Domenica 20th Dicembre

No more snow for us in Italy since the big dump on Friday - but still very very icy today. Stayed in for most of the morning and unpacked a couple of the boxes of mine - aaaaarrrrrgh scary. Went shopping to get some basic supplies and then had to go into the office to sort out an urgent issue before Australia woke up on Monday morning. Managed to solve that in a couple of hours and then ran around the campus with my big camera taking a few photos. Beautiful views across the Tuscan hills with the snow settled on and beautiful clear sunny skies.

Went round to a friend's place and played another level on Left 4 Dead and a bit of GTA 4. I drove home slowly as it had become incredibly cold all of a sudden and Italian drivers are, well, slightly unpredictable to say the least. In fact, when we drove into the centre of Siena to go to the Municipality on Friday, we went in a normalish taxi. I was the only one to wear a seatbelt, even the Danish guy, who had been living in Germany the last few years, was in no way tempted to deploy the seat belt. I of course had it on practically before I sat down! We drove right in to the centre of Siena which is a proper mediaeval walled city with very tight narrow alleys and not set up for cars. Still - people drive into the centre especially taxis and people just don't get out of the way. The centre is full of tiny little taxis and the little three wheel open back "cars" which are powered by motorcycle engines, and also lots of scooters, natch. On campus at Novartis, which is a real hodge podge of buildings and very tight roads, there are more of the three-wheeled cars, but also some really scary super mini little electric cars that just seem to appear by magic. I shall try and get a photo of one soon. They also remind me of the late 1960s surreal TV show and one of my all time favourites - "The Prisoner"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Prisoner
which was filmed in the tiny little welsh of Portmeirion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portmeirion
Which is a picture postcard pretty sort of artifical village "made", well designed and created by Sir William Clough-Ellis from the 1920s onwards. Amazing place. Anyway - full of famous quotes like "I am not a number - I am a free man", "six of one and half a dozen of the other" - anyway, in that program they had little cars driving around - little Mini Mokes or something I think they were called. Anyway, sometimes the campus at work reminds me of this tiny little artificial world were all sorts of magic people get things done. Or not as the case may be!

I digress. Planet Italia, weird cars, crap drivers :) When I went out to work earlier there had been a car that had slid into a wall and the police were making things awkward to drive round. Very flashy Alfa Romeo police car, natch, and just getting in the way, causing travel havoc, waving a red stick to annoy people.

But, to the point of this little monologue - as I was driving back I noticed that the snow at the side of the road was twinkling like it was full of little diamonds in the half light. It was very cold (the iMac claims that it's -8C in Siena tonight) but I had never seen an effect like that before, amazing. It's like Planet Italia in lots of ways - take anything "normal" that you might have in the UK and add sparkle and gold edging to it - and hey presto! that's Planet Italia! So yes, twinkly things. Indeed, when I was visiting Dawn in the summer I saw fireflies for my first time just by where we are living now.
Planet Italia, twinkly bits, and gold edging.

I used the video function on google talk for the first time tonight, using the built-in video camera on the new iMac. Awesome system, thank you google, much better than I have seen before. Quick shot of me speaking to Saman - full screen goodness!!

Shots uploaded today are of the snow at work. And also an ariel corporate photo of the centre of Siena to show how hard it is to drive to the centre of the town. In fact - I think that most cars are not allowed access to the centre of the town.

I bid you good night.
Ciao.

Sabato 19th Dicembre

Well it was a whole 5 day week this week! How unfair is that? First week was a 3 day week, then a 4 day week the week due to holidays - so a whole 5 day week this week.
Well I'll try and give the highlights, but it has been an amazing rollercoaster week again, with long hours and some really fun things going on.

