MAKING A START

I can't say I'm feeling very festive and, as even stores here do not usually decorate until the 8th December holiday, I have not been in a hurry to get started. However, I've noticed a few shops getting ready earlier this year and now that my neighbour across the way has got her glittering snowmen in her windows, through which I can glimpse her tree sparkling away, I suppose I had better get on with it.

Thoughts turn, too, to Christmas baking and yesterday I decided to give a trial run to Rachel Allen's Raspberry Upside-Down Cake, a recipe which appears in the Christmas edition of Good Housekeeping UK. I used frozen raspberries, as that is the only kind you can get here in any season and, as we cannot get self-raising flour, added two sachets of vanilla-flavoured lievito [raising] powder. I must say that, once I had finished bashing my head on the cupboard shelves trying to find the right pan, this was a very easy cake to make.

OK, I probably overdid the pink icing sugar and the star shape I'd wanted to create in the middle went a bit wonky but the cake sliced up very nicely and my students today thought it was great!

OUT AND ABOUT AT CHRISTMAS

I hope you all like the new header because it took me from 5pm till midnight to get it on as it just wouldn't centre! In the end I had to crop it in order to increase the width but you can see the whole effect above. It is, of course, a light projection of Raphael's Madonna della Seggiola and, along with the stars, it is a lovely sight, lighting up the Duomo di San Pietro for Christmas.

Outside the Bar Edicolè there are these pretty arrangements:





And round at Mr T's deli, his daughter has set up this clever tree:



I hope you're all beginning to feel festive!

NATALE DA RAFFAELE

Raffaele the hairdresser's Christmas decorations always cheer me up and this year is no exception:

NOT EGGSACTLY...

A box of eggs in Sicily, I've discovered, does not contain specimens of uniform size: Today I was trying to get those egg wrapper things you can buy in Britain onto some; you hard-boil the eggs, slip the wrappers on, put the eggs back in the boiling water for 3 seconds and - hey presto! -you have some pretty Easter decorations. That's the theory but I could only get the wrappers to fit onto 3 of the eggs. So tomorrow I'm off on a "small egg hunt"!