In Another Place, someone recently asked for advice about buying an above-ground swimming pool. I suggested that, if he'd never owned a pool before, he might get a better idea of the work involved in maintaining a swimming pool as well as the posi
We live in central Abruzzo near Teramo. A couple of months ago, I posted on Abruzzolutely about my experience in setting up a 2.4 metre dish: http://www.abruzzolutely.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1337598507/s-7/#num7 For more than two years, we subscribed to UK Sky while using a 90 cm dish. Although we were getting quite a few channels, we didn't get all the Sky channels we were paying for and we never received any BBC channels. Now, we have got rid of the Sky subscription fee and we receive the same channels as anyone in Britain using the Freesat service. I was interested to see that Roddyb is able to get the same channels as us using a 1.8 metre dish. If his profile information is correct, he's at about the same latitude as our house, but around 120 km to the west. That might make signals a tiny bit easier to receive at his place, but I suspect the difference is minimal. I think it will be interesting to see if either or both of us continue to be able to receive the BBC when their transmissions are taken off the Astra 1N satellite at the end of this year or beginning of next. I agree with what Brianm says about "petalised" dishes. I did read some negative comments about them in the expat satellite TV forums I glanced at before buying our dish, and I can easily see how our dish could have ended up a distorted, useless mess if put together by someone with little manual dexterity and less common sense. Our dish did require some care to assemble correctly so that each of the petals aligned neatly with its neighbours, but it really wasn't all that difficult or time consuming. I don't have the equipment necessary to properly measure the difference in the signals we got with our old dish compared to the new, but it's definitely a fact that we now have a full channel list whereas before we just had a few. Our Freesat box is showing the BBC, ITV, C4 and 5 channels all at about 75% signal strength and 95% signal quality. The minor channels seem to be normally about 80% strength and quality. Unfortunately, it seems that buying a dish like ours - a FortecStar 2.4 metre - is very difficult at the moment. Someone we know was inspired by our experience to get his own big dish, but he has had major difficulties doing so. Apparently, the Italian retailers he has contracted have given him grossly over-priced quotes, nobody in Britain is selling the dish any more and the only options he has discovered involve paying a lot more than the £250 which we did and then paying even more than that for shipping from Spain or Germany. Oh, and while I'm also far from expert on this, I'm pretty certain that Roddyb is right when he says that you can't get UK Sky on a Sky Italia box. It is very definitely the case that the satellite used by Sky Italia is not in the same spot in the sky as UK Sky, so you won't find UK channels just be fiddling around with the settings on a Sky Italia box which is attached to a dish pointing at Sky Italia's satellite. Al
Given how roof tiles are traditionally held in place by nothing but gravity, given how it's traditional at least in this part of Abruzzo to put whacking great boulders on the edge of the roof to keep the tiles in place in strong winds and given how many tiles crashed to the ground during the L'Aquila earthquake, I've given serious thought to the falling hazards we might encounter if we leave the house during a tremor. Al
We've used a TomTom GPS and one that came installed in a Nissan car. Both have been the cause of occasional amusement and sometimes serious annoyance. My conclusion is that the fault usually doesn't lay with the devices themselves, but rather with the mapping data supplied by whoever does such things in Italy. The GPS displays roads in an amazing amount of detail, including some very minor ones -- the 300 metre driveway which leads only to our house, for instance. Unfortunately, it seems that roads are all categorised as belonging to one of only three groups: Autostrade, main routes (A-roads in British terms) and everything else. This means you can be working your way up a hillside through a series of hairpin turns, when the GPS suddenly tells you to turn sharp right on to a near-vertical dirt track which cuts across one of the bends and so - as far as the gizmo is concerned - will shorten your journey be a few hundred metres. Another irritation often occurs when trying to find a particular street. If you happen to be looking for a shop on, say, Via Giovanni Maria Falconetto, you might find this listed as Via Giovanni Maria Falconetto, Via Giovanni Falconetto, Via G Falconetto, Via GM Falconetto, Via G Maria Falconetto, Via Maria Falconetto or just Via Falconetto. If the street in question is anywhere near the edge of a town or village, then it's entirely possible that, as far as the GPS is concerned, it's actually in a town other than the one listed on the business card or on the internet site. There have been moments when I've been trying to find an address on the GPS that I've actually felt some sympathy for Italian courier drivers. Add to all this the potential for confusion caused by rubbish Italian road signage and stress when non-Italians get on the road here and try to get from Point A to Point B, and I'm not much surprised that visitors go badly astray. I do think that the best solution is for people to provide detailed written instructions on how to get to a holiday place or whatever. Still, we have sometimes been given driving instructions here which were misleading at best, mainly because of how easy it is to start to assume things are obvious once you've driven a particular route a few hundred times. Al
