I’m experiencing a textbook winter. The walls of my apartment would have to grow fur for me to feel more cosy and soporific than I do at the moment. I drift from one mug of hot chocolate to another, wrapped in a blanket, a sleepy smile on my face. (N.B - Italy is worth visiting for the hot chocolate alone. If you get a mug that you can’t stand your spoon up in, you should send it back. It’s so thick, it requires a new verb to describe how you eat/drink it.)

Work is ok. I have honed my skills so that I can now plan 3 days worth of lessons in an hour. It may shock some people (namely other English teachers) that I still plan my lessons, but I do. This means that I can just get in there, do my job, and get out. A bit like a bull impregnating cows. I have lots of time to lounge metaphorically in a metaphorical field, chewing on metaphorical grass.

On Thursday, Peter took me with him to San Gineseo. He teaches at a state school up there (in’t mountains) and, as he starts teaching at 8 o’clock, I had to get up at 5:30. There are only two varieties of town in this part of Italy. The desolate, out of season, seaside kind like Civitanova, or medieval hillside kind like Macerata, Tolentino and San Gineseo.

I met him outside his apartment building at 6:45. We said some kind words to Brenda, the Fiat Panda ‘young’. Brenda needs a lot of encouragement, and apparently personification, to get her to start. Start she did though, bless her heart and soon we were trundling up the hill towards San Gineseo (possibly the highest point in Europe, your ears pop twice before you get there. The people must have hearts the size of footballs to combat the thinness of the air). The mist was as thick as candyfloss in the valley. Peter peered down into it two or three times and said melancholically, “That’s usually a very beautiful view.”

He went off to teach, and I explored the town. I was frightened a couple of times by bent and berugged old women appearing out of the mist and disappearing through a door which was called the ‘Porta Del Morto’ which I think translates as ‘The Door of Death’. San Gineseo is a town of narrow cobbled passageways, one eyed dogs and skittish tortoiseshell cats. It’s crowned with a church in the ubiquitous rose coloured brick, inside which, instead of candles to light, they have red candle shaped electric light bulbs that light up if you put some money in the slot. Oh the Catholics!, I have thought on many an occasion. (I have also secretly wondered if we would get a holiday if the Pope died, and then I brushed that aside because it’s horrible to wish death on someone simply for a day off. But he is very old…)

I walked out towards the edges of the town where the cobbles turned to tarmac and there were tall, feather-pines in lines like soldiers. The mist dripped off the needles onto the ivy below. I passed gardens in which pink roses still bloomed because of the damp conditions. There were lots of lantern-trees too. I don’t know what their real name is (though I have been told many times), but they bear this hard orange fruit which looks a little bit like pomegranates. I think the fruit is fairly inedible, but they do look wonderful. There are no leaves, just the fruits in the branches. The wood-smoke, mist and lantern-trees all reminded me of Japan, but when you smell wood-smoke in the Japanese countryside, it feels like strange, spiced, ghostly fires are making it.

Ooooh, I feel drenched in hyperbole, but not as drenched as I was the other day when I fell in the sea (wahey, what a segue). It takes a special kind of person to fall in the sea when they are on their own. I didn’t even fall off anything. I fell from the beach into the sea. I felt like a bit of a pillock. I have recently noticed that I look like an elephant, so I decided that I needed to go running. I was running along the beach barefoot as I don't have any trainers. My trousers were very long and sodden with water and I got my big toe caught in them and over I went. A group of teenage girls who were walking along arm in arm stared at me wide eyed as I sat giggling hysterically in the lapping waves.

I went running again today, and it was much more successful. I even did some rather marvellous meditation sitting on the rocks that have been put there to create little pools for swimming in the summer. I read a rather amusing article about mediation in Time magazine (well, it wasn’t very amusing, it was rather closed minded and pompous, but there was one very funny line about ‘feeling the fullness of your bladder and accepting it’).

Part of the reason I feel so chirpy at the moment is because I have made a decision not to apply for university next year. I would be very happy to go to university next year, but I don’t think I will be ready for it. I have to prepare a portfolio of stories, including a 5,000-word story that I can use in my application, and I don’t want to rush it or do it badly. My new plan is this (I have a new plan every 3 weeks!). I am going to work here until next June, and then work at a live-in summer school. Hopefully I should make a shedload of money doing that. If not, I will supplement my income by temping for a month or so (agggghhhhhh), and then I will go off to the cheapest place I can find in Europe (somewhere in Eastern Europe I guess) and I just write for a few months. That’s the plan anyway. I’ll probably go and end up getting drunk every night and not do any work at all. But anyway, I’m happy that I don’t have all that pressure on me any more.

My apartment smells like Christmas because Peter and I were overcome with festive feeling the other day and we went crazy and made baked apples, mulled wine and pomanders to give to our grandparents. The baked apples were lovely, the mulled wine was nice after the first glass, but the pomanders frankly look bollocks. They are currently in a plastic bag by my window waiting to be turned over every day. I’ll give mine to my Nanna and she’ll say “Oh, thanks Beth” and then whisper to my mother later, “I thought she was over making shite like this”. The creativity didn’t stop there, oh no. My living room looked like crap, so before you could say Laurence Llwelyn Bowen, we had rearranged all the furniture and stolen twigs from the neighbour’s plants. I got a load of driftwood today and arranged it on top of a cupboard. I’m going to get some white fairy lights and twist them in amongst the wood. I imagine it’ll look fairly bad.

Caroline has escaped from Bolivia, which is good news. She sent me an email from her boyfriend’s house in Chile. She’s sitting by the pool, getting sunburn across her shoulders and being waited on by maids (maids being quite usual for rich/semi-rich families in Chile apparently). She’ll be flying back to NZ soon for her sister (or brother’s wedding). It will be summer in NZ. It’s alright for some, ain’t it? Still, I really cannot complain.