FEB 08

Snow came, as it seems to do, in the middle of Feb. Two days of no school/clearing the drive/smiling children throwing snowballs/cold wet children/confused dogs and all the other delights of late winter. We just about ran out of gas but the tanker got through last Thursday.

Gina is negotiating her contract as her old one ran out at the end of January. But there has only been 4 months to get this one sorted out so far but, being Italy nothing happened till the old one had actually run out. She is preparing International Law modules for her visiting professorship at Macerata. She had a week in Rome on a full immersion Italian course then a week in London visiting clients with her boss which was exhausting but went well.

Tim is changing focus. He got a TEFL English Teaching Qualification and now has 2 companies as clients as well as three classes organised with the help of the Comune of Porto San Giorgio. It seems local people are finally realising that they have to actually get out and go to class to learn English. (Somehow there is a comparison with buying language course CD's and buying fitness machines - there's more success when a class is involved.)

The children are wonderful. New photos are on the flickr site. I haven't figured the photo gallery on the Italian version of Front Page Web Editing.

We went skiing yesterday. It costs a lot but it seems to be fun once we have got through the pain of getting the children ready and onto the slope. We set off at 7:30 and were on skis at 9:30. It would have been faster but ski hire took a while and while Mummy and Daddy were getting fitted out our wonderful bright children had wandered off into deep snow to mess around, which would have been fine at the end of the day but they had their ski boots open and trousers not tucked in (=snow down the boots, etc...). So we had a clothing change before we could start.

Daddy was just ready for a break after a couple of successful but slow runs when Mummy asked him to accompany hewr. She went to the top of the blue run and talked about getting season's ski passes and coming every weekend. Daddy's long term plan was getting down the slope for a Cappuccio. Then Mummy saw the ski run and decided it was all too frightening. As soon as she got up any speed she looked for somewhere to fall over, then majestically did just that.

She spent so long blocking the run that the Carabinieri sent one of their finest ("He was very good looking with a dark blue ski suit that said Carabinieri"). Gina readily accepted his offer of a "scilitter" thinking he was going to come back with a snowmobile. The local Polizia skied down but Gina sent him off packing - something about the uniform not being good enough - she was waiting for her Carabinieri. Daddy was looking after the kids at the bottom of the slope while these interactions were going on.

Soon two brave and fearless guys from the Red Cross arrived with a stretcher and brought Gina "protesting" down the slope. I was a little late getting camera from the car otherwise YouTube would have it all. Mummy stayed on the bunny slope after that with George. Daddy Hamish and Steedley went part way up the blue run and skied that a few times, chunks of it were off piste as we had to get from the button lift where the kids fell off to the ski run!

Quick update Christmas 08 - just got the editor working will try to add pictures etc soon

It has been quite a while since we last updated and a lot has been going on 
as well.  The kids have started their fourth year of school in Italy.  They 
all speak Italian like Italians.  We went to a gelateria the other day and 
all bought ice creams.  First Tim and Gina specified which flavours they 
wanted, then the children.  The lady at the counter was so confused and said 
“ok, it is obvious that you two are stranieri, but these children-they speak 
like natives!  Are they yours?”  Far from being offended at being 
immediately spotted as foreigners, we were thrilled that our kids were being 
considered true Italians! 

The children area also getting involved in activities.  Hamish has started 
tennis, and is beginning to hit more balls than he misses.  Steedley and 
George have fencing once a week (inspired by countless viewings of Pirates 
of the Caribbean) and we are hoping they will continue this. Le Marche is 
well known for its fencing teachers and in fact the past Olympic gold 
medalists came from just down the road in Jesi. 

In addition to the fencing, Steedley has started individual lessons with our 
local opera singer, SoEun Jean.  She is doing very well and has a very sweet 
voice.  At Christmas she will be singing as the Shepherdess in Tosca, and is 
learning the female part of “Papageno” from Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which 
she will sing with SoEun’s son, Leonardo. 