I went to the karate school for the first time on Thursday. I really struggled with making myself understood, as I was just hanging around and none of them seemed to speak English at all. How very dare they? Got stuck in pretty quickly and it was a good class, I really enjoyed it. For the karateka out there, we did quite a few combos, a lot of backfist and elbows in kibadachi, and then some bunkai from Heian Nidan. Two things spring to mind - the first was that the temperature was nearly freezing outside and yet it was so hot in the dojo that we had to have all the windows wide open. Lots of sweaty Italians in a small room. Hmmm. This makes me absolutely terrified about how it's going to be in 40C heat in the summer! The second thing of note relates to my comprehension of language. I've had two Italian lessons so far and am doing ok, but not very well, sometimes I can understand stuff and make myself understood and other times it's just impossible. I wasn't in the zone at karate, but thankfully all the commands in karate and counting etc are done in Japanese so it was possible for me to understand the commands, albeit Japanese with an Italian accent. One thing kept making me laugh though and I nearly burst out laughing a couple of times. The standard opening move for any sequence is a lower block "gedan barai" which is done with the left or right foot forward. So in English you would say something like "stepping down, left gedan barai" and just about every move starts like this. So, the same thing happens in Italian, and the words for left and right are "sinistre" and "destre", respectively. (Etymologically, people who are left handed are thought to be freaks and unlucky and wierdos. Which of course they are. In fact, I remember at infants school we had a new kid join our school who was left handed. When he joined they wouldn't let him eat or write with his left hand and made him put his left hand behind his back and smacked him when he tried to use his left. And quite right too! He was quite a bratty child later through school - maybe that was the reason why. Full etymology of "sinister" courtesy of dictionary.com.

Word Origin & History

sinister

1411, "prompted by malice or ill-will," from O.Fr. sinistre "contrary, unfavorable, to the left," from L. sinister "left, on the left side" (opposite of dexter), perhaps from base *sen- and meaning prop. "the slower or weaker hand" [Tucker], but Buck suggests it's a euphemism (see left), connected with the root of Skt. saniyan "more useful, more advantageous." The L. word was used in augury in the sense of "unlucky, unfavorable" (omens, especially bird flights, seen on the left hand were regarded as portending misfortune), and thus sinister acquired a sense of "harmful, unfavorable, adverse." This was from Gk. influence, reflecting the early Gk. practice of facing north when observing omens; in genuine Roman auspices, the left was favorable. Bend (not "bar") sinister in heraldry indicates illegitimacy and preserves the lit. sense of "on the left side.")

So about 30 times in the class the command "sinistre gedan barai" came - and every time I imagined a sinister person, with a pointy moustache, similar to the child catcher from "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", doing a lower block, and stroking his diabolic moustache and cackling evilly. And, needless to say, I was giggling internally every time the sensei said this!

On Friday I had to go to the Siena Municipality to be made official in Siena. Classic Italian bureaucracy - thousands and thousands of pieces of paper, absolute meaningless to me, that I had to sign again and again and again. I went down with one of the HR people and a Danish guy who started on the same day as me. The HR person had to pay the fees for me, him, his wife and daughter - it came to a mighty 1 Euro 56 cents. Bargain. So, I am now legal or something, I don't really understand, but I had to have a piece of paper documenting where I lived, that I had employment, and that I was earning enough money to allow me to stay in Italy, and all this pieces of paper had to be signed and stamped, and my passport browsed over. Then we had to have a shiny glossy stamp put on one of the pieces of paper. Bizarre. More paperwork stuff, I was looking into joining the work gym this week, which is directly below my office and Dawn forwarded me the link to the forms. FORMS. 6 forms. Allin Italian, and completely unintelligible to me. Aaaaaargh.

Friday was another one of those crazy days where a million things happen. Unfortunately the most senior member of my team resigned on Friday - hopefully, nothing to do with me, she had actually been offered a job at Novartis Pharma in Basel. Anyway, a real shame, but good luck to her!

It has been cold for several days, below freezing for most of the times. I was following the weather forecast in the UK excitedly, and gutted that Hitchin was deep under snow and everyone at Roche was at home. (Although it made me hanker for the days when being snowed in meant that no work could be done!) Apparently it never snows in Siena - it day snow a little, a light sprinkling 3 years ago, and then similar 10 years ago, but apart from that it never snows. I had seen a biblical hail storm a couple of weeks ago, but during my Italian lession in the afternoon the first flakes fell. A couple of hours later we had a couple of inches. Went out for a couple of beers in Siena central on Friday night and by the time we came out of the bars it was deep snow, and no taxis, so I strolled back, taking rubbish photos on my iPhone. Attached.
Saturday we woke up to proper snow. Sadly this meant that we stayed in and missed the evening's wine tasting since the roads are treacherous out in the sticks where we live. Also I was nursing a hangover, so probably for the best! Popped out briefly to take some photos during sunset and then dived back in to avoid the subfreezing conditions and watch The Italian Job - 1969 version, natch.