Perhaps Italians do all check into a hospital when stung by a hornet. If so, I guess that's just another example of what fragile flowers they are (their susceptibility to deadly diseases as the result of draughts being another). One of us was stung by a hornet a couple of years ago. It was painful and the lump didn't fade for a couple of months, but neither Epipen, ambulance to casualty or coffin was required. Hornets are disconcerting to Brits because they're so big and noisy, but our experience is that they keep themselves to themselves and all you need to do is learn to keep calm when you see one. At this time of year, you do need to be aware that they like over-ripe fruit. If you should, for example, grab a fig that has a hornet happily munching away on the other side, you're likely to get stung as the insect reacts to being squeezed. You also need to be aware that they do fly at night seeking insect prey, so an open, unscreened window with a light on inside is a bad idea. However, keeping screens in place on open windows should be a no-brainer for anyone who has ever seen how squadrons of flies and mosquitos zoom inside a house the moment they spot an open window. Here's a couple of websites with info on hornets: http://www.insectstings.co.uk/hornets.shtmlhttp://www.hornissenschutz.de/hornets.htm Personally, I am much more concerned about horseflies and mosquitos. Hornets don't really want to have anything to do with people and, in fact, given that they're insectivores, you can see them as good neighbours. Biting flies are fast, aggressive and difficult to swat as they go for any unprotected flesh and mosquitoes - including the day-time flying Tiger Mosquito - are numerous and very sneaky. Al
Capo Boi said: "So who on here wants the euro to fail with Italy pulling out? I'll kick off and only my opinion but speaking through my pocket. Anyone with a house here will see a fall in its sterling or dollar value of something in the region of 30%-40% overnight." I'm easily befuddled by finance and it's really too damn hot to think at all, but I'm pretty clear that the only thing that matters in property dealing is the difference between the price you can get when you sell and the cost of the property when you bought it. I happened to buy our home when Stirling was quite strong against the Euro (2006), so a 30% fall on the current supposed value would - what? - take the value of the house in Stirling back to roughly what it was five years ago? If that was so and given what has happened to UK property values in that period, I'd not be surprised to find that I could then step up from what I had in Britain if I was to sell up here and move back. I can see how, if the hypothetical New Lira was worth less than a Euro - and if house prices changed only in that the currency sign altered, but the sum remained the same - then the number of Pounds I would receive for the sale would then be less than what I might get if I sold the house today for Euros and immediately exchanged those Euros for Stirling. But that sort of property value has always seemed to me more speculative than real - a point many people with mortgages in the UK have been reminded about over the last couple of years. Obviously, if we wanted to sell our current home and buy another in Italy, the change to the New Lira would have no impact. Much more important to me than how much I might be able to get if I was to put our house on the market and sell it for New Lira is how much we will be able to buy in Italy next month when I convert my fixed Stirling income into Euros. Leaving aside the affects of inflation, I think the purchasing power of my income has fallen by roughly a third since I moved here. If there was to be a devaluation with the hypothetical New Lira set at a value against the GBP lower than the €/£ exchange rate today, we would be a net winner, at least in the short to medium term. Al
I can cope with temperatures in the 30s as long as I'm in the shade with a drink and a breeze and nothing much to do. However, I still find the sun incredibly intense here and the humidity can be very unpleasant. So much so that I get very sweaty and uncomfortably hot if I have to do any sort of work outside in temperatures much over 20°. Summer is the season I enjoy least here. Al
Raggio, I wonder what exactly the workers were muttering as they released the owl. Friends in the nearest village have told us that they've spotted an owl roosting in the roof space of a neighbour's house, but they have deliberately said nothing to them because they're certain that superstitious beliefs would mean that the owl family would come to a rapid, gruesome end. We often see and hear owls around our place. Our most interesting bird sighting of late, however, is a buzzard who has taken to roosting in a tree that overhangs our driveway. We've seen it several times flying over one of our fields, but the other day we came home and surprised it as we drove up the drive. It swooped down from it's perch about 20 metres in front of the car and flew up the track between the trees until the point where the road gets to an open space, then it disappeared off over the fields. Al
