to let the rest of the sale go ahead.
‘But what would that mean?’ we asked. ‘Could he just come round any time and spend the day sitting in his room?’
‘He almost certainly won’t.’
‘Well, does he have his own key? To get to his bit, he’d need to use our front door, isn’t that a bit weird?’
‘Maybe you just need to adjust your thinking a bit,’ said Mr Linen. ‘Italy is a very relaxed place.’
It wasn’t hard to say goodbye to him.
Next up was the lovely Anna Paola in Serra de Conti, a pretty village slightly further north. Unlike Sandro and Mr Linen, her office was rather immaculate and she had a computer that did modern things like make projections of how houses would look once they were done up. After the essential coffees and perusal through her offerings on paper, we got in her car to start the day’s viewings. Her car had little stickers all over it in English saying things like ‘glove compartment’ and ‘vanity mirror’, apparently there to teach her as-yet pre-verbal child the importance of knowing English. Given that she didn’t speak much herself, this seemed a clear case of transference. She, too, showed us some lovely houses and our uncertainty grew. We saw one called Graziosa, which had such huge rosemary plants growing all around that the whole microclimate had the most delicious smell, evocative of Sunday roast. We tried to convince ourselves that it was big enough but knew in our hearts it wasn’t true.
We really wanted to buy a house from her! We trusted her, even if she told us things we didn’t want to hear about how restoration can cost twice as much as many people will tell you. It was probably because she told us things we didn’t want to hear that we trusted her. She also told us some interesting specific things, which was nice in a world of indecision and generalities; for example: the legal minimum ceiling height is 2 metres 70 centimetres; you can only extend existing windows vertically downwards and you can’t put any new windows in rural properties. She told us that the reason you see lots of houses with four odd pillars in a square or a beaten-up old metal framework in the garden is that they are marking the position of a former outhouse. Any outhouse can be automatically rebuilt without additional permission-seeking, to the same volume as the original—but if you take away the pillars you lose this right.
She showed us some lovely places but they were all just not quite right—a bit too small, a bit not in an olive-growing place, a bit too expensive. That evening, we hatched a plan to buy Graziosa, to do up the outbuilding first and then live in that as we set up our olive business and brought up (hopefully) a baby while we did the work to restore the main house. We went to sleep excited with this image—and with having a plan. But by morning the house had shrunk back to its true size, and there was no further mention of it.
One final day of house viewings; this time with Anna Paola’s sidekick Peter, a serious Swede with the longest fingers you’ve ever seen and that irritating Scandinavian habit of speaking five languages fluently. We saw a few more properties with him, had lunch in an honest workmen’s café where we were shocked to see that he drank wine at lunchtime, and went on to the two final places of the trip. One was just a bit bunkerish on the outside and a no-no, but as we drove to the last one we turned to each other to note a feeling we both had of familiarity. We wondered whether it was just that in seeing so many houses (about 40 by now) dotted all over the region we were actually getting to know the area quite well. But no, there was more to it than that. As we turned off the strada bianca and saw a familiar massive crack down the side of a pretty house next to a field of olive trees, we realized we had been shown this house before, by another estate agent! It was a disappointing way to end but also strangely reassuring in that things were coming full circle.
We said goodbye to all and prepared for our trip back to LA.
Back in LA, our thoughts kept returning to Upupa—the unfeasibly huge house we had unfeasibly fallen in love with, in all its madcap glory. At the distance given firstly by e-mail and secondly by being thousands of miles away in a city where the overriding philosophy is ‘If you want it, you damn well go out and get it’, we found ourselves composing an e-mail.
At first we played it slightly coy. There was some neighbouring land with lots of olive trees on it, which we would be interested in buying, too. If the agents could confirm whether there was a possibility of our buying this in addition to the house and its existing land, it would make our decision a good deal easier.
A few days later, an e-mail came back confirming that the owner was interested in discussing the possibility of our buying up to two hectares of land in addition to the house.
This was more than enough to puncture our coyness. Our next e-mail could only be described as…an offer! In our excitement we even forgot the usual etiquette of offering below the asking price and instead just girlishly sort of said ‘We want it!’ The asking price was 155,000 euros.
Our hearts skipped every time there was the ping of a new e-mail popping into the inbox. But strangely there was no word that day, or the next day, or the next. We sent another e-mail checking that our first had been received safely.
The next day came back the following reply. ‘The owner of the house is being rather naughtie and has increased the asking price, on the basis that she has someone interested in paying it. She now wants euros 206,500.00. We are a bit vexed that this has happened as you can well imagine, and wait to hear how you feel about it.’
Quite apart from the insult of the spelling of naughty, this was just a joke, especially given how much we would have to spend on doing up the house. And even more especially since in the meantime we’d learned that the house had been on the market for twenty years. May it long remain there.
That evening, over a consoling beer in the sunshine of our porch, we cheered ourselves up by booking tickets for our next trip back to Le Marche to see more houses. Even though Upupa wasn’t to be, there was no going back now.
Orecchiette pasta with cauliflower
Orecchiette al cavolfiore
Ingredients for 4 people
Cauliflower—one medium sized
Garlic—1 clove
Chilli—1
Extra virgin olive oil—2 tablespoons
Orecchiette—500g
Salt
Parmesan—grated to serve
This is a different take on the more common orrechiette with broccoli, which we found at a lovely little trattoria in Urbino.
Cut the cauliflower into little florets, cook in salted boiling water for 5 minutes and then drain. Peel the garlic and seed and chop the chilli. Heat the olive oil (Marchigiani if you can find it) and gently cook the garlic and chilli for a few minutes. Add the cauliflower and cook for a further 5 minutes so there’s a bit of colour to the veg.
Cook the orecchiette in salted water according to the instructions on the packet. Once it’s al dente, drain and toss into the cauliflower. Serve with a generous handful of grated parmesan.
