Life in Le Marche: The big day

Yes, today's the big day!
Bernie's on his way over from Rome and I've got it! It's true, I have...the aerial.
The aerial for our fantastic new 'wireless' adventure. Do you know what this means to us? No? Shall I tell you?
Well, for Bernie it means that he can come over and work in his country house away from Rome, send articles zooming out at 2000kps and Skype to his heart's content, even from the garden, (if we can manage to wireless the wireless as the lady at Fidoka tried to explain to me, unsuccessfully)
For us at Sambuco, it means Skype and being able to work from home and check our mail and then also to go out into the garden, or even snooze occasionaly. Oh, you know, all that stuff which will give us everlasting freedom and happiness. Yes, surely it will.
But, oh, if wishes were fishes!
Did it work?
Did it happen?
Hmm! sort of!
It became, in fact, an adventure.
Two days later
I came away from Fidoka with a box full of tricks and promises. This is what you have to do they said. You must plug all the wires and bits in and then wave the dish in the direction of Gualdo (4.7K away, it says on my form) and when the green light stops flashing, bring up the signal strength box and jiggle the dish until you get the lowest number between 50 and 90, (Whhhat?)
Have you ever tried adjusting a satellite dish after a scirocco? when the dish is one side of the house and the TV the other?
Easy, it's a breeze compared to wireless signal finding.... .
So there they were, my stalwart friends, standing on step ladders, hanging out windows in a howling gale, rain and sleet with me shouting no up,no down,no... where you were, hold it there, hold it there!
Until, bingo, we get green light to stop flashing and I call Fidoka and they say Nope, we can't pick you up this end.
(what?, we've been out here for two hours)
So we have to wait until Monday because they close on a weekend. They close?
But this is the only time when most folks have time to jump up and down in the garden with their wireless dish. Hey! But this is Italy, remember, they don't do service. OK Ok.

On Monday Pino arrives with a ladder and he fixes a metal pole onto the wall of our house and attaches the dish to it and points it at Gualdo and ...zilch, nothing...green LED flashing like crazy.
Winds begins to pick up again and Pino's grip on the ladder is looking decidedly
precarious then suddenly he shouts we've got it, the green light has stopped flashing! Again I call the company and no, they can't locate us.
So I look out of the window and see that Pino has the dish pointed at San Ginesio (9K away) and not Gualdo. Call Fidoka again and yes, they've found us beamed on to San Ginesio, but it's impossible, San Ginesio is too far!
So here I am, typing this via an ADSL broadband connection which can't possibly work but does.
Today I bought a compass in town to try to get at Gualdo the Boy Scout way.
I get home too late to try, It's getting dark, Gualdo has been consumed by a black cloud and it's beginning to snow.
And why was I late back?
I confess, I dropped Lili's precious Nikon wide angle lens this afternoon and took it in for dispatch and repair, swiftly and immediately to avoid death sentence ( which I'll get anyway)

The ski season, up until now) has been non existent. In fact wiped out, so no work for those poor chaps in the snow industry. For weeks it's been hovering above 20C, but guess what? Angelo shouted to me from his Kangoo yesterday afternoon that on Monday it's gonna drop by 15 degrees and we are all gonna be covered with the white stuff (snow, that is). Your dreaming I say to him (Angelo BTW is a ski instructor up in the mountains above us here) but no no he says, it's coming, it is, it is. But how can this be? All the trees are blossoming and the lizards and butterflies are out and I can't my grass yesterday evening. Hell' it just can't snow. What's worse, the geraniums are all outside and the lemon tree too. Oh dear, oh dear, I'll keep you posted.

Postscript
See above, It's March 21st and it's snowing like hell outside.