After four days of cleaning we have moved on to looking through the lockers clearing out old stuff. This is particularly moot in the case of our ships stores, as the girls hold sell by dates in high regard and had previously made clear their disapproval of the vintage nature of some of our supplies. We have relinquished anything that remained from our initial provisioning in Lymington on the grounds that as they had not tempted us for five years the instant soups and packet mixes were unlikely to become alluring. Yes they were extravagantly out of date even for items largely consisting of preservatives. We also jettisoned the emergency carton of paella, a free gift with the pan we bought in Sante Carles, reasoning that it required too much courage to tackle even in extremis. It was all a most uplifting process, we felt so virtuous we promptly set off for the supermarket on a minor spree. The walk into town also does wonders for the step count, particularly as the top gates are locked until June, so we must backtrack across half the marina to reach the street. The avenue of saplings planted last year is looking good and some are about to burst into blossom. We trundled along with our trolley for what seemed much further than either of us remembered, so we stopped for a coffee before hitting the supermarket. A wise move as the place was much more hectic than usual, it being Friday. The scrum of resolute looking Italian speakers at the deli counter deterred us from our usual point and smiles practice, so we stocked up with help yourself fare avoiding heavy items like water, beer and wine. Back we trudged with our trolley and backpack brimming with vegetables, gin and other non-perishables including both gluten free pasta and nut milks. We dropped this shopping off and headed to the little local shop for ham, cheeses and the heavy stuff. The ladies there were friendly as ever and the older one sold us on the punnets of strawberries by wafting them under our noses for the ‘perfuma’. We excused our increased alcohol consumption by blaming the imminent arrival of the family. At the deli we bought olives and artichoke hearts, fresh mozzarella and a sprig of basil, which came with a twist of paper wrapped round its’ roots, spritzed with water to keep it fresh during our walk back. We had a most splendid salad lunch before turning our attentions to sorting out the non-food lockers.

The less accessible lockers were a treasure trove of surprises; best amongst these was a piece of net curtain in which batons had been sewn at intervals. John was about to feed it into the black sack of doom when I realized it had been made to exactly fit over the companionway opening, to stop insects getting in, a genius idea from Alan and Sheila. Lara will be thrilled. We moved things we hardly use into the harder to reach spaces; organised similar items together and manned up to consign various broken things we had been keeping as spares to the recycle bins. Now we are all spick and span and ready for the girls, who fly out tomorrow.

Johnsey and Scamp are already en-route, driving through France in their half converted Ford transit. We have been following these adventures via Instagram on themustardbus and it looks such an exciting road trip, I hope they have as good a time when they arrive. I also hope the weather improves, at the moment it feels more like Scotland than Italy. Since we arrived last Thursday we have been subject to a full range of weather. We were greeted by two days of fog and worried the coast might be prone to sea frets at this time of year. Then an overnight storm set all the halliards around, including our own, beating a Jumangi tattoo. John promptly sorted ours, but we still had to listen to the thrum of every other rope on mast. On Wednesday we had such a glorious scorcher of a day I followed Doreen’s example and cleaned in my swimsuit. Unfortunately having cleaned the decks I started doing washing and things took another turn for the worst and now the sea state is so pumped up there are a couple of surfers on the nearby beach.

Friday evening and steady drizzle sent us below decks and we are hoping it is clean rain, not the dust filled stuff or all our work will be undone. We fortified ourselves by opening a bottle of the red wine from the little shop. It was fizzy. We put it in the fridge to chill. John thinks we will have time to go back to the shop in the morning and buy a less effervescent red and some fresh bread.

Fingers crossed for a decent morning Sunday so we can head off to Ithaca with full crew and ship’s dog. We are booked into the marina at Casamicciola for three nights. They phoned John promptly to confirm after he asked for a reservation using their new online booking system. We are now waiting to hear from his enquiry to Capri before we can book anywhere else.