Lunedi 1st Febbraio

"Pinch and a punch, at the beginning of the month, white rabbits"! Yes - I am crossing everything at the minute as I need all the luck that can be mustered. I landed last night in a very snowy Frankfurt airport and ma now in our offices in Marburg in central Germany, with a very beautiful couple of inches of snow on the ground, and an impending sense of doom as I am here for two weeks with an audit next week. This week we have "role play" aka preparation for the audit. It's a big deal.

Hotel is lovely, gym is great, but just like the one at Siena, there is no rowing machine. What's all that about? It may very well be a convenient excuse, but I really really want to have access to a rowing machine to try and stop the rot. I am at an all time high of weight, approximately 9kg heavier than the summer. Of course, it's nothing to do with the food, or the cheapness of the wine, or the lack of a rowing machine - rather the combination of all of them and many more things too. But I need something to help me get out the hole. The whole hole. And it's a big bad hole.

Olive news - well, it's a mixed bag. After a few days in the water, the olives came back to life, and stopped being crispy rabbit dropping sized things and became slightly shrunken olive-sized things instead. They were a mixed bag - some tasted excellent, some tasted rank. I had a few of them raw and they tasted great, but really really intense, and some just tasted awful and were a slightly lighter colour.

That's all for now! Ciao, arrivederci. Auf wiedersehen!