One mark of our becoming increasingly established down here is that this month we finally got our Permissions to Stay in Italy. In theory this is more or less a formality for EU citizens, but in practise we had to drive the fifty-odd miles to the Police Station in Bari every fortnight, usually to be told that our documents were not ready. When we did eventually get them, Sue on a roll immediately applied for residency and is now the only English person resident in the Commune of Locorotondo. Which then meant that finally we could buy a car and a motorcycle here. So for €2,000 we bought a ten year old Opel Corsa from a local garage and a little later I walked into the main Moto Guzzi dealer in Taranto and said “I would like to buy an Italian motorcycle”, to an almost tumultuous reception. Moto Guzzi make robust twin cylinder motorbikes that are old fashioned and unfashionable in Italy. I bought a six-year-old 750cc machine that is absolutely perfect for blasting around the count...

This feels strange. I’m sat in my home office, transported at ludicrous expense along with the rest of our furniture from London. In the last couple of weeks the building work on the house has suddenly started to come together and for the first time in three years we are living in relative comfort. The interior of the old stone part of the house is more or less finished and we have an elegant living and dining room with a domed stone ceiling and a fitted kitchen complete with washing machine and dishwasher. There is still much to be done to the modern extension to the house and to the exterior, but for the first time we are able to unpack things and feel more or less confident that they will be staying where we put them.

A good friend, Peter, died this week. Most of you won’t know him. We met Peter and his partner Jude in Porto di Roma last winter. Jude is an artist and teacher and Peter had been many different things in his life, including a great swimmer, potter, teacher and financial products salesman. He and Jude had crossed the Atlantic twice in their small eight-metre yacht “Flight”, which they have owned from new for the last thirty years. Even in his fifties he had the curiosity of an eight year old and the guts to look into the abyss and say “hmm, this is interesting”. Peter and Jude were due to visit us in Puglia in their yacht last August, when Peter had a seizure and they had to fly back to the US for treatment. Peter had been living for a couple of years with the knowledge that he was slowly dying from a brain tumour. On returning to the US he declined quite rapidly. Jude documented their trials in regular emails to their many friends around the world. From the mails it sounded a...