This little minor drama in our personal bubble started 2 nights ago. The trullo here is gorgeous and lovely, but as with most of the places round here, is a summer holiday residence. That said, the winter here is still rich blue skies atop these plentiful white Trullos. I digress though, 2 nights ago our water ran out. Our 'cisterno' which fills from collected rain water ran dry! Given the volume of rain that we suffered on our entry to Italy, it seemed a shock to see that we had run dry, but I guess that the volume of rain down here was less so.
The following day we sought help from Klaus and Sue once again, and then also turned towards our nearest neighbour Antonio who apparently sorts the water out. After knocking on his trullo we found that he was out, we came back to our trullo and waited before going back over. However, like some sort of Italian Paul Daniels, he appeared magically from behind our trullo.
Antonio is a wonderfully helpful chap, but I have not quite worked him out yet. We have had some good conversations with him, but also the awkward type where messages are mixed and misunderstood. Yesterday, he was set on helping us. There were lots of mumblings and grumblings though about it being a festival but he still helped us out for which we are very grateful. Prior to this, Klaus had very kindly come over to offer assistance and advice and we had noticed a huge black pipe with a diameter of about 5 inches. We thought that Antonio would just drop that in the cisterno and it would gush in quickly. However, the reality was that Antonio found a disappointingly hose sized piece of pipe and pumped in a few hours worth just to keep us going. Despite still grumbling about the festival (Sunday we guess), he then offered to help us get our water sorted with a delivery of water (yes, it really is quite a different system to get used to). In fact, he was quite adamant that after he had been to the hospital the following day, he would come with us to negotiate the water delivery from the next village, where a tanker would deliver a few bath tubs full for us! We weren't that convinced that this would happen the following day, but given Antonio's support and help thus far, we agreed that we would wait for him to return from hospital in the afternoon and then go to haggle out a delivery. At least we had water for a couple of days if needed!
Onto this morning. A gentle start was going to happen as we had a bit of waiting to do.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Initially this woke me up, it sounded like the front door, but I was still asleep.
(Next bit spoken as if in the next room) "Hello, hello, I is Antonio. I talk with you!" He was right outside our bedroom door which has an outside opening door onto the patio area.
The time was 8:37 so not a disrespectful time, but I was fast asleep. The next bit is a bit of a blur. I jumped up rather quickly, and proceeded from our room in the trullo to the front door. I opened the door and having got thus far was still trying to a) wake up rapidly, b) make sense of what was happening and, c) look smart and look like I had been up for hours. I failed on all of these. Added to that, as I opened the door, the morning sun glared brightly into my eyes and I couldn't see. It was a full head melt down. I couldn't see the chap, but I could make out that he was talking and my beard and hair was all over the place. A fine moment!
Anyway, bless him, Antonio had organised a water delivery for 10am. He had done this before he went to the hospital. A very kind thing to have done. The laughable thing is, it is now 10am, and we wait now for our localised deluge to arrive. We are living in the hope!
**STOP PRESS**
It is now 10:22 and what seems like the Santa Lucia reserve fire fighters, have been and delivered a big slosh of water (not entirely sure if there is a collective noun for a pile of water, but a 'slosh' would be acceptable I think). An exciting moment in our house. Never thought water could be this exciting?
Good news then. Having a bath tonight! Thanks once again Sue and Klaus, and now Antonio!
Ed
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