Wills International Consulting has begun, which is a service offered to local businesses in the area who wish to begin doing business outside Italy.  We have a few clients but it is early days yet.  We are working with the Porto San Giorgio Town Hall to start offering general English lessons in January to local citizens.  We are hoping this will be a way to provide a good service to the Town Hall as well as get publicity for our consulting business. Wills Consulting is also working with a local lawyer, Giampaolo Lauretta, assisting with legal services for various private individuals and 
corporations.  Tim is still working with Banca Mediolanum and has started English teaching and advising at a couple of local businesses in the Fermo 
area.  We are currently renegotiating our contract with the factory, which is rather hairy and requiring nerves of steel, but we are hoping for the 
best. 

We have acquired a new member of the family, a orange-striped cat named 
Dandy (originally for “Dandelion” but then we found out it was a boy so we 
changed it to “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”  Gina and Steedley immediately fell in 
love but Tim was hardhearted until he saw that the cat thinks he is a dog.  
He constantly meows for attention, fights with our girls Dixie and Delilah, 
walks with us and heels.  Not like a normal cat at all.  So he is allowed to 
hang out with the girls outside (NOT INSIDE-George blows up like a balloon 
any time he rubs his face against his fur).  We are still having fun bike 
rides and playing down at the “hay patch”.  The local farmer has stacked hay 
bales at least four stories high and the children (and parents) love to 
climb and wander through the myriad passages.  The dogs like to hop up too. 

Late Summer 08

Its all going at a pace... Steedley got a 'job'. She and Daddy had a day in Milan where she did a photo shoot for Giorgio Armani. With any luck the fee will cover the train fares. At least she has started a c.v.

The camps went much better than last year. The obligatory crisis happened just as they started and we ended up without help in the garden and at home, but the teachers and helpers at the camp were wonderful and the children had lots of fun. Note for next year: Buy a sound system for the final show. Kids can't compete with an Italian audience (who always chat) and a railway alongside the stage!

We had Vivvi helping us for July. She arrived the same day as Granny Seaside and they both quickly got into days at the beach with the children. Granny made picnic lunches and used the wonderful picnic rucksack she gave us a couple of years ago. Granny was here a week. Vivvi waded through a chunk of an English course we got for the kids for their English Summer Work. We gave up when they were onto paragraphs and journalistic stories. Maybe we go back to it in late Autumn.

We have been to the beach so often the children beg for a day at home. They have nearly finished their Italian homework - weights and measures, centimetres and metres, kilograms and decalitres, celsius and cents.

I had my 50th actually on the 12th. Of the 60 people who accepted only 100 turned up! Luckily we have learnt from experience so we ask people to bring a dish instead of presents. It was a good excuse to load up on wine and we got through 25 litres of local organic Chardonnay and Rosso Piceno. I went for the good stuff so had to fork out €1.40 a litre. Well it was worth a splurge. It seems it was a fun evening, though Gina and I worked like dogs the whole night and finished putting the mountain of leftovers away sometime around 1 a.m. The cleaning waited for a day or so!

We had fun 2 days ago when there was a big fire in our neighbours wood. We ended up having the helicopter swooping over the house as it carried huge buckets of water to stop the fire spreading. Maybe I can get that on You Tube and post a link.

Steedley, George and Hamish have their birthday party tomorrow (Saturday). They have all decided on different cakes and Gina is busy baking. Daddy made that task harder by leaving the door open this morning, so the dogs got to George's cake. Luckily it was not yet iced (though I nearly was!).

Gina is getting big into Facebook. I found 30 people called Tim Wills on there, so formed a Tim Wills Group. What a strange bunch we are!

Photos to follow or try

http://it.facebook.com/people/Timothy_James_Bethune_Wills/555833000

http://www.new.facebook.com/people/Gina_Marie_Steedley_Wills/1342846504

new photos on flickr.

