Thanks to the fragile nature of the British property market, the last few months have been tale of ‘Great ! There’s a buyer for our house; oh dear, that’s fallen through; Yippee ! There’s another buyer for the house; oh no, that’s fallen through too’ ad naus until, strangely, you pass through stress to a state of Zen-like acceptance of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Perhaps it’s an English obsession, but the weather in this corner of Abruzzo is a source of endless fascination. Yesterday for example we had:

* a high of 21C - around 70F - at lunchtime
* followed by vicious squalls early evening
* and the sight this morning of the mountains in the Maiella National Park with their first proper winter coat of snow

Perhaps not quite enough to get the skis waxed and the car revved-up for the drive to Passo di Lanciano or Roccaraso, but certainly enough to justify a glass of hot chocolate after having a decent snowball fight and building a snowman.

Little Plum, Aurora and Edwin. Slightly eccentric names for kids; marginally less so for cats. LP and Rori are blue-point Birman girls; Eddie’s a chocolate-point Siamese boy. If you’re a cat-lover - and let’s face it, the world’s divided into cat lovers or non-cat lovers. Nobody’s indifferent to cats - you’ll now be nodding your head sagely at the mention of Birmans and Siamese and thinking it utterly normal to refer to ‘girls’ and ‘boys’ instead of ‘females’ and ‘males’