We had this trip planned before Hilary’s diagnosis, for our house in Italy has, during the ten years that we’ve owned it and it has been habitable, had no handrails on the stairs between its five floors. We only let friends stay there – we don’t let it commercially – but a friend can soon become less of a friend, if they break their neck and think you might have had something to do with it.
We’d had a quote for handrails from an Italian company. They would have done a good job, but it would have been an Italian job. That is to say all bells and whistles. Fancy twirdles. We are northern Europeans. We like plain.
So for roughly half the cost of the Italian quote I ordered some American hemlock mopstick rails and brackets from a company in Welshpool, cut the wood to size so it would just fit in the car, and we drove the lot to Italy for a DIY fitting session.
This was the first long trip since Hilary’s dementia had been diagnosed. How would she cope with it? I think the answer was that we had absolutely no idea. While the going seems good, let’s try and carry on and do all we can. It was early days, and maybe we were being a bit too blasé, though somehow or other we managed not to overdo things.
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