In Love with France, At Home In Italy

We are getting to know our son's adoptive country, and as helicopter parents with a first grandchild on the way, we expect to be spending increasing amounts of time here. Even though it's a seven-hour drive from our Italian home, this will not be such a sacrifice. This is a beautiful place that feels exotic to us, and about which we still have plenty to learn. For example, just outside our charming B&B, the church bells go bonkers with something like regularity. They seem to go into overdrive at quarter of the hour, and they like to get an early start. A few minutes ago, at 8:45AM, I counted 145 bongs. That must mean that it's 145 o'clock, and all is well. Or could it mean that once the bonging stops, we have only 10 minutes to get to 9AM mass? We are a family of theorists who likes to think there's a method even to things that look like madness. We  have a family saying for when we have no idea what might be behind any given phenomenon:...