One of life's great unanswered questions:how come Italian women can spend all day grazing and still wear a size 8? They break every rule in the dietician's book. In the morning they run out of the house fueled only by a shower, a cigarette and an admiring glance in the mirror. First stop in our neighborhood is the Pasticceria Tonolo, for a full-cream cappuccino and the kind of doughnut that leaves sugar down the front of your black Armani.
I love to watch Italians drink coffee. The way they spoon up the foam and then wipe out the cup with the heel-end of their brioche. They may eat their breakfast standing at a bar in three-inch Ferragamos, but boy do they make a meal of it.
Then lunch, which is a complete rebuttal of the gospel according to Dr Atkins. Pasta, polenta, rice, what can I tell you. But by 4 they're feeling peckish again, so they're back at Tonolo for another slice of jam-filled pastry. Just enough to keep them going till the passeggiata hour of 6pm when they sit in their little leather skirts, hoovering up peanuts and casting a critical eye over any passing wide-asses.
Their calorific intake just doesn't jig with their waist size and frankly I'm sick of it.

For anyone whose business involves Britain, Italy and the United States this is proving to be a very short week.
We're squeezed between Memorial Day, Bank Holiday Monday and the 60th anniversary of the Italian Republic.
It's a good job I didn't have any deals pending in Azerbaijan (Republic Day May 28). It would hardly have been worth getting out of bed.
May 31st 2006

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In a fever of excitement having discovered that my tomato plants, my first ever attempt at growing anything since a sunflower in First Year Infants, have sprouted actual, actual tomatoes. Not only that but they are exactly the variety promised on the label. Mr Fitzpatrick, who grows nectarines and olives and all kinds of 'difficult' perennials is very cool about it, but I find it little short of a miracle. How does it know it's a tomato when it's out on the terrace sandwiched between a pepper plant and a jasmine? And how does it know to be a cherry tomato and not a plum or a beefsteak?
Enquiries like this generally earn me a lecture on Nucleic Acids from my friend The Scientist. If I really push it I also get Primeval Sludge and Darwinian Evolution 101. But that's not the point. The point is it's all so clever and elegant,
and if there's one profession that has daily reason to sense a Master Architect behind the scenes, it should surely be scientists. Who mainly cover their ears when the G-O-D word crops up. Strange.

Saw His Eminence the Patriarch cutting it fine for 10.30 Mass. Only in Italy are you liable to bump into a cardinal, flapping down the street in full ceremonial fig. I must say, Cardinal Scola can really wear red.
May 24th 2006

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Friday evening and the week's work done, our thoughts turned to an aperitivo down in the square; a spritz, on the rocks, no music. A tall order in Venice these days. If the moronic thud of piped rap doesn't get you then the scrape and wail of a wandering gypsy band certainly will. In my book three Bulgarians playing instruments made out of coconut shells and sheep's intestines is marginally better than Tupac Shakur's effing and jeffing, but it really amounts to Hobson's choice.
The only music-free bar in our neighborhood is the one run by a downcast little guy who seems short of get-up-and-go. Maybe he just doesn't have the energy to press Play. Maybe he needs more fiber in his diet.
Anyway, a small boy was kicking a football against Bar Glum's wall, therdunk, therdunk, so it would have been like drinking in the percussion section of Grimethorpe Colliery Band. Also, Signor Glum doesn't always give you potato chips with your drink. He's funny that way.

We'd have gone home and opened a bottle, only we knew our downstairs neighbor was still spring-cleaning, beating the bejaysus out of her rugs and so causing the two dogs in the building to yip, but not quite in synch.
You want a quiet drink, what can you do?
Of course, compared to New York it's like the very grave.
May 16th 2006

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An invitation to afternoon tea which reminded me what a neglected, civilised meal it is. The only time we eat it is when friends getting on a little in years are in town, people who don’t do late nights and heavy dinners. I instinctively flung on a rope of pearls.

It would probably have been a sober, tea-drinking occasion (one third English Breakfast, two thirds Earl Grey) but Danny was in from Dubrovnik with a bottle of sweet, tawny Croatian Prosek. Then we started listening to my latest discovery, an Australian called Mary Schneider who yodels the best-loved classics. Believe me, until you’ve heard Miss Schneider yodel In a Monastery Garden you haven’t lived. Well, way led on to way and before we knew it our host, Russell Oberlin, living legend in the world of countertenors and creator of very fine cucumber sandwiches, was giving us a demonstration of Nelson Eddy singing in New Moon.

Oh, give me some men who are stout-hearted men,
Who will fight, for the right they adore.

Oh absolutely. I couldn’t agree more. Another glass of Prosek and I believe we’d have got him doing Jeanette McDonald.

Then to the mountains - where incidentally, I’ve never heard anyone yodel, not even a lonely goatherd - to meet an agent because we decided to sell our little house. There was still snow on the highest peaks, the sky was incredibly blue and the second wave of spring flowers were in bloom. The place looked a picture. Why do houses do that to you the minute you decide to sell them?

And Italian house agents are a riot. Talk about sociability. Even the most casual enquiry has to be addressed over coffee and the parties present at a closing stampede to the nearest bar before the ink’s dry on the contract. It therefore goes without saying that discussing the sale of even a very modest house calls for lunch.

Thank goodness we’re not likely to be buying a palazzo. It would probably mean a three-course dinner and a sleep-over at the very least.

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