Martedi 15th Dicembre 2009

Two things struck me today. One was in the canteen, one of the options of vegetables was baked beans. Looked like a big steaming bowl of Heinz baked beans. Apparently it's a Tuscan speciality, fagioli de something or other - looks like baked beans and I steered well clear of it as it's not what I came to Italy for - although several of the Italians had some and apparently they are very good!

The other thing that has stuck in my mind today is "rectal lag" - the fact that if human body temperature changes then it takes longer for that change to be noted if you are measuring body temperature at the rectum rather than other sites - oral, axilla, lughole etc. So there. That was how my day was spent!

Lunedi 14th Dicembre

Up early as usual. Yesterday it had been much colder and rained quite a bit yesterday and evening. As we drive to work we could see snow on the mountains to the north of us - hooray! Might pop up into the mountains over Christmas or maybe New Year. The lucky and miracle-working statue of Buddha is still there and has not been smashed by a flying statue of Milan, unlike Silvio Berlusconi's nose. I thought the Catholics might have crept up in the night and wreaked some terrible carnage, but no, maybe Melissa the confused and recently healed from a terminal tumour cat is repaying the kindness by protecting her saviour's 90 pence plastercast hide?

Today we took a quick trip to the post office to post a Christmas gift to my parents. Never ever again. Never ever ever? Ever ever ever? You bet your ass. Those of you who thought you were going to get Christmas cards can go and get bent - I'd rather fly over myself and personally hand the cards over than go through that again. We got there, that was mission number one. It is hidden somewhere in the Aqua Calda region of Siena (Hot Water - I think there are some natural hot spas there) in a back street - really really well hidden. We got there and immediately felt the fear. Rammed diddly jammed it was, with a dog tied up outside who looked like he'd been there for several hours. Inside was a disorganised throng, 5 desks, with a bizarre ticketing machine with three different types of tickets. We chose the one for what we hoped was for letters and packets (that thankfully was) and waited. People came and went, but not from the letters and packets coding. It could have been that the cleaners decided that a Monday mid-morning was the best time to clean the air filters above the desks on a ladder with a hoover could have delayed it. The one or two people that were posting parcels were using Italia Posta complicated boxes and seemed to be filling in endless pieces of paper and scanning barcodes and sticking various bits of paper. Whilst we were waiting, I started to get annoyed with the lack of queueage. People were just milling around and getting in everyone's way. The best bit about the experience was that the ticket machine was really quick and when people pressed the button for their selection of whatever they were doing in a post office (clearly not posting anything, bizarrely) the ticket would come flying out and fall on the floor. Like home, the mid-morning post office was full of old Italian gits, well I guess there wouldn't be too many Italian old gits at home, anyway, out would fly the ticket and then be on the floor and the old cranky oldies would have to bend slowly over to pick up the ticket and then someone else would open the door and it would blow around before they managed to get it. Heh heh.

After about an hour it was our turn. Our process seemed to be simpler because we were posting abroad - but it still took over 20 minutes to post this one stupid box, filled in all our personal details on the form, scanned the barcodes, several carbon copies of the document, we got one, one went somewhere else, another one got photocopied (photocopied - of a carbon copy!!) and then we paid them and we were done. All in and out in about 80 minutes - result. Not that it will get there before Christmas, but I did try Mum and Dad! As we were leaving, I raised my arms aloft and shouted "Yay!!"quite loudly which seemed to delight the locals and several of them started laughing.

Sounds like I'm moaning all the time. I'm not really. Job is good, people are lovely, food is good, and stupid stuff like going to the post office is still like an epic adventure, so it's all great.

In the evening, I left early, the earliest ever, leaving the office just before 6. We went to Tae Kwon Do class run by one of the guys from work, a 3rd dan. Great class, really enjoyed it, and as shocking as it sounds it's the first proper bit of exercise I've done in about 3 or 4 weeks :( So yes, good fun, good atmosphere. Taught in English, well I say English, the guy is an American ;) but I will try and get down the karate dojo this week before I decide what to have a crack at long term.
Excitingly the 2nd series of Californication and 6th series of Desperate Housewives arrived from Amazon today so we're going to tuck into that in a moment.

Posted some photos:
1 - my office - the 18th century "Master's House"of the villa.
2 - the other side of my office showing the sadly emptied and never to be refilled swimming pool.
3 - taken on the side of the road a few hundred yards from our house. Vines in the front and you can just about make out snow capped or snow dusted mountains in the distance.
4 - another view of the swimming pool in front of my office with some other non-snow-dusted hills in the background.

