C’e un problema

We arrived at the house one morning at the same time as an Enel van. A fat sweaty bloke got out of the van and inspected our electric meter and external wiring. Drawing in a breath he then said the words you never want to hear in Italy: “C’e un problema.” It turned out that the electric had been cut off many years ago and in the interim the house next door had been completely rewired and the old cable running from our house, across the neighbour’s house to the nearest electricity pole had been completely removed. This meant we needed to get the permission of the neighbours to run a new cable and have an external cabin built for our new electricity meter. Paranoia struck again and I envisaged years of bitter argument while we sorted out our power supply.

However, despite the power problem we decided to move into the house anyway. We could draw buckets of water from the cisterns and we went out and bought a job lot of oil lamps. This turned out to our advantage as it considerably increased the pressure on our neighbours, a family of architects from Bari who bought the house last year and use it very occasionally as a summer retreat, to help us sort something out quickly. Anyway, with the help of our estate agents we got the agreement of the neighbours to run the power cable over their land and an electrician to install our new cabin.

Within a week the fat sweaty bloke had returned with two other Enel men and had installed our cable and meter. Martino our electrician returned the same afternoon and connected up our supply to the house. The house has old-fashioned wiring with no earth, appropriately enough called “salva vita” or “life saver” in Italian, so I was relieved when Martino connected the power and the trip switch didn’t blow. He also soon got our electric water pump working, pumping out spurts of rusty water into the bath. So, after two weeks in the house we had running water, electricity, a fridge and an improvised kitchen, also a couple of mattresses. There are no taps in the kitchen, no hot water and mysteriously no sink in the bathroom, so I have the novel experience of having a wash and shave in the bidet. But after the privations of the first week it seems like luxury.

The Act

Last time I wrote we were staying with our friends Claude and Jane while waiting to complete on the house. The completion, which in Italian is called literally “the Act”, was finally set for 10am on the 28th July at the Notary’s office in Martina Franca. After the formality of the meeting to sign the Sale and Purchase Agreement three months before, I was a little disappointed to find it was a very casual affair. Pierot and Immanuelle from our Estate Agents were dressed in suits, but the Notary wore jeans and trainers. Mr Convertini, the vendor, was dressed in chinos and a polo shirt and had the demeanour of a man about to receive €66,000 in negotiable cheques. His son came with him, thoughtfully attired in a Union Jack T shirt. We suspected that Mrs Convertini had sent the lad to make sure the old man didn’t do anything impetuous with the dosh before returning to their flat in Bari. We had a different translator this time, a young Swedish woman who rendered the Completion Contract into interesting but more or less understandable English. The Notary read the Contract in Italian and then the translator read it in English and that was it really, please sign here. I actually had a few questions, but I thought “oh sod, it, let’s go with the flow” and Sue and I signed on the dotted line.

The contract included a statement by the Notary along the lines of “the parties have told me that the selling price is €60,000”, although actually we paid Mr Convertini a total of €73,000. This arrangement saved us about €1,000 in taxes and the Convertinis presumably gained as well. Half way through the Completion meeting the Notary popped out “to do some photocopying”, at which point Immanuelle, the more spivvy of our two estate agents got up and said “perhaps this would be a good time to exchange the cash and the keys?” Thus the actual cash was exchanged with the Notary out of the room and theoretically none the wiser.

After the meeting Sue and I drove straight to the house. For me paranoia immediately started to kick in with a vengeance. I imagined arriving to find a pile of smoking ruins, picked bare, with a queue of angry creditors lined up outside the door. Of course, the house was just as we’d last seen it three days before, although seeming a little more damp, musty and neglected, as is always the way after actually buying the house of your dreams. We wandered around in a daze. For a townie like me an acre is a lot of land and what the hell were we going to do with all these trees? The house had not been used by the Convertinis for several years and so the electricity had been cut off, this also meant there was no water as the house is not on the mains and water is supplied from two very large cisterns and a powerful electric pump. The estate agents arranged for the electricity company, Enel, to visit and reconnect the power in a few days and in the meantime we stayed at Jane and Claude’s while visiting the house each day to start the process of cleaning and tidying.