Marmite bombs!!!
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Painting After nearly 2 years away, I have finally found time to pick up my paintbrush and start painting again. Under Delores’ (TYFON) expert tuition, I am – at last – learning to paint watercolours properly!
Masterpiece under construction (what do you mean you don’t know what it is?). We meet up in the gazebo twice a week to capture the sky in the water and other seemingly fleeting and impossible visions in watercolour. From myself, Lynne, Bethany and Bryn, the class has now grown to include Karen, and passing Italians stop to enquire whether the class runs every week and can they join in.
Masterpiece number 1. Sorry, can’t think of an appropriate title.
Masterpiece number 2. No, still not inspired on the title front. Marmite and Shredded
Wheat Karen and Richard arrived back from the
Emergency food supplies – available only in the
As it had been Karen’s birthday while they were away, Bethany and Bryn rustled up a surprise chocolate freckle cake with Nutella icing (recipe of the month). I rustled up a vision in watercolour for her card.
Chocolate freckle cake with Nutella icing, and four diplomatic candles.
Boats at anchor in Fishing boat
drama There was great excitement in the marina one morning when a fishing boat sank overnight. The ensuing rescue operation was conducted by committee with dignitaries from the Italian Coastguard, Navy, and Fire Brigade all in attendance. The poor little boat was finally hauled, dripping seawater and fishing gear, from the marina and carted off to the cantieri (boat yard) for repairs.
The half-submerged fishing boat; note the plastic sun chair still in position on its doghouse roof.
The yottie version of rubbernecking. Julia’s birthday – a ‘Ping-pong’ and ‘Twister’
fest Julia’s birthday provided another outing for the chocolate freckle cake recipe.
The singing marathon was followed by ‘ping-pong’ with beach bats and a tennis ball played on two bar tables pushed together, and a game of tipsy Twister. You can’t say that we don’t know how to have a good time!
Peter and Monica getting in a twist.
Bethany, Gary, Bryn and Rosie tied in knots. Catherine and co. Bethany and Bryn have been counting down the days
to the arrival of Catherine (my sister) and three of her brood – Molly, Robyn
and Patrick. It was touch and go whether they were actually going to make it to
Cagliari at all as an accident on the M1 had them abandoning the car “somewhere
in a car park at Luton airport” with minutes to spare and running all the way
through the airport to be last through the gate as it was closing. To add insult
to injury, the two large jars of Marmite that Catherine was trying to smuggle
out of the
Bethany and Robyn share a Margherita pizza.
Patrick and Bryn manfully tackle a Pizza de la Casa each. It’s been a year since we were all together (when
we were back in the
The frightful four – Bryn, Robyn, Bethany and Patrick.
Four go mad with Ice Age and a large bowl of popcorn.
Ringing the changes – pasta instead of pizza. We tackled a bit of culture too, marching everyone up to the top of the hill, then marching them down again.
The culture bit – the Cathedral near the top of the Bastione.
Catherine finally relaxing after nearly missing the flight and having the two Marmite ‘bombs’ confiscated from her hand luggage.
Four kids contemplating the meaning of life and pizza at the Lion Gate.
A quiet, Italian ice cream moment. The weather was even kind enough for a paddle in the sea in Poetto. As usual, the kids dug in the sand like puppies, got their clothes and shoes wet, and sand everywhere! (We are still getting sand – and popcorn – out of Bryn’s bed.)
Bethany and Robyn running away from ripples.
Catherine – “I’m off to visit my sister on her yacht in the Med”. Next time we hope that they come to stay for longer in the summer, so that we can eat even more pizza, and talk even more rubbish with red wine, while the kids play in the sand and the sea in the sun. Sorry Molly – you escaped my camera! Going to the
dentist Catherine says that the blog gives the impression that we do nothing but eat, drink and party. What us? Never! Well, OK, maybe sometimes, but we do have mundane, everyday reality in between. The problem is, of course, that we only blog about the exciting stuff – or when the everyday things go wrong. When we had a blocked loo in the middle of the night when we lived in the UK, we would have either called an emergency plumber out of Yellow Pages or left it until the next day when David would have gone to get ‘a bit’ from B&Q to fix it. Living ‘on a yacht in the Med’ has its exotic points, but the local Yellow Pages isn’t one of them. Even if we did have the Sardinian Yellow Pages, we probably wouldn’t be able to make ourselves understood to the Sardinian plumber over the ‘phone (although we are getting quite good at pidgin Italian, Pictionary and mime to get our message across face to face…). Furthermore, finding the Sardinian B&Q probably involves car hire or a taxi, and B&Q doesn’t stock marine loo parts (not even the Sardinian B&Q). So David strips off and strips down the toilet, while I hold the torch and try to catch the fallout (that is usually under considerable pressure) in my Lakeland Baby Bucket. Most of our days really are taken up with work, school, cooking, shopping, washing up, laundry, boat maintenance and keeping the boat tidy (for such a small space, it takes a lot of tidying!). We even ventured to the dentist for a family check up recently, followed by a not very exotic scale and polish all round, and a few fillings here and there – but I guess you don’t really want to hear about that! I did spend a happy afternoon lining the notorious holding-tank-cupboard-behind-the-loo with what looked like Astroturf matting to help with air circulation and to stop the towels and bed linen going mouldy…
I spent ages cutting around the pipes to get a snug fit with the Astroturf (no the brown stains are not poo – they are glue that won’t come off!). David, on the other hand, has been getting to grips with the wayward outboard engine.
“Maybe if I turn this bit and poke it here it will work…” Did we mention that it is party time here in
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