I'm pleased about that, Capo Boi. I'd come to the conclusion from your previous posts that you were a sensible sort. Having looked into this issue a bit more, it seems that the scientific consensus used to be that only Helodermatid lizards were venemous. There are only a few species in this branch of the reptile family and they're all native to the New World. However, a few years ago research indicated that Iguana and Monitor lizards also produce venom, although the quantities involved and the weak delivery system means a bite from one of these is very unlikely to pose any real danger to humans (the usual caveats about individual hyper-sensitvity apply as usual with these things). Iguanas are also native to the New World and monitor lizards are native to Africa, Asia and Australia. Again, no suggestion in anything I've read that any native lizard you might come across in Italy poses any sort of danger to humans. Rather, it's clear that they play a role in reducing numbers of creatures that most of us would probably rather see less of. Therefore, the most rational approach is to just leave them alone to get on with pest control. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8331-lizards-poisonous-secret-is-revealed.htmlhttp://www.herpcenter.com/herp-awareness/6128-more-venomous-lizards-than-we-thought.html Al
We have lots of fireflies around here on a good night, but I've only ever spotted one glow worm. It's entirely possible that this is because I've just not been out looking in the right places at the right time. The one I did see was on a gravel area at the bottom of the house wall, but I have no idea what that says about their preferred display area. I managed to pick the creature up and bring it into the light for a closer look; it was a very odd looking thing. The glow was interesting, too, in that it was constant rather than blinking like the fireflies. Al
Capo Boi, I'd like to believe that when you say, "Highly dangerous," you're either employing irony or agreeing that ignorance is dangerous. However, I suspect you're actually asserting that Maralyn's friends are right to be fearful of the large green lizards one occasionally sees in Italy. If so, I'd be interested to know the source of your information. Nothing I've seen in reputable sources suggests they are dangerous to anything larger than mice. Al
Comments posted
We live in central Abruzzo near Teramo. A couple of months ago, I posted on Abruzzolutely about my experience in setting up a 2.4 metre dish: http://www.abruzzolutely.com/forum/Blah.pl?m-1337598507/s-7/#num7 For more than two years, we subscribed to UK Sky while using a 90 cm dish. Although we were getting quite a few channels, we didn't get all the Sky channels we were paying for and we never received any BBC channels. Now, we have got rid of the Sky subscription fee and we receive the same channels as anyone in Britain using the Freesat service. I was interested to see that Roddyb is able to get the same channels as us using a 1.8 metre dish. If his profile information is correct, he's at about the same latitude as our house, but around 120 km to the west. That might make signals a tiny bit easier to receive at his place, but I suspect the difference is minimal. I think it will be interesting to see if either or both of us continue to be able to receive the BBC when their transmissions are taken off the Astra 1N satellite at the end of this year or beginning of next. I agree with what Brianm says about "petalised" dishes. I did read some negative comments about them in the expat satellite TV forums I glanced at before buying our dish, and I can easily see how our dish could have ended up a distorted, useless mess if put together by someone with little manual dexterity and less common sense. Our dish did require some care to assemble correctly so that each of the petals aligned neatly with its neighbours, but it really wasn't all that difficult or time consuming. I don't have the equipment necessary to properly measure the difference in the signals we got with our old dish compared to the new, but it's definitely a fact that we now have a full channel list whereas before we just had a few. Our Freesat box is showing the BBC, ITV, C4 and 5 channels all at about 75% signal strength and 95% signal quality. The minor channels seem to be normally about 80% strength and quality. Unfortunately, it seems that buying a dish like ours - a FortecStar 2.4 metre - is very difficult at the moment. Someone we know was inspired by our experience to get his own big dish, but he has had major difficulties doing so. Apparently, the Italian retailers he has contracted have given him grossly over-priced quotes, nobody in Britain is selling the dish any more and the only options he has discovered involve paying a lot more than the £250 which we did and then paying even more than that for shipping from Spain or Germany. Oh, and while I'm also far from expert on this, I'm pretty certain that Roddyb is right when he says that you can't get UK Sky on a Sky Italia box. It is very definitely the case that the satellite used by Sky Italia is not in the same spot in the sky as UK Sky, so you won't find UK channels just be fiddling around with the settings on a Sky Italia box which is attached to a dish pointing at Sky Italia's satellite. Al