Summer 08

Gracious me what a lot to do. Luckily school has just broken up as well, so a mere 100 days of holiday for the kids. They are ecstatic, we are ordering English courses! Well we want them to keep up with their English and the hard part of working is finding them something to do beyond fighting and DVD's. We have a few people lined up via helpx.net who we hope will have some fun and teach the kids new things from around the world.  The children are wonderful and growing up so fast. It is so much easier now they are happy to help around the house. I keep insisting it is part of a long term plan to ratchet up the duties at home so by the time they are 18 they will be looking for an excuse to set up on their own (and be trained enough in cooking and cleaning to do it!). This of course is anti-constitutional in Italy where 'my poor little baby' often refers to a 30+ year old, who is still living at home.

Work continues apace, between English lessons, lecturing, batteries, the bank and the summer camps comes a new idea for Gina and I to market ourselves as International Consultants - for local firms looking to do business abroad - contracts, finance, marketing, that sort of thing. We think we would be rather good, we only have to hope that local companies think so as well.

I am off to the bank's head office in Milan on Tuesday to develop international bank accounts. It is really impressive how the banking centre has someone on each team who can talk English. I am trying to help people who have problems with banking or payments here in Italy by getting involved with the Italy forums; ItalyMag and Italian Fever. I now have quite a few English speaking customers with Agriturismi as it is cheaper and easier for them to run their accounts with us. There are some horror stories about how people have been charged a lot for minimal service and am hoping to help people before they get ripped off, rather than after. (The bad ones include people being charged for putting money into their accounts!) Any news of other forums gratefully received. 

All 3 children can cycle, at last! We have even made it up to Moresco (2 miles and 350 feet uphill). We go on walks with the dogs and the kids take their bikes. It is fun as we mess around and sometimes find fruit trees and herbs in abandoned houses. The sun and rain this year mean that nature is running riot. The grass is head high and the roses are huge.

All three children have also been to auditions for ads and TV, we are waiting for the call! Steedley will be in a couple of singing competitions this summer.

With any luck we can finish the immediate needs of the house this year, the last bit of gutting and plastering under the terrace outside. Then all we have to worry about will be the next few hundred 'urgencies' that come up as we go along.

 

Spring 08

Lots of sunshine and very little rain for the early part of the year has now turned to sun, rain and just in time for Easter, snow. The mountains look wonderful in the morning sunlight. The sea is a shiny gunmetal blue in the afternoons. It is all very inspirational.

The first rain for 7 weeks contributed to the crash I had on a downhill tight curve when I met a lorry that was illegally on the narrow hillside road. I failed to adapt to going back to an old car without ABS. The wet was a greasy wet with all the dust being washed off the road. There was no way to pass the lorry so I hit the brakes. The car stopped in a straight line, which is great, but not on a curve where I crossed the road to hit him head on. My fault. The day before the vagabond dog that hung around our house was hit by a car. My fault. Gina was in the UK so I  had the kids, who helped me bury the dog, and no car. It was an expensive and difficult time. 

We are silly busy between trying to sell the batteries, starting up a personal network for the bank, having fun with the children and then all the work the house demands. For  the batteries we had to deliver one for testing. The challenge was that it had to go to Turkey within 5 days. We couldn't send it by air as Turkey will not import 40kg lead acid batteries by air without a battery of tests (?!) certifying their safety. We didn't have two weeks for commercial items need to clear customs if we sent it by courier, so it had to go privately.

We lined up appointments to buy boats in Turkey which we hoped would give me cover for possession of a large, very heavy suitcase. Boats need big heavy batteries for reserve power. Since our cars are both over ten years old and have an average of 200,000km on the clock we hired one. I got the ferry from Ancona to Igoumenitsa in Greece, which was a mere 15 hours, and drove across Greece to Turkey. They are rapidly building motorways but the first hilly part took hours, behind heavy trucks on steep passes with hairpin bends and rickety bridges. Starting at 6:30 local time and after a quick lunch on the Aegean Sea, I was at the Turkish border by 15:00 (some of the journey was within the speed limit). Taking a hire car outside the EU is not allowed and the only other option of crossing the 2km no-man's-land is to hitch a lift or wait for an irregular bus. So I chatted a while with the Greek police who told me just to give it a go. There a lots of soldiers with helmets and machine guns near the border but they seemed friendly enough to a middle-aged bumbling Brit with a battery. Mobile phone reception is bad in the border area, so it took an hour and more friendly chatting with policemen, this time the Turkish Border Guard, before one of them talked with the guy I was supposed to meet. He was at the border, with Bulgaria. So I sat in the car and watched the expanse of marshland in the setting sun for 3 hours while he drove the 200km from the next border crossing!

