White goods and turquoise supertub

Today Darty delivered the white goods. Bringing the microwave up the old staircase was probably OK, but heaving and straining to get a fridge, a washing machine and a dishwasher up the same gradient wasn't going to be fun.

I kept out of the way, a male thing, as I felt embarrassed not to be helping too, so it was the better half who witnessed the apoplectic necks and bulging eyeballs as two quite modestly proportioned delivery men heaved the white goods up to their final levels. As with the removal men last week, the moments of maximum effort were accompanied by short wheezy puffs of breath which I had last heard in the delivery room of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh, as the kids were being born.

The better half celebrated having working white goods by cleaning chairs with turpentine and nourishing the wood with linseed oil. It brought back memories of Caillebotte! I carried on with putting continental plugs on electrical items: a slow business, lots of screwing but no pleasure...

Still, the house is beginning to look like a house. On leaving this evening, everybody was doing the passeggiata, so we joined them. Why were they heading for the millionaires' section of the port, where the really big yachts are moored? It turns out they were inspecting the latest arrival, of quite exceptionally ugly opulence, a Jeddah registered supertub by the name of 'Kingdom'. Even the boot-topping, normally that lovely red lead hue, was a vile colour, an electric turquoise with a greenish tinge. I don't think its owners were doing the passeggiata, though.