This morning, Aldo and Tommaso were at loggerheads. Both were convinced the other was in the wrong, both certain the other had miscalculated.
Aldo, you see, is a blacksmith while Tommaso is a carpenter. Aldo had just been fitting a handsome railing at the top of his splendid spiral staircase. Tommaso was busy fitting doors. At the centre of a good-natured debate was the ever-vexed question of the "line" i.e. from where do you take your straight line when walls are not always perfect. Aldo had started at one point but Tommaso, who had fitted wooden steps to the spiral staircase, had taken his line from another point.
Such lively debates of the artisan kind have been everyday reality around here for much of the last 15 months. In that period, we have been engaged on a mammoth (or so it seems) house-building project that has strained nerve, limb, purse-string and aged Volvo rear axle (from carrying endless bags of cement).
Over the last 15 months, if one has learned anything, it is that the artisan in these parts is not short of an opinion - usually a jocular one on the perceived shortcomings of another artisan's work: "Oh no, he's got that all wrong"; "Oh no, he'll have to knock it down and start again"; "Oh no, those stairs will never fit"; "Oh no, that floor will be ruined." This seems to be the negative mantra ingrained in the artisan's proud DNA - when referring to a colleague's work, of course.
Perhaps there is a world faraway where you dial a number, ask to speak to the house-builder, leave your order and come back to a perfect house a year or more later.
In these parts, however, it doesn't work that way. Equipped with your concessione (the all-important planning permission, obtained from your local commune) you set sail on a stormy ocean where you (or in this case, She Who Must Be Obeyed) learn to handle the tiller in a tempest of estimates, consultations, measurings, calculations, orders with the specific artisan, be he bricklayer, plumber, electrician, marble cutter, blacksmith, carpenter, painter, plasterer, wood roofer, digger driver, gas tank consultant or builders' supplier.
In Ireland, I imagine, one builds a house. In these Lazio parts, you create it, collectively. You might have thought you were building a house to your own requirements and desires. That would be to dismiss the contribution of those summoned to do the work. Nearly everyone, it seems, has an idea as to where that wall, that door, that window, that shelf should go and, rest assured, their idea contradicts your original plan.
She who must be obeyed found the artisan class a very difficult challenge. The plasterer would be busy finishing off a wall when he would look up and say: "That shelf there will have to be finished in marble."
The painter would be busy finishing off a ceiling and he would look down at the raw cement staircase and say: "That staircase has to be done in oak." Almost all of these opinions are offered in a spirit of goodwill, by way of being helpful to someone who, after all, is only a poor heathen of a foreigner and cannot be expected to know any better. If two or more artisans come together, however, then discussion on down-pipe angles, terrace pavement inclines, ceiling heights or chestnut rafter stability becomes lengthy, lively and of an intensity that makes the UN Security Council seem silly.
Much of the advice, too, is directed at Giorgio, our talented and resident Romanian "brickie" who is just one of a whole community of Poles and Romanians without whom the building industry in these parts would grind to a halt. In the end, however, the collective advice is both good-humoured and nearly always sound, with problems you didn't even know you had, already resolved.
Just now, we are coming to the end of this building marathon. Having continued to work in the midst of the noise and chaos of a building site peopled by, at times, up to 20 workmen with all their various bits of noisey machinery, it will come as a welcome relief when the last worker moves out. I'll miss the banter and Security Council sessions, though.