Miracle at Montefalcone

On Wednesday the 23rd, just after five, I took the dogs to the upper woods (to the left on the map, to the right in the photo) for their usual late afternoon walk. When we reached Valentino and Cecilia's house 1, one of their adopted strays, Fred, joined us. When it was time to put them on the lead to return home Meg and Fred had disappeared, a not uncommon event. I spent ten fruitless minutes calling her. Then Pat arrived. Fred reappeared but as there was still no sign of Meg we retraced our route through the woods constantly calling her, to no avail although I could hear a dog which sounded like her barking below me in the  far distance. By now it was dark.       

   Pat took Eva home and then drove round the roads (see red arrows below) which encircle the upper woods and, on the eastern side divide them from the lower woods, 

looking for Meg. I stayed at the point 2 from which I could hear barking, continually calling her.  Then, when Pat phoned to say there was no sign of Meg on the roads,  I used the iPhone's torch, to help me slowly navigate my way out of the upper woods to Fred's 1 where Pat was waiting in the car. We drove to where 3 we could once again hear the barking, which we now discovered was coming from the lower woods (to the right on the map, to the left in the photo) . Carrying the torch Pat had brought from home, I attempted to go towards the sound down a steep and muddy path 4. Unfortunately, it led me away from the barking so we gave up and got home almost four hours after the walk began. Pat was convinced we'd never see Meg again. 

  At seven the next morning Pat took Eva to the upper woods to look for Meg while I walked to where we'd heard the barking from the lower woods, crossing myself as I passed a shrine to Our Lady 5 en route. There was no longer any barking but I thought that if I could get to below where we'd previously heard it I might be able to climb up through the woods to find her. I set off down a track by the cemetery 6, well to the south east of the previous evening's barking. When I got to the bottom and turned a corner there she was - Meg, alive and well - trapped inside a chain-link fence surrounding a plantation of oak trees 7, and nowhere near where I'd had a very faint hope she might be.  If I hadn't found her she would almost certainly have starved to death. The gate was padlocked but I managed to pull up enough of the bottom of a section of fencing to get her out. In a way it was fortunate that she'd been trapped because, given her predilection for trying to round up cars as if they were sheep, she'd have probably have been run over if she'd tried to make her way home in the dark.

 Was her salvation a fortunate concatenation of circumstances or divine intervention? Take your pick.

Update to May 4th's Post.

The BBC have recently screened the Italian TV dramatisation of The Young Montalbano complete with English subtitles. Episode 3, Back to Basics, incorporates the plot of Pezzetti di spago assolutamente inutilizzabili.

The Courtyard Circular: August and September 2013

August.

August, as usual, saw  our social life take a severe downturn as term ended for the dayboys: the Rogers went home on the 5th and the Cairns on the  9th. We had Sunday lunch at the Trattoria di Moro with Tony and Shona before they left, and coffee at John and Judy's a couple of days before their departure. On the 13th went with Glyn to a concert of Celtic music, La Cuma di Notte at the Monte Rinaldo archeological site. It wasn't very good and - even worse - while I was filming a song the screen on my camera packed up.

The following day we had a pleasant birthday lunch with Glyn at Il Faro on Pedaso beach, followed by heavy rain. Ferragosto began as though it were an English bank holiday,  grey and much cooler. However it picked up in the afternoon with blue skies and temperature in the mid-twenties. Although it never returned to the low thirties of  early August, the weather remained good on the whole until the last Sunday in September when I had to finally abandon shorts.

September: Things - and people - fall apart.

The month began fairly well. On Sunday 1st Pat had an enjoyable hack out on Daisy and in the late afternoon we went to a Chopin concert given by Gil Jetley at his house.



On the 6th we got the second load of wood in before Pat went to the UK until the 13th
the following day.

 On the 8th I went to Joey Luis's confirmation in Force,

returning home to stack the wood to make room for the third and final load on the 11th.
   Then things carried on from last month's camera disaster as more things started to fall apart. Firstly, while Pat was away the boiler decided to pack up so I was without hot water until the 15th when Pompeo and Peppe effected a temporary fix. It went off again on the 18th and we're still awaiting some replacement parts. Secondly, warning lights came on in the car, one of which began flashing menancingly. Thirdly, installing an iTunes update on the 18th in order to download iOS 7 led to a distorted graphical display followed by flickering and crashing. Eventually the computer became unusable. Fortunately, searching the web revealed that the mid-2011 model of my computer came with a faulty graphics card and Apple would replace it gratis. Took the computer to Ascoli last Tuesday and will pick it up tomorrow.
  And it's not just things which are breaking. On the 22nd I got my foot caught in a shop-fitting at Lupo's alimentari and went sprawling, the corner of another fitting hitting me in the mid-riff. The same day at mass Don Marco fainted and fell backwards hitting his head on the altar steps. He was taken to Fermo Hospital but, fortunately, was back at his post this Sunday. As has my sciatica since the last week of September!