Given how roof tiles are traditionally held in place by nothing but gravity, given how it's traditional at least in this part of Abruzzo to put whacking great boulders on the edge of the roof to keep the tiles in place in strong winds and given how many tiles crashed to the ground during the L'Aquila earthquake, I've given serious thought to the falling hazards we might encounter if we leave the house during a tremor. Al
We've used a TomTom GPS and one that came installed in a Nissan car. Both have been the cause of occasional amusement and sometimes serious annoyance. My conclusion is that the fault usually doesn't lay with the devices themselves, but rather with the mapping data supplied by whoever does such things in Italy. The GPS displays roads in an amazing amount of detail, including some very minor ones -- the 300 metre driveway which leads only to our house, for instance. Unfortunately, it seems that roads are all categorised as belonging to one of only three groups: Autostrade, main routes (A-roads in British terms) and everything else. This means you can be working your way up a hillside through a series of hairpin turns, when the GPS suddenly tells you to turn sharp right on to a near-vertical dirt track which cuts across one of the bends and so - as far as the gizmo is concerned - will shorten your journey be a few hundred metres. Another irritation often occurs when trying to find a particular street. If you happen to be looking for a shop on, say, Via Giovanni Maria Falconetto, you might find this listed as Via Giovanni Maria Falconetto, Via Giovanni Falconetto, Via G Falconetto, Via GM Falconetto, Via G Maria Falconetto, Via Maria Falconetto or just Via Falconetto. If the street in question is anywhere near the edge of a town or village, then it's entirely possible that, as far as the GPS is concerned, it's actually in a town other than the one listed on the business card or on the internet site. There have been moments when I've been trying to find an address on the GPS that I've actually felt some sympathy for Italian courier drivers. Add to all this the potential for confusion caused by rubbish Italian road signage and stress when non-Italians get on the road here and try to get from Point A to Point B, and I'm not much surprised that visitors go badly astray. I do think that the best solution is for people to provide detailed written instructions on how to get to a holiday place or whatever. Still, we have sometimes been given driving instructions here which were misleading at best, mainly because of how easy it is to start to assume things are obvious once you've driven a particular route a few hundred times. Al
Perhaps Italians do all check into a hospital when stung by a hornet. If so, I guess that's just another example of what fragile flowers they are (their susceptibility to deadly diseases as the result of draughts being another). One of us was stung by a hornet a couple of years ago. It was painful and the lump didn't fade for a couple of months, but neither Epipen, ambulance to casualty or coffin was required. Hornets are disconcerting to Brits because they're so big and noisy, but our experience is that they keep themselves to themselves and all you need to do is learn to keep calm when you see one. At this time of year, you do need to be aware that they like over-ripe fruit. If you should, for example, grab a fig that has a hornet happily munching away on the other side, you're likely to get stung as the insect reacts to being squeezed. You also need to be aware that they do fly at night seeking insect prey, so an open, unscreened window with a light on inside is a bad idea. However, keeping screens in place on open windows should be a no-brainer for anyone who has ever seen how squadrons of flies and mosquitos zoom inside a house the moment they spot an open window. Here's a couple of websites with info on hornets: http://www.insectstings.co.uk/hornets.shtml http://www.hornissenschutz.de/hornets.htm Personally, I am much more concerned about horseflies and mosquitos. Hornets don't really want to have anything to do with people and, in fact, given that they're insectivores, you can see them as good neighbours. Biting flies are fast, aggressive and difficult to swat as they go for any unprotected flesh and mosquitoes - including the day-time flying Tiger Mosquito - are numerous and very sneaky. Al
