Piano, piano va lontana

I'm writing this in bed with Sue snuggled up next to me reading.  In the living room next door our new pellet stove is hissing gently and pumping hot water around our central heating system.  For the first time since we moved to Puglia in 2004 it's winter and the house is thoroughly warm, instead of comprising a small island of heat in a cold sea.  It's life-changing, I feel relaxed as I wander around the place and the smell of mould is retreating daily.  I now think of taking a shower with pleasurable anticipation instead of it being an unpleasant and goose-pimple inducing chore.  The paper on my desk is crisp and firm to the touch and no longer droops flacidly when I pick it up.

On top of that we have satellite TV and I can write this in bed thanks to our new ADSL internet connection.   It seems a long way from the house we bought in the wilds of Puglia nine years ago, when we had no electricity for the first couple of weeks and were drawing water from our cisterns with a bucket on a piece of string.


Our old pellet stove has not gone to waste and is now installed in the playroom of Paolo and Elizabet's house next door, so the children can stay there in comfort during the winter.

It's been hard work making the house habitable again over the last few weeks and there is still lots to do, but as Erminia would say - "piano, piano va lontana".  I'm not sure how you translate this - "you get a long way by taking many small steps" perhaps.