Bedlam in Paradise

Our next door neighbour is a vineyard. It changed hands about a year ago and the new owner is making big investments, including trebling the size of the winery. Most of the heavy work, pile driving and building foundations, was done last winter. Recently they have been pouring cement, tiling and painting, relatively quiet activities. But today they decided to fill in the trench along our boundary to bury the newly laid services. So we had two huge diggers about 10 metres from the pool scraping rocks into a trench. They are doing a good job but, as this is Italy, the digger noise is accompanied by lots of shouting, horns tooting and radios blaring! If that wasn't enough, the crane has been working all day lifting bags of gravel and soil onto the roof. When it is finished it will be a "green roof" which should help to blend the raw new building into the scenery, and be good for the birds. Meanwhile, we have decided to go to the seaside tomorrow for a couple of days, and hope they will be finished with the noisy stuff by the weekend...