Christmas Round-up.

Thanks to everyone who has sent Pat and me a Christmas round-robin. Being a cheap-skate, I’m saving on paper and printer ink by creating mine electronically! 

The highlight of the year was Sophy and Adam’s engagement: they’re getting married next November in Dubai. Sophy and Pat are off to Bond Street a week today to choose the wedding dress. The near miss of the year was the Abruzzo earthquake, which unfortunately turned out to cost far more lives than we knew when I posted the entry. The saddest event, the death of Pat’s Uncle Leslie.

  Pat made several visits to the UK to look after Quinn while Candy was away on business. I went rather less, but was there with Pat for Quinn’s third birthday in February, and  a week at Candy’s in June, and on my own for the OEs’ annual dinner. In April we made our annual visit to Dave and Sue’s at their holiday home in Burgundy; they came to stay with us in August. We made two trips within Italy: one in celebration of our wedding anniversary in July to Orvieto and Assisi, the other in late October to Prato, near Florence. Candy and Quinn visited us twice, once in February and again in September.

   We lead very sheltered lives in Montefalcone, although the village does spring into life in the second weekend in October when it holds its annual sagra. The most exciting things which happened to me personally were getting two letters published in the Guardian, failing to get two published in the Observer, and having dinner with the Moldovan ambassador to Italy. 

  The first heavy snow of the year having arrived yesterday we’re keeping our fingers crossed that we’ll be able to get to England next Monday, as planned, for a family Christmas with Sophy and Adam, Candy and Quinn and Deborah at Deborah’s holiday home in Suffolk.

If reading this hasn’t deprived you of the will to live, click here for a summary of what we got up to in 2008.