Domenica 13th Dicembre

Strange day today. Dawn woke up early concerned about Melissa the cross dressing cat. She had not been feeding properly for about a week and had started being sick when she ate and generally getting worse and worse. One of her Italian friends knew of a vets that was open so we took the, almost feral, cat to the vets in a box, and waited in line with dogs that had bloodied legs whilst hunting chingiale (wild boar). We got in quite quickly and were seen by the young lady vet. Dawn's Italian was excellent as she went through the symptoms. Dawn thought that maybe the cat had something stuck in it's throat after we gave the cat some awful meat last weekend, but thought that it might be something much worse. We bought this, reasonably expensive, selection of meat, chicken, chingiale sausage, and some other random stuff that looked very nice. We cooked it and it was disgusting. So Dawn gave it to the cat, who started being sick some time after eating it. Don't blame him/her/it - it made me feel sick! The vet looked at her and very quickly identified what looked like a tumour on the back of the tongue. The cat was given some injections and attempted to give her/him/it a drip feed for nutrition. The plan was to take her/him/it back to the vet on Monday to have a biopsy, some bloods to get analysis. Unfortunately, squamous cell carcinomas are quite common on the tongue for cats and it cannot be removed as this would stop the cat from feeding. The future was not looking bright.

When we got home Dawn tried to feed the cat some sugar water with a syringe when something happened - the cat coughed up something from it's throat which turned out to be a huge piece of the rank chicken that we had given it that night that was blocking the throat and looked like the tumour! It was a miracle - personally I am thanking my lucky Buddha that I had unpacked from my shipment yesterday and put at the front door.

So yes - Melissa is fine and dandy, and the Italian vet, despite being very kind and caring misdiagnosed a piece of chicken as a tumour. We live and learn.

The Buddha is an amazing "objet d'art" - I procured it from Hitchin's famous 90p store. It is sat happily outside our door and later in the afternoon it caused some consternation. I happened to be looking outside the door when a family walked to one of the flats. The wife stared at it, the daughter stared at it, the husband stared at it, and the young boy stared at it, incredulously and with not a small amount of fear, as though I was burning the Italian Flag and preparing for, well I don't know what, but the shock was enormous. I will not move Buddha though. He's lucky and indeed has just performed a miracle by turning a tumour into chicken!

In the afternoon I popped to a friend's house and played some computer games including another epic session on Left 4 Dead.

Sabato 12th Dicembre

Saturday dawned bright and early. So I'm told - I slept like a log after spending too long trying to work out how the mac works. Still got the wrong setting on the keyboard - despite having it set to British and Italian, neither seems to pick up correctly.

Whilst Dawn went to get her haircut I make a fry up and it went a bit wrong and I made everything burn like crazy - the way fry ups should be! Later I had to go and sign something in reception of the accommodation so strolled down the road. Yet again Mr Lizard was out to play - it was a really sunny and bright day and I was wearing t-shirt and flip flops, and lots of lizards were out basking in the sun on the walls of the road. Mmmmm Mr Lizard. Surely too late for lizards? And then later I saw a butterfly - must be too late for them, and the buds are out on some of the bushes in the garden, strange.

Three trips to UniCoop today - three! And all to get plugs. There appear to be several different types of plugs - some with two prongs and some with three, and some with fatter prongs and some with thinner, some wider apart than the others. High power items such as the toaster need a sort of sleeve on the plug to connect them up. The iMac runs on one of the bigger plugs, and it is still unintelligible to us as to which we should use when and how one plugs into the other. We needed to extend the cable and this resulted in three trips to Coop and the purchase of approximately 10 different plugs and adaptors. But it now works, and I am using it now yay! Also have managed to set the Wii up and link all the systems together.

As I write we have another stunning sunset out of the window. Later we have some friends coming round for aperitifs and then we go to some African cooking evening somewhere near here. Some Tanzanian chefs apparently. We're having nibbles first as in the past it has taken ages to get any food apparently!

Pictures are from Tuesday's trip to Volterra. I am proudly sporting my Roche AIDS jacket :)

Venerdi 11th Dicembre - Meeeeeester Lizard put it there

Dearest Diary,


Can I please apogolise {deliberate typo, rather bathetic of me, and pretentiously {natch} I do mean bathetic and not pathetic} for not having done nowt for the last couple of days. Sadly I have been super busy.

