End of year round-up.

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This year for the first time for 32 years we’ll be spending Christmas without the girls: Candy’s son, Quinn, wants to see his father, and Sophy and Adam have used up their annual leave. We spent Christmas in England last year for the first time since 2002, joining Deborah at her holiday home on the outskirts of Southwold.

  The highlight of the year has undoubtedly been Sophy’s marriage to Adam in Dubai on the 12th November. Being several thousand miles away we weren’t able to be as actively involved in the preparations as we’d have wished. However I did create a website for Adam and Sophy which enabled guests to keep up to date with information on the wedding and contains a link to their gallery of wedding photographs. As well as the wedding itself one of the great things about the trip to Dubai was seeing James and Gabrielle again for the first time for nine years.

  Pat’s been back to the UK virtually every month to look after Quinn when Candy’s away on business. I’ve only been across three times: for Quinn’s fourth birthday in February, in June and, finally, last week. We should have gone across together for Candy’s birthday in April but our flight was cancelled owing to the volcanic ash-cloud.

  Another of the good things about this year has been the number of family and friends who have come to see us: Warren in March, Dave in May, Sophy, Quinn and Candy in August, Mike and Julie and Richard and Jane in September, and Chris and Kate in October. Our social life has also been enhanced by Jane and David, Tony and Shona and John and Judy who have holiday homes in the comune.

  Last year’s success in getting two letters published in the Guardian was followed this year by getting one published in the Independent. However, I was completely overshadowed by Candy who had a whole article devoted to her in the Guardian in July.

   We followed this year’s election campaign in the UK with interest and weren’t surprised to see that, like Italy, the country continues to be run by an elderly media plutocrat with a fondness for much younger women. The Italians, at least, elected  Berlusconi; in Britain it doesn’t matter which party people vote for: Murdoch still pulls the strings. We noticed that Nanny England seems to be getting increasingly paranoid: not only was a chap fined for tweeting about blowing up Robin Hood airport  but a bloke from Stroud was imprisoned for having a political argument with his television set!

  I spent a lot of time this year preparing a course which didn’t run. I didn’t really expect it to: the fun was getting it ready. Apart from that, intellectual activity has largely been  confined to reading detective stories and a couple of Italian novels, one good, the other rather dull. 

  Pat’s off to England again on Tuesday, snow permitting: according to the weather forecast the sunshine and mild temperature we’ve been enjoying gives way tomorrow to snowfalls every day for the next fortnight. Unlike the UK, however, the country won’t grind to a standstill: Italy knows how to cope!

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