He was really cheery and helpful, especially for someone who then had a further 5 hours to go to deliver the battery. I stopped at the Duty Free in no man's land and was tempted to go overboard on the 200 Silk Cut for €21, but only got a couple of packs for the siblings. That was a lucky decision as the Customs Guards on the Greek side of the border were highly suspicious of a bumbling Brit illegally taking a hire car to Turkey for a couple of hours "to meet a guy" - well it didn't seem the time to give them the whole story. "Do you have a spare tire" they asked. "I hope so." "What do you mean, you hope so?" Well its a hire car. You're not allowed to take a hire car into Turkey. Yes, that's what I thought but your colleagues over there said I should......

So out came the spare tire, which we luckily found. Out came the large suitcase, with very little in it and somehow together we figured out how to lift up the backseat at which point I confessed that I was not smuggling anything into Greece. So he let me put it all back and drive away.

There are no petrol stations on the motorways in Greece. You have to pick an exit, find a village, hope they have a petrol station, which is open and so on... Luckily the one I found had a restaurant next door. I asked for something traditionally Greek, hoping for Moussaka, and ended up with chicken soup, which was nice, but not as good as moussaka. I drove till I got too tired, slept in the car till I got too cold and so on till dawn, when I found a small village with a restaurant serving breakfast of cigarette smoke and chicken soup. Oh well.

The ferry was not till 8pm so I took a small diversion, chatted with the armed Border Guards on patrol in the mountains, found the unmarked crossing, parked the car and walked into Albania, because I'd never been to Albania before. They are very poor.  Of course on the way back into Greece I got hassle from the Customs again. This time for buying duty free. It was all very confusing, so I bumbled and they vented steam in the way officials at boring border jobs tend to do and they decided that doing the paperwork on €23 of Ouzo, shampoo and a six-pack was probably going to be a lot of effort for little gain. So they let me go.

Listening to Rachmaninov and Pink FLoyd on the mountain drive led to all sorts of weird thoughts. But one was that when I was at school there were dictatorships in Spain and Greece, army rule in Turkey and not even James Bond went into Albania. The borders of democracy have been pushed out two countriesworth in my generation. There is international road traffic in a constant stream. The world is a lot better place, whatever the TV News tells you. Apart from the 6 Nations rugby, Gina and I have not watched a TV programme since we moved to Italy 4 years ago, life is a lot better without TV.

More importantly here's some photos of the kids:

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Winter 07/08

Since September we have less than 20 days with sunshine. Although life with the kids is a lot more fun the weather gets depressing, probably doubly so as the solar panels have little to do and we burn a lot more gas. After a lot of fiddling around the underfloor heating finally keeps the downstairs apartment at a steady 18 degrees, though the main room (with its 43 windows and 50 m2 of glass), varies a lot more with the outside temperature. The wood burning stove helps a lot and we have a lot of wood left from tidying up our pine trees.

The kids have turned into fun people. Despite the constant need to remind them to put on shoes, not slam doors, tidy their room and help in the house we laugh a lot more together nowadays.

We're in the UK every so often visiting potential clients for Faam. We have done a few small deals and quoted on some large ones. We hope for success soon. I passed my exams for Promotore Finanziario - the equivalent of Financial Adviser. Only 30% of the Italians who enrolled passed the course this time, so I feel quite proud. Now is the hard work of signing up accounts. Luckily Banca Mediolanum has a wonderful current account, with most operations included in an "all you can eat" style. It suits anyone struggling with the complexity of banks and banking in Italy. In addition to the internet and telephone each customer has a personal "Family Banker" - my role. So for the English mother tongue speakers in the area they have someone who can explain what to do and what it costs in a way they can understand!

