Snow, Selection and Signatures

It has been a momentous week in Italy. For some, the snow that fell, even in the south of the country, and the election that resulted no result were momentous enough, but for us, it was the week when we finally signed for The Olive Hill.First, I think that I should share a snow photo:I wish that I could share one of The Olive Hill under its snow blanket, but I hope that an olive tree and the Colosseum will make up for that disappointment.Later in the week, much later, we met at The Olive Hill, with our Friendly Estate Agent, and The Three Sisters, to sign our lives away. Any hopes that we had held of persuading the ladies to allow us to farm their trees for them until such a time as the land was legally ours were swiftly smashed, as it became clear that The Sisters' advisor was, in fact, A Sister. A fruitful, if rather freezing couple of hours passed (the house has been unheated all winter, and nobody thought to light the fire) as we discussed the sales contract, and its contents, much of which seemed to take The Sisters by surprise. For our part, we were particularly surprised that in the eight long months that had brought us to this auspicious moment, nobody had considered finding out the names of the neighbours that needed notifying of the sale, nor had they found out the addresses of said neighbours, nor had they found out what said neighbours had to be told, nor how to tell them that which had to be told. No matter, after a mere two hours, we were rewarded with the news that there was now no going back, and that now all that remained was for all the mystery Farmer Neighbours to be traced, informed of our intention to buy, and given the opportunity to smash our hopes and dreams to smithereens, by buying the place for themselves.So, The Olive Hill will be ours in ... Six to eight weeks. I feel like I have heard that before somewhere!We lunched at a local restaurant where we knew that a fire would be lit, and celebrated with bruschetta drenched in Sabina olive oil, homemade pasta, and huge hunks of meat cooked on the fire, all washed down with a €2 bottle of rather delicious red!