Thanks Nic

With luck my roomies will let me do some of the cooking so there will be LARGE portions of pasta and poulenta. Local seafood is supposed to be excellent.

Last year the only things that I cooked that they did not like were:

horse escalopes - the Brits are funny and sentimental abou this meat which wholesales for 50 pence per kilo on the bone. You can't buy horse meat in the UK so I always take the opportunity to eat it when I am abroad.

baccherla - in the old days used to be peasant food but now considered a delicacy by Italians. It is salted cod. Soaked to get out the salt and cooked in a bolognese type sauce. It took me two days to make it and my flat mate spat out his first mouthful - so we went out for pizza instead. Shame that some people don't want to try anything new or unusual.

Have to take a test on Monday. Last year I was too hung over to take it and got into school real late, so had to spend one lesson in Level One. Did four weeks at level two, with private tuition each afternoon. Would be nice to get into Level 3 but everything has gone rusty after a year and I can't quite remember the Imperfect tense. I "cheat" with the future tense just like we do in English: I am going to do something instead of I will do something is a lot easier to say in Italian.

This afternoon will have to revise my "parolacce" or swear words. Getting them was quite difficult and my private tutor was reluctant at first. I asked how you could pretend to speak a language if you were unable to swear. We had great fun compiling a thorough list, giggling like naughty school kids. I had to promise her that I would never use any of the words she gave me in her classes. My roommate did the same thing with his tutor and that evening we compared notes and filled in the gaps. When I went to a footie match I could understand what people were shouting at the referee and talk to the people around me.

I can't believe the amount of work that has gone out since Christmas. January was a mega month dealing with the tax filing deadline. I took Monday off to recover and billed about £6000 on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, which is normally quite a respectable total for the whole of February.

Yesterday evening one client delivered his records and said he needed his accountants urgently. I posted them out on my way home. Mind you I actually fell asleep at the computer while doing them and "lost" one of the documents. That's when you know you are pushing your limits. But that is another satisfied customer and satisfied customers pay their bills quickly. Last night I was too tired to go to bed and slept sitting at the table.

All over for another year -2003/04 financial year is now effectively complete. Stationery is on order for 2004/05 and all the checklists are blank.

Things to do today:

Have a cup of tea
Go back to bed
Update the lap top to talk to the camera and MP3 player
Download last year's piccies of Italy to the desktop
Burn some back up system disks
Put new tax disc and parking permit in the car so it does not get towed away
Go to the sauna
Pack my bags
Get to airport by 04.25

Hopefully the school will have internet facilities but time is likely to be extremely limited.

See you XXXXXXX