Men at work...

I managed to snap an unlikely photo of Francesco using a blowtorch in the process of dismounting, cleaning, and repainting the seven radiators that are part of the heating scheme we’ve devised for our second house - we also are installing a woodstove in the fireplace, as well as a wood-burning cook-stove in the kitchen.

Francesco is marvelously patient (a characteristic I sadly lack) and will spend an eternity honing down some little bump that I would shrug off, ignore, leave.

That is one huge difference between us - and I have to admit that I have come to respect his way of doing things. His notice of minutiae, his insistence on correcting even miniscule problems, leads to a perfection that, on my own, I would not attain.

He immediately notices a crooked baseboard and asks Jez to correct it. Or a small crack in Monsieur Capelou’s plastering work and has it re-done. A badly soldered joint gets re-worked by the plumber.

Francesco claims he inherited this finickyness from his grandmother Anna who drove her maids mad by ordering beds re-made, dishes re-washed, brass re-polished, etc., until whatever job reached her formidable standard.

I grew up differently.

My dad was a talented amateur carpenter and jack-of-all-trades and I learned how to use tools by helping him around the house. But he was inclined to take shortcuts and be satisfied with sometimes rather flimsy results.

“That’s pretty good for Government work,” he’d declare as he hastily finished off some project around the house - one that my mother had assigned over a weekend on which he’d prefer to have gone golfing.

I absorbed dad’s message all too readily I’m afraid.

But Francesco is another kind of duck.

He sticks stubbornly to his tasks like a dog with a bone, and by example keeps me going.

Who else - in a day - can bake an apple-walnut cake, carefully iron a basket full of linen sheets, make breakfast, lunch, dinner, and clear up afterwards; clean the house, do more laundry - then start blowtorching and sanding radiators, lugging the blankety-blank heavy-as-a-ton of mud monsters around, and have completed, by dusk, repainting the entire ensemble – all the while listening to opera on France Musique radio?