Fawlty Towers

Rory - Bianca, Bianca. What a gal. She, the proprietor and gardener at our villa. We didn't expect to see much of her during our week at Aia di Ama.  She lives elsewhere in the area and said she'd be by early Monday morning to water the plants and clean the pool -- all this communicated without the benefit of English on her part, or Italian on ours.  So we thought we'd see her once during our week at the villa. She keeps a nice villa, but she also keeps popping up at odd times and places, until finally everyone agreed that it was just a little odd. The first encounter was perhaps the most bizarre. I woke early Monday morning, went into the kitchen, opened the windows and shutters over the sink, looked down to pour a glass of water, looked up again to drink the glass of water, and there was Bianca standing outside the window, eye level, smiling directly at me, as close and friendly as if we were at a cocktail party, with nothing between us but the walls of her house. It was like the daily appearance of Jerome the Giraffe at the window of the Friendly Giant's castle (for those who like to rock). Remember? He could stick his head right into Friendly's castle and look around? Well just about the same with Bianca. It was a real Sesame Street moment -- like she was going to start counting to ten or singing the alphabet or something. But then out came the Italian, starting with "Buon giorno" and taking off from there, leaving me in the dust. In her kitchen. 
Another time I woke very early to the sudden and startling sound of water hitting the stone walkway directly outside our open bedroom window. 
It was the spill-over from Bianca's overly enthusiastic plant-watering on the terrace above our window. I took the opportunity to find her and bring her inside to check out the faltering wi-fi connection. She put all her plant-watering enthusiasm into this problem, asking questions loudly in dense Italian then turning her vocal energies to her cell phone, calling out loudly "Pronto!" and shooting off a volley to her figlio somewhere nearby. I tried to get her attention and mime to her the fact that people were sleeping upstairs, but it was too late: the first casualties stumbled sleepily down the stairs, miming to me "What the..."
I found the operating manual for the wi-fi router -- printed handily in five languages -- found the problem first in English, then in Italian, pressed it in Bianca's hands along with the faulty router and, as kindly as possible, showed her her own door, before any more sleeping house guests might appear. Faulty router indeed. We all laughed and agreed there was more than a little bit of Fawlty Towers at Aia di Ama.