I shall push on regardless. Wednesday started bright and early. In the office by 8. Had the usual kerfuffle going through security. I probably mentioned that our office is a former villa and hotel that was bought by Novartis quite recently - it is right at the top of campus, for that reason, and possibly as we are middle management in the company, we get a special pass that allows us to drive in to the top of campus. Every day and every time I go in and out I go through the same charade with the security men. They look at my car quizically, and they look at me, sometimes I get out and say something in p1ss poor Italian but they always let me through. And we do have the special badge. Security are the only people I have met so far who do not arm wave. So, yes, in the office at 8am, and then into an all day meeting, running through a system check of a potential new append to a CTMS. Mmmm. The meeting was held in the Jonas Salk room, which is basically a 17th century ballroom complete with huge fireplace / the juxtaposition between amazing old building and arm waving about future science and computers amused me when I drifted off. But good day all in all. Excellent lunch of risotto and I had some caffeine for the first time in ages, a tea trolley came in and I had some tea. Shock horror but thought it might be required for this particular passage.

Knocked off around 7:30 and went straight out into the centre of Siena - first time since I've been here! - to have a meal with 2 reps from a vendor and 5 of my team. And what a meal it was. Some discrete little Italian place, tucked away in the cobbled streets. The Italians in our team decided we should have the starters surprise - and they brought us starter after starter after starter, and I'm not the biggest fan of Italian food, but this was AMZING. Lots of fish {one guy doesn't like fish so he had meat alternatives} but it was just the craziest different things of fish, and not amuse bouche size but good sized starters. My favourite, and those of you that know me well will know why - was this dish that seemed crazy to Italians - it was cheese, which were cheddary, with soft brown bread {Sienese bread is by and large tough and to be honest, a bit rubbish} and then something that looked like mango sauce from a curry house but turned out to be something like honey with wasabi in it. Amazing. Excellent wines, really the best I've tasted so far, accompanied the meal, and all in all it was a very pleasant and jolly evening. However, as is the Italian culture it was a late one, so I came home and pretty much collapsed straight away.

Thursday started early. In by 8, and tired, a quick catch up and then off for 4 hours of GMP training. Mmm. The lady who gave it had a bizarre sweating thing going on that amused me for a short while. No, it was a really good course actually and very important for the stuff that I'll be doing. Despite having thought that I would never ever never be able to eat again after last night's meal - 8 starters, main course, and then a deliciously devilish hot chocolate pudding with gooey centre and chocolate sauce - by the time it was lunch I was RAVENOUS. This does not bode well people! More risotto with chicken and the random yoghurt generator. For some reason, I seem to have a mental block when picking up the yoghurts and can never work out exactly what I've chosen until I sit down. For those of you who were with me in Aberystwyth, there is no danger of 2nd puddings, yoghurts and danones, or balking the system in any way. And nor is there any need at the minute as the most energetic I am being is looking at the empty swimming pool occasionally whilst I work.

One of my staff is going on long term sick leave so had to deal with the HR aspect of that in the afternoon - she is very good and will be sorely missed but she will be back and it benefits her and also the company, since Italian law requires that to be able to sell drugs to the national health system you must have a certain proportion of less-abled staff.

Knocked off just after 7pm to go a celebratin of the work that has been put in for the swine flu vaccine. Heh heh. None was mine. The location was a very exclusive villa resort just near Monteriggioni


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monteriggioni


which is about 15 minutes drive from Siena. There were instructions on how to get there but I decided to keep the faith and follow TomTom. Bit of a mistake, as I found the road that it was located on but there was no indication of where on the road the place was, and the road was little more than a dirt track in some places. I was driving up and down a little frantically, but to be honest I was enjoying using the hire car on the crazy roads just a little! I guess the location is one of those classic things - if you don't know where it is - then you are not the sort of person they want to be there! One of my PhD supervisors described it thus "I don't want to be part of a club that want's me as it's member". Like it!

Despite all this I eventually made it. Beautiful old villa with outdoor swimming pool and all wonderful stuff. Approximately 200 people there, all of clinical development in Siena, all having a whale of a time. What is "a whale of a time"? Do whales have a good time? Or is the Welsh? Does a whale have a better time when he's in, or outside of, Wales? Answers on a postcard please.