Capo Boi said: "So who on here wants the euro to fail with Italy pulling out? I'll kick off and only my opinion but speaking through my pocket. Anyone with a house here will see a fall in its sterling or dollar value of something in the region of 30%-40% overnight." I'm easily befuddled by finance and it's really too damn hot to think at all, but I'm pretty clear that the only thing that matters in property dealing is the difference between the price you can get when you sell and the cost of the property when you bought it. I happened to buy our home when Stirling was quite strong against the Euro (2006), so a 30% fall on the current supposed value would - what? - take the value of the house in Stirling back to roughly what it was five years ago? If that was so and given what has happened to UK property values in that period, I'd not be surprised to find that I could then step up from what I had in Britain if I was to sell up here and move back. I can see how, if the hypothetical New Lira was worth less than a Euro - and if house prices changed only in that the currency sign altered, but the sum remained the same - then the number of Pounds I would receive for the sale would then be less than what I might get if I sold the house today for Euros and immediately exchanged those Euros for Stirling. But that sort of property value has always seemed to me more speculative than real - a point many people with mortgages in the UK have been reminded about over the last couple of years. Obviously, if we wanted to sell our current home and buy another in Italy, the change to the New Lira would have no impact. Much more important to me than how much I might be able to get if I was to put our house on the market and sell it for New Lira is how much we will be able to buy in Italy next month when I convert my fixed Stirling income into Euros. Leaving aside the affects of inflation, I think the purchasing power of my income has fallen by roughly a third since I moved here. If there was to be a devaluation with the hypothetical New Lira set at a value against the GBP lower than the €/£ exchange rate today, we would be a net winner, at least in the short to medium term. Al
I can cope with temperatures in the 30s as long as I'm in the shade with a drink and a breeze and nothing much to do. However, I still find the sun incredibly intense here and the humidity can be very unpleasant. So much so that I get very sweaty and uncomfortably hot if I have to do any sort of work outside in temperatures much over 20°. Summer is the season I enjoy least here. Al
Raggio, I wonder what exactly the workers were muttering as they released the owl. Friends in the nearest village have told us that they've spotted an owl roosting in the roof space of a neighbour's house, but they have deliberately said nothing to them because they're certain that superstitious beliefs would mean that the owl family would come to a rapid, gruesome end. We often see and hear owls around our place. Our most interesting bird sighting of late, however, is a buzzard who has taken to roosting in a tree that overhangs our driveway. We've seen it several times flying over one of our fields, but the other day we came home and surprised it as we drove up the drive. It swooped down from it's perch about 20 metres in front of the car and flew up the track between the trees until the point where the road gets to an open space, then it disappeared off over the fields. Al
I'm pleased about that, Capo Boi. I'd come to the conclusion from your previous posts that you were a sensible sort. Having looked into this issue a bit more, it seems that the scientific consensus used to be that only Helodermatid lizards were venemous. There are only a few species in this branch of the reptile family and they're all native to the New World. However, a few years ago research indicated that Iguana and Monitor lizards also produce venom, although the quantities involved and the weak delivery system means a bite from one of these is very unlikely to pose any real danger to humans (the usual caveats about individual hyper-sensitvity apply as usual with these things). Iguanas are also native to the New World and monitor lizards are native to Africa, Asia and Australia. Again, no suggestion in anything I've read that any native lizard you might come across in Italy poses any sort of danger to humans. Rather, it's clear that they play a role in reducing numbers of creatures that most of us would probably rather see less of. Therefore, the most rational approach is to just leave them alone to get on with pest control. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn8331-lizards-poisonous-secret-is-revealed.html http://www.herpcenter.com/herp-awareness/6128-more-venomous-lizards-than-we-thought.html Al
We have lots of fireflies around here on a good night, but I've only ever spotted one glow worm. It's entirely possible that this is because I've just not been out looking in the right places at the right time. The one I did see was on a gravel area at the bottom of the house wall, but I have no idea what that says about their preferred display area. I managed to pick the creature up and bring it into the light for a closer look; it was a very odd looking thing. The glow was interesting, too, in that it was constant rather than blinking like the fireflies. Al
Capo Boi, I'd like to believe that when you say, "Highly dangerous," you're either employing irony or agreeing that ignorance is dangerous. However, I suspect you're actually asserting that Maralyn's friends are right to be fearful of the large green lizards one occasionally sees in Italy. If so, I'd be interested to know the source of your information. Nothing I've seen in reputable sources suggests they are dangerous to anything larger than mice. Al