(Thursday, 30 April 2020)
This morning started like any other really, shuffling out of bed, coffee, the usual, but rather surprisingly, no rain. Since Accuweather had been foretelling tales of doom for this week, we were not expecting clear blue skies this morning at all. But then again, it had been wrong quite a bit this week.
We give it a pretty hard time, but it is actually a nifty free app, lots of info and it is actually quite often right, so blaming the app is not really fair. Mountain weather is notoriously unpredictable and the topography of our region makes it not only very hard to predict, but it can be raining in a valley on one side of the mountain and not on the other, so we have somewhat unfairly nicknamed it (inAccuweather).
Work continued today on the [insert appropriate expletive here cos ‘sodding’ is already taken] coffee machine. Mark has done amazingly well with this, he has large hands and the machine is small, it is fiddly and complicated and apart from regular sound effects and mutterings that emanate from the kitchen, there has been no throwing of anything… including the coffee machine.
Having cobbled together the pipe (whilst we wait for a longer one), the machine is still making louder than normal noises so further investigation was required to try to solve this. Between us, I think we’ve exhausted every Delonghi repair video on YouTube. There’s quite an impressive array of them for a model of the machine that’s not that common apparently. The model name of this one is ‘Prima Donna’ – they got that right! 😳
There’s some nice but slightly scatty American guys who show you how to clean/service it. There’s a very sensible german guy who demonstrates how to take it apart which was very helpful, except that he’s a little on the larger side and most of the important bits are obscured by the view of his extensive back occupying the screen and then there is some faceless guy who does the most amazing detailed repairs (most of which require tools that we don’t have) but has a rather sexy accent. I was hard pushed to pick a favourite. 😂
Between them though, we were eventually able to decide what to do. Namely, clean up various parts of residue coffee/grounds, decide to ignore the remaining noises, put it back together and attempt the descale program in the hopes that might do the trick.
We took it outside and set it up, just in case it blew up when we turned it back on and hey presto, much descaling, gurgling and spitting later, it worked and churned out coffee and – even better – steam and hot water. Yayy!!! 😁 There was a disappointing lack of fanfare or fireworks at this momentous achievement, but we were still pretty happy with the result. 😆
Since the hourly forecasts of impending rain didn’t materialise, I managed to get a few parts of my veg patch organised. First planting of the courgettes and the first batch of climbing french beans were duly completed together as per the information I’d been given and researched for the whole ‘companion planting’ experiment. I’m hoping I’ll be able to fit more stuff into the beds and in theory, the companion thing (if you get it right) means the plants actually crop heavier as they are mutually beneficial. Watch this space! 🤞
Of course, technically, it’s still too early to plant out. Ice Saints isn’t finished for another 2 weeks, but there doesn’t appear to be any real cold weather on the horizon (no pressure InAccuweather… no pressure!!) and another good sign is that planted window boxes have been appearing on balconies throughout the village this week. If you really want to know what the weather is going to do… curtain twitch! Because the neighbours will always be your best indicator! 😜 👍
Today is also the last day of full lockdown here in Austria, from tomorrow there will be limited socialising allowed. Of course, we will still be closed until May 29th, but we might at least be going out and about a little more now so you might even get pics of more exotic things than just our house/dogs/garden/coffee machine 😉 😂
Stay safe everyone xx
