Well yesterday, after 2 hours and around thirty signatures each on countless originals and copies of various documents and plans, our project for the refurbishment of the house has been submitted to the Comune. Over the last few weeks our Italian vocabulary has been increased to include words such as ‘trincea’ (trench), ‘intonacare’ (to plaster), ‘soffita’ (loft space) and ‘trave’ (beams). But we’ve been very lucky to have found a ‘geometra’ who, although he speaks very little English, has bags of patience to allow us to ask all the questions we need to understand each process – and you know how much we like to understand each process!