End of year round up.

If I were honest, this post would emulate the BBC's 1930 Good Friday bulletin which famously consisted of the simple statement "There is no news"! Compared to last year we've been nowhere and done nothing. However, in this self-obsessed age which has given birth to Twitter  - thereby allowing twats, as Cameron judiciously labelled them, to broadcast their every bowel movement to their 'followers' - the distinction between the significant and the mundane has been largely abolished. So here goes. 

   Pat's trips to England to babysit Quinn have been slightly less frequent than last year but not without incident. Her flight home in January was diverted to Perugia because of fog which meant she got home four and a half hours late; the inconvenience was insignificant compared to her nightmare journey to the UK the previous month, but still irritating. In October, thanks to the magnificent service provided by England's privatised rail companies, she almost missed her flight, the situation only being saved by the good offices of BAA and Ryan Air's staff! I made three trips to the UK: the first with Pat for Quinn's fifth birthday, the second to be with her on our wedding anniversary, and the third to attend my Old Boys' Society's Bristol dinner. We had fewer visitors than last year: Candy and Quinn came in April and Dave and Sue in late June. However, in early June we had the delightful surprise of a visit from Matthew and Charlie, their first, but not I hope their last. And next August James, Gabrielle, Ruby and Olly are coming over from Australia.

  As usual, apart from our guests, our social life has been largely tied up with the day-boys, although we did enjoy going to one fellow-boarder's birthday party and to the opera with another. Like last year I've kept myself amused with writing letters to the Guardian -only one of which was published - and a project: this time translating a couple of accounts of the Sybil of the Appenines. I've finished the first draft, and after Christmas Pat is going to provide some illustrations. I think it might find a niche market: non Italian-speaking visitors to the area. Italian versions are on sale in museums and bookshops in the area and most tourists - not only the English but many Germans and Dutch - can speak our language. Christmas promises to be much more fun than last year as Sophy and Adam and Candy and Quinn arrive on the 23rd and stay until the 30th. 

   Other than the iPad, this year's technological addition to my life has been the eCigar. These ingenious devices deliver a nicotine shot without, it is claimed, the attendant cancer. Looking remarkably realistic - the end glows when you inhale and a smoke-like vapour is emitted - they have the added advantage of winding-up the anti-smoking brigade when you, perfectly legally, 'light up' in areas where smoking is prohibited. And the eCigar is proving a hit not only with dilettantes like Pat and me, but also with real smokers like Dave - although, being a grown-up with some aesthetic sensibility, he's not gone for the model which attempts to pretend it's an actual cigar. When I was nine I used to buy sweet cigarettes and, on a cold winter's day, lounge on street corners blowing out my frozen breath in the hope that a passing adult would mistake it for smoke and think my cigarette was real. And the grown-ups would walk past thinking, 'There's a silly little kid making a fool of himself by pretending his sweet's a cigarette'. No doubt the anti-smokers think the same when I'm smoking my eCigar. But if just one of the sanctimonious kill-joys is fooled I'm a happy man.
  As well as improving the quality of my life, my love affair with Apple has caused me a lot of heartache this year owing to their decision to stop hosting websites. Moving my site to another provider has been fraught with difficulties from whose ill effects I'm only just beginning to recover. Transferring all my posts here took weeks and I have had to jettison their audio.

   Although Pat and I have had an uneventful year, the same hasn't been the case for the world at large. The elderly billionaire media tycoons, with a taste for much younger women, running Italy and Britain have both had set-backs. Berlusconi resigned; never having been elected, that option wasn't open to the Wizard of Oz who cut a pathetic figure in front of the Select Committee after the Guardian had pulled back the curtain. How fortunate he had his very own crouching tiger, hidden dragon to protect him. And, as I write, the currency speculators are doing their best to bring down the EU, cheered on by a British government which defends the interests of the wealthiest one percent, and is supported in so doing by a population misinformed by the Sun and Mail as to where its true interests lie. Thank God I live in a country where europhobia is confined to the swivel-eyed supporters of the repulsive Bossi rather than being the default position of the nation. Over here people are all too aware of the truth of Guido Westerwelle's comment yesterday: "We think we have a common destiny. We think the EU is not only the answer to the darkest chapter of our history. It is also a life insurance in times of globalisation because no country – not Germany, not Great Britain, not France – no country is strong and big enough to face the challenges of globalisation alone."

   On a lighter note, 2011 seems to be the year we gerries finally took over Facebook. I subscribed to the network some years ago simply to find out what my kids were up to. For some years I was bombarded by requests - which I ignored  -  to become 'friends' with people I'd never heard of; many of them I subsequently found out were friends of friends of my children, eager to boost their number of Facebook 'friends'. This year, however, all the requests have come from people I know, and have accordingly accepted - and only one was from someone under fifty. I only hope Twitter doesn't catch on with the over-sixties, it would be even more undignified than dad-dancing.

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