We were depressed. We had found a beautiful small house that was perfect in a location that suited us. It was neither too small nor too large. It needed some work but nothing that could not be put right without a modicum of hard work and a bit of paint. It was ‘ready for immediate occupation’ as the web site enticingly hinted. We could move in tomorrow if it was but for one thing - money.

I hate money. I hate the way it limits your dreams and clouds issues. I hate the fact that it worms its way into nearly every important decision I have to make – forcing me down one avenue when the other always seem more enticing. I hate the fact that people fall in love with it to such a degree that it seems more important than anything else in the world. And now I resented the fact that between us we didn’t have enough to start our new life.

Back in the UK we took my mother out for lunch. Between the starter and the main course she happened to mention that her partner Pete had sold his house and was looking to invest the money.
“He could buy a house in Italy”. I joked.
“Oh, he’d love to do something like that”. She replied in all seriousness. “But we wouldn’t know where to begin”.
The hand holding my fork paused half way between my mouth and plate. Could I hear the shaking of dice? The rolling of a double six?
“We know of somewhere”.
“Let me know the details and I’ll ask him”

The phone call came two days later and Pete liked the idea. He preferred to put his money in bricks and mortar rather than stocks and shares – and so the four of us formed a partnership. A deposit was quickly found and we ran the agency with the news.

I had read all the horror stories about buying a property abroad. It seemed everywhere I looked people would advise about deals that had gone wrong, deals where more money was needed to ‘grease the wheels’ of Italian bureaucracy, houses that were bought and then not legally owned due to some distant family member who had a 1% share and exercised that 1% ruthlessly. But in all honesty it was rather easy.
We were lucky in the fact that as a group we had enough money to purchase the property outright and lucky in the fact that the company we bought the house through were more than willing to sort out everything on our behalf. Yes it cost more – but there were no hiccups and three months after viewing the house we stood in the piazza in Castelnuovo Di Garafagna.

It was now September and the days were long and hot. The mountain foliage was wilting after the heat wave that had hit in August and forest fires were a constant threat.
We found our way to the ornate double door that face that faced the castle gate, behind which were the office of the Notary. It was his role to ensure all the necessary paperwork we had brought from the UK was correct with Italian requirements. For a small fee he would supervise the sale and lodge the necessary documentation to say the house was ours.
Our agent also attended to guide us through the process and explain what each document was for. We sat around a large wooden table and played a game of verbal table tennis.
The Notary would study a birth certificate in great detail and then frown. Looking up from the paper he would ask a question in Italian while pointing to a line of text.
“Che cosa questa media?”
This would be intercepted by the agent who would field it to us. We would scrutinise the line and send back an answer via the agent. This carried on for an hour. Each document was examined with mistrust – a questioned fielded, an answer batted back. Eventually all the documents had been examined and the final document was drawn up.
My hand shook as I signed the document. This was it. This single piece of paper in impenetrable Italian and four shaky signatures was the document that allowed us to secure our little piece of Italy.

Our intention had been to live in the house from the outset but to do so we needed work. How do you find work in a country when you can’t speak the language? We are fortunate that we can rely one of the few areas in which we are experts. The English language. Since it became the language of business, science and computing the demand for dual speakers in Europe has grown resulting in a mainland Europe with multi linguists and allows the UK to wallow in the self delusion that it doesn’t need to speak any other language.
While we don’t want to move away from Barga we had to be practical. The requirement for English teachers in the larger Italian cities would give us a source of income until we could find some other way in which to make a living.
Having enrolled on a course to gain the required certification we spent the next five months learning the phonetic alphabet and how to describe verb tables in exciting and challenging classroom based activities. We then practised our new won talents at the local Asylum centre helping refugees from Croatia make there first hesitant steps in English.

We had the house; we had some skills that hopefully would come in handy for earning a living. Was it time to say our farewells?

Next month: Goodbye to all that… Adam J. Shardlow is a writer moving to Barga soon.