Good night, great food, good company. I decided to play it very cool, I was driving so had a glass or two of vino, and didn't get involved in any of the karaoke or dancing. It's far too early for the dark side of JJ to come out just yet! But those guys know how to party, loads of people dancing, and so much karaoke it was untrue. Another odd phrase. My team were leading it, which was funny. I sat right at the back and kept quiet! Chatted with a pregnant lady and a guy from Persia. Safe.


Back home very late, starting to get tired, these 4 day weeks are hard!

Friday 11th Dicembre.

Today is Mr Liiiiizard day, Mmmmm Mr. Lizard. For those of you too young, too innocent, too forgetful, or too intelligent to remember the Chris Morris vehicle "Jam" check out

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuoCiAok83M

Jam was a very very dark comedy program from the 90s. Chris Morris has always been controversial. This sketch stuck with me - as well as the one about "The Gush" - I'll leave you to research that on your own if you so desire. Jam was weird and controversial in a way that I have never experienced since. Maybe it's just that I was a student and really into this stuff and there is still such stuff out there? A prime is example of this is that Jam was shown about 11pm on a Friday night on Channel 4. It was then repeated about 3am on Saturday morning, played back at 2/3 speed to really freak out the drunks and dopers. I remember watching it when getting back from a club one night and finding it really weird - it was only later I found out that it was slowed down!!

I digress - Mr Lizard. Today is Mr Lizard day. I knew it was going to a bad day when I got to the office - 8 as usual - popped to the toilet and saw that the window was ajar {optional insert pun}. Hanging down from said window {I'm stealing Tambo language!} was a lizard - but one that had had its head crushed in the frame of the window. Needless to say I took some photos - I especially "like" the one of the shadow lizard. Anyhow - I knew it was going to be bad and it was. The entire team confronted me and the interim manager about an HR situation I mentioned last week, and rumours that had been circulating - queue some very awkward questions and some really unfortunate Italian-HR situation. The Italian HR laws really protect the employee and this has put me in a tricky situation, not of my own making for once!, and I am feeling it with both barrels. So, yes, not a good start. Spent about 2 hours with HR trying to sort the issues out. Had lunch in the villa. Risotto again. Mmm ricey goodness. And this was on top of someone in my team bringing in a selection of cakes including a sort of rice pudding cake that I had which was great.

Early afternoon I dashed home to meet my shipment of all my stuff from the UK. On Monday they had actually arrived before I did and then unloaded into one of the warehouses in the vineyard. I shouted at them as I didn't want to spend hours dragging 28 boxes to and fro the warehouse in our tiny Fiat. So they came and moved it to our flat. Hooray. Mixture of feelings. Great to have some things, guitars, wii, bikes, trainers, karate stuff, but I had reached the stage already when I didn't want it, and was really hoping they'd lost it and I would get the 37,000 EUR that it was insured for instead :) But yes, all my odds and sods are here. Why did I collect so much rubbish! It's all very special and magical though I'm sure. And it's important that Dawn feels that way too!! The workmen who unloaded the van were good fun. One was a former boxer, who spoke very little english, but more Italian than me, natch, who weighed himself on my scales when they were unpacked. He was 118 kg. When he boxed, 4 years ago, he weighed 81kg!! As we unpacked he saw some of my glutamine tablets and thought they were protein pills - he said to me "no protein pills - just Italian spaghetti!! And from the size of him I really believed him. As big as a small house.

Back to the office for a few hours, made a small announcement re: HR stuff to the team, watched yet another AMAZING sunset out of the window of the office, and then decided at 6 o'clock that it was POETS day (P Off Early, Tomorrow's Saturday) and came back. Bought some Xmas flowers for Dawn and then tried to make my stuff disappear as best as possible. Failed.

We opened the shiny new iMac. It is very shiny and lovely. However, I have no fricken idea at all how to use it. Also, we have an Italian keyboard but I've set it as a UK keyboard and I don't know how to change that back - help please, so I am guessing where all the special characters are - hence some wrong ones being used throughout tonight's update. Not even three bottles of Splugen is helping tonight. Also - I turned on Voice Over which was THE MOST ANNOYING SHOUTY PROGRAM ever - am I being a doofus or is that right - help please, MacAfficianados!

I'm glad the week is over. Review. Last week I did 3 days, this week I've done 4 days, next week I shall do 5 days - aaargh - but then it's Xmas so will scale down again. Maybe I timed this very well!

Ciao a tutti!