Earthquake, Storm, Pestlience, Flood and Famine

What a sojourn this is turning out to be. From the exhilaration of seeing all there is to see to the relief of surviving Wednesday's earthquake. The worst one in 40 years, 4.4 on the Richter scale so all the newspapers said. To be honest it was only the super sensitive people who felt it. I was stood by one such who was sat in her comfy chair when she suddenly gave me a startled look and asked, "what was that?" "Earthquake" I assuredly replied, having not felt a thing but being aware that between us and Sicily there's a plate boundary. Actually, to be honest I was joking but it turned out to be true.

Then there's the storm, ongoing. Warnings of 48 hours of sustained wind speeds in excess of 50kts, gusting 70 would appear to be true. Sat here now is to be surrounded by a trio of slightly unbalanced pan pipers. The highest tones come from the bedroom window because it is closest to being airtight. Immediately in front of me the window 4 floors up on Old College Road isn't quite as airtight and howls in the upper and mid registers. To my left the outside balcony door leaves a gap of some significance and the inside door has no visible gap so it maintains a bass howl fairly constantly increasing in volume as the tree tops below disappear from view and remain bowed over for some extraordinary lengths of time.

The wind is northerly and as the waves pass the headland they swing into the bay and break over Portomaso breakwater. The spray carries rainbows halfway back across the bay as they break. To be fair it sounds dramatic and to some it may well be but this is the Mediterranean so the quay is only half a metre or so above the sea level normally so it's not as if these waves are going to carry the sea wall away although if they did it would make for a wonderful improvement.

Pestilence, too has made it's mark, awoken as I was to some unknown critter leaving a mark in the palm of my hand in the crease of the thumb which will obviously preclude any kitchen duties for the foreseeable.

Floods were evident in yesterday morning's rain because although we have familiar phone boxes and pillar boxes, camber in the road and gutters with drains are not as common.  The real flood continues to be indoors, however. In Spain it was the electrics that always posed problems, here it seems to be plumbing.

Our delightful caretaker, Felix is well versed in that art of smiling placation but I've taken to txting him as when phoned it's hard to hear him from the background din of camaraderie and general revelry. Yesterday, as we weren't going out till the rain stopped he was invited around. The washing machine will be repaired on Monday. The leaking bidet, unfettered by any floor fixings had ceased leaking though, for which I expressed my gratitude. Sadly, at about the same time the leak stopped filling the kettle became an opportunity for the exercise of patience but having a shower became impossible as when on full bore it allowed only sufficient water to exit the shower head to make it's way to the bath by crawling down the shower hose at a fairly leisurely rate.

I did mention the strange case of the disappearing water pressure. Felix was brilliant. I'll go up to the roof and see what's happened. This he did. "Air leak," he told me. I nodded and thanked him. Strange air leak, though. Now the water pressure's back, and the shower is too but so is the puddle under the unfixed bidet. It's no problem, unless you forget if you have to get up in the night.

As for the famine, that's sorted. The 2.4kg of Christmas Cake which fitted perfectly into a Celebrations tub was finished last Tuesday but by Friday we'd found a shop which sells nothing in it nothing on it cake. Not quite like Nana's but pretty good nonetheless.

Midday yesterday as the rain cloude were blown away.