The children had a fun Christmas. The morning was full of mystery. We went to the living nativity scene in Altidona with Fiona, Brett and Natasha and met lots of friends, some of whom were participating shepherds, basket weavers and Roman soldiers! It is wonderful to live in an area with mediaeval villages with narrow streets and downstairs rooms used for shops or storage, that convert easily into forges, bakers or a VIP lounge for the Angel Gabriel.

Steedley and George continued their stage career with Morescoro, the Moresco choir. This year the mothers got roped in.  The choir was joined by Claire, a friend of ours from Geneva who was visiting with her daughter Imogen. New Year's Eve had the usual spectacular firework displays. We watched about 50 from our house! The children stayed up for the first time and enjoyed a midnight cocoa.

There was a very emotional ending to the choir's performance at the old folks home in Monterubbiano on New Years Day, sort of captured and viewable on You Tube.

We now have two laptops so the photos are on the wrong one for editing the site - hence new photos on flickr.

I am helping a couple of local Agriturismi with their websites, for a small commission on their bookings. Try anything in the Fermo area on http://www.ownersdirect.co.uk/Italy-Le-Marche.htm

Now we have broadband we are on Skype - "timwills".

If you want to see the house or know anyone looking to rent accommodation please feel free to pass the link on. The apartment downstairs.

An article on Italy. published in Mensa

More photos on: http://community.webshots.com/user/timwills1

for our sister's company Bushes Brew

 

Even older news

Autumn

We got a load more photos of the new camera, so here are some of the more presentable. We continue to appreciate our house which seems new after the paint job and sorting over the summer. Tim is unhappy as we have had two weeks of rain which means he had to turn the boiler on 6 weeks earlier than last year. Still it must be obvious from the photos that the GDH (Gross Domestic Happiness) is substantially up.

We had a fun Guy Fawkes night at Helen and Brian's house in Montalto. Funnily enough it is not celebrated over here. Helen's beef and onion pie was a real treat. You don't seem to miss good English cooking till you taste it again! Our children really enjoyed playing with the other English children from the area. There was a crowd of about 10 with the offspring from Thomas and Debbie and Hugh and Jo. Funny how the larger families have emigrated here, while the Italian ones get smaller!

I am studying hard for the Italian Stock Exchange exams. Presumably it would help the market as well as us poor students if one day someone took a blowtorch to what passes for regulatory oversight here. Somehow the Banca d'Italia, CONSOB, Uffico Italiano dei Cambi, ISVAP, COVIP, and the Comitato Interminesteriale per il Credito e il Risparmio have all carved themselves a slice with, under and independently of the Ministerio dell'Economia.

Notwithstanding the hithertoforementioned here are the photos:

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The kids are back at school after a mere 14 week holiday. The house is painted. We have a new kitchen upstairs and we have made and renewed lots of friendships again. The painting looks fantastic. Jesse stayed for August finding work with Peter and Val. Friedel and Andrew (http://travellingtwo.com) stayed to house- and dogsit while we went to the UK for a couple of weeks and ended up sorting out the entire place. We are very grateful to all these guys, who all seem to be on facebook (man I am getting behind).

The UK was a rush. There is so much traffic on the island nowadays. All that wealth - not that anyone would let you believe it - au contraire the place is going to the dogs, falling into the sea, it's losing direction, face and moral fibre. Looks busy and comfortable enough to me. We drove 1,500 miles (2,500 km) in those two weeks, managed to spend two nights in a row in a couple of places. One of which was Uncle Micky and Auntie Bundy's house where we discovered we'd arrived with Steedley's fleas (I'm not sure how much more embarassing it could get!). We visited a dozen prospective places that may want FAAM's batteries. It was exhausting but the children were wonderful (helped bye Nana's portable DVD player in the back of the MPV).

