Living in San Giorgio di Pesaro and Kingston

This is the tower of the Church of the Holy Spirit which is in front of the house. They have been restoring the building for some time but are now on the home straight. One of the problems they had to deal with was pigeons. The pigeons have been able to get into the roof space of the church and over time had deposited lots of guano i.e. bird droppings. So an important aspect of the restoration has been to ensure that pigeons are no longer welcome in or on the church. They have blocked up any possible entrances for the birds and where there are lintels etc they have used sloping bricks which prevent the birds from roosting.  However, the main line of defence is to install a very low voltage cable on the building. When the birds come to land they get a small shock which sends them flying off. So far it seems to be very successful. Now the pigeons have migrated to the castle wall becoming someone else’s problem.

This very uninteresting picture shows the fibre optic cable (i.e. the black tube with white paper stuck to it) that is currently being installed in San Giorgio – at least this is what I have been told. They have been laying cable both in San Giorgio and Piagge and it seems that that cable will go the local telephone exchange. Once the system goes live people are saying that our internet connection will be up to 5 times, and with a good wind behind it even up to 7 times, faster than the current speed. We await with baited breath.

Every year we are asked for a Christmas present list so that we don’t get anything we don’t want. Every year we get things not asked for.

This year Bill’s niece sam won second prize in the  “getting me something I didn’t ask for and something I would never have thought of asking for” competition. She bought me a fetching black apron which comes with purple trimming. It also has hooks for attaching various kitchen implements and adjustable apron stings for cooks with the fuller figure. To complete the gift she added a large blue plastic oven guantlet which can, should the need arise, be used for internal explorations of pregnant cows.

The first prize in the “getting me something I didn’t ask for and something I would never have thought of asking for” competition must go to my brother who bought me a complete set of Norman Wisdom films. I am still trying to work out “why”.

Obviously it was a very close competition but the jury felt that Sam couldn’t get first prize as although her give was not asked and would never have been thought of it has turned out to be very useful.

Every home in San Giorgio has now received a booklet outlining the system of door to door refuse collection which is expected to start in March. The large rubbish bins in the street will become a thing of the past.

The system is already in operation in Mondavio and according to their newsletter it has been a great success despite some inital teething problems. They claim that the amount of differentiated rubbish collected has risen from 24% to 68%. This means that the amount of rubbish taken to the municipal dump dropped by 75%. The commune has to pay for each ton of rubbish taken to the municipal dump and so the new system saves money. Of course it costs more money to manage the new system which means “the annual rubbish tax” will rise. However, the success means that Mondavio is now very near the EU target and will not be penalised by central government for not differentiating their rubbish.

When the San Giorgio system starts in March we will have container for food waste, a container for paper and cardboard, a container for glass, a sack for plastics, a sack for cans,and a container for miscellaneous dry items. The very useful booklet explaining the system clarifies important questions such as do yoghurt cartons go with the plastics (they do) and so orange juice cartons go with paper (they do). As well as all the cartons and sacks an “Ecological Station” will be created for items such as medicines, batteries, old clothes, garden waste etc. It all seems very complicated to people used to throwing everything in one large container but if Mondavio can do it so can we.

Anne from Mondavio told us some time ago that eating two Brazil nuts everyday protects against Alzheimers etc. Then while reading a food magazine over Christmas an article recommended that 1 Brazil nut provides all the selenium that the body needs. It also mentioned some possible beneficial facts including helping to protect against certain cancers including prostrate (always good news for men of our age), helping against arthritis and possibly protecting against Alzheimers.  So we have decided to give it a try.

Now a few days into our regime I was searching the net for more information on the beneficial effects and came across a paragraph about what happens to the body with too much selenium. I read the following:   high blood levels of selenium can result in a condition called selenosis. Symptoms of selenosis include gastrointestinal upsets, hair loss, white blotchy nails, garlic breath odor, fatigue, irritability. Sounds just like us. Better stop the brazil nuts.

We have been away from San Giorgio for a few weeks while we went to see family and friends.  Just started to read “The Volcano Lover” by Susan Sontag. It is the story of  Sir William Hamilton a British diplomat in Naples in the 18th / 19th centuries. He becomes the husband of Emma Hamilton and welcomes Lord Nelson into his house where Nelson meets Emma. When the book opens he is preparing to leave London after visiting family and friends. I was amused to read the following lines: “Everyone is relieved when demanding older relatives who live abroad conclude their visit.” Obviously our families were much too polite to say either that they were relieved that we were leaving or that we were too demanding.

Recent bad weather in Italy has caused major flooding up in the  north and also down in the south. The Marche has been spared the worst of the weather although even hear the Iper-coop supermarket that we go to was flooded as a nearby river burst its banks. The problem was a lot of rain in a short time but also the fact that in recent years there has been a lot of new building in most parts of Italy and this building has been on vulnerable land. This problem is called cementificazione. A recent survey said that in the 1960s 92% of the marche was defined as agricultural land while today only 69% is agricultural.