anyone who has visited Italy. Italian drivers do not like to stop at zebra crossings – they prefer to slow down and then drive around the person on the crossing.