We stayed with Auntie Charlotte and Uncle Chrissy, Emily and Georgina (plus a menagerie of dogs). We had a weekend with Granny Seaside in Southwold in her new beach hut (which costs about the same as a second hand Rolls or a family house round our way in Italy). We had lunch with Grumpy Gramps - who forgot to be grumpy quite a lot of the time! We had a day near Marlowe, had a full day in Portsmouth with Bundy and cousins Douglas and Alice - We saw HMSs Victory, Mary Rose, Ark Royal Aircraft Carrier and Invincible and big stuff for boys. We then had three lovely days on the beach in Lancing (which is a different kind of time warp to Southwold - but a time warp nevertheless).

The kids came back to school with by far the most adventurous 'what I did in my summer holidays' essays. We were lucky enough to spend the night in Her Majesty's Royal Palace - The Tower of London, which I promise you is a right royal privilege. There is something really rather satisfying about driving through the tourists and across the drawbridge into the Tower. The kids learnt how to skateboard while Mummy and Daddy had a quick refresher at the Yeoman Warder's Club. We are very grateful to Tom and Andrea for putting us up and putting up with us. We hope to stay longer next time.

We visited places I'd never been to, Liverpool, Leeds, Lincoln, Loughborough and Stafford (there is somewhere in the UK I hadn't been to does not begin with 'L'). And then we caught the 6 am from Liverpool back to Ancona to find that Friedel and Andrew had organised the entire house. It was really rather good.

Since then the work at FAAM has been frenetic and me studying for the Italian Stock Exchange exams which, being in Italian, are quite hard work.  Two new battery customers have been made and the UK market has been penetrated! My exams are on November 16th. So given all the pressure what do we do (cue Animal House - "Toga, toga, toga) yes we had a big party for our 10th Wedding Anniversary. Just the 100 people for dinner. Luckily someone from the local Commune lent us some tables and benches so we could seat everyone comfortably downstairs. We did not even need to use the big room upstairs or the 16 seater dining table!

Life is so much more fun now the kids are helping around the house and now they play happily together. We still have a struggle with homework and George can be really hard to deal with when there's work to be done. But it is a lot better and we appreciate how well things are working out for us. Now the house is just about there we just need a proper job or two and we will be paying our way without drawing on savings.

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Summertime

Emily and Georgina Bevan brought Granny Seaside out for a holiday. It was camp time so Gina was working ' come un cane' and Daddy was running around like the fly with the azure derriere impression. Steedley, Hamish and George have finished their Italian homework, after one month of holidays and have now started on an entire English course, which they may easily have done by the end of July. So it will just leave August and most of September to fill before they go back to school. But more importantly was the beach with Granny and cousins. We hope to have a round trip of England visiting potential customers for Faam, which will hive us funds and a good excuse to visit friends all over the UK.

The camps have been a bust this year with less than half the number of children from last year and double the costs. Some local commune started demanding 'rent' at the last minute for premises they had kindly donated last year. We had only been talking to them for 6 months at which this had not been raised. We tried sports camps but a combination of less money locally, 35C weather and general laziness meant we had less than a third of the children we were hoping for. The teachers from New Zealand, England, the US and Namibia have had an easier time than the Kiwis from last year. Jesse and Patrick worked for a couple of weeks painting the upstairs here, which was money out that wasn't coming in, for a job that could have waited, but we are very glad it is done. We also thought the camps would allow us to get a new kitchen this year and foolishly ordered it before banking the cash so we are very low on funds again.

We are looking forward to our single family renting this year, which is less than half last year. So our summer has not been a good harvest. The drought continues and the farmers are worried, per usual some may say. But they finished the grain harvest in June and the second hay crop at the beginning of July. They have already done half the ploughing. Maybe it will all be ready to suffer the intense heat of August by the sea. If it was mid 30's in late June then it could easily be 40+ for August.

1000 words time...