Working out who's who

I'm been puzzling once again this evening over my church's address list. It is normal here for a woman to keep her maiden name. But some women it seems add their husband's name when they become a widow. And so begins a difficult pastoral situation - should I write "Famiglia so-and-so" on the envelope, if in fact there is only 1 person at the address. And how is it that women with different surnames seem to be living at the same address - are they sisters? are they widows? are they in fact at different addresses, and the one we have is wrong?

Those people in the UK who have a different surname to their husband/partner, how do you like mail to be addressed when it is for both of you? and could I really offend someone I haven't met by getting this wrong?!

Anyhow, this is just preamble to me suggesting that you take a look here http://www.methodist.org.uk/index.cfm?fuseaction=churchlife.content&cmid=1697
at a funny bit of methodist graphics for your mobile phone. I will be downloading it, once I've worked out how!

Destination: Italy

It seems like more than 3 months ago that we bid a very sad farewell to Potters Bar, to a lovely house and 3 even better churches. Closing the door for a final time was an emotional moment, but it was lovely to spend a few days at my sister's, with my family before we crossed the channel. It surprised us to find that the actual moment of leaving old Blighty was also difficult, but then we opened the pictures drawn so carefully by number 1 nephew and so decorated Hilde (the camper van) for our 2 week epic adventure!

The beauty of the camper is the freedom to travel when and where you choose. Which was just as well, because in the final moments of packing, I'd placed all the official van documents safely in a box to be sent to Florence. Which I thought was fine, but Robin proceeded to explain that we were supposed to carry them in the van to be able to show them if necessary. So we didn't drive through Switzerland, as you need to produce documents at the border.

I like France, and it was good to drive back around the Champagne and Alsace region (avoiding eye contact with any traffic police!). We stayed for another fabulous night at "Bollenberg" http://www.bollenberg.com/, enjoying great good, a spot more winetasting and buying a small supply for Christmas. Clinking slightly, we visited only a few wine producers this time, conscious that we were, after all, moving to the Chianti region! But we have tucked away a couple of bottles of cremant for Christmas.

The temperature rose steadily as we headed south, so it was beautiful relief to spend a night at altitude as we drove over the mountains into Italy, using Col du Mont Cenis. We joined about 40 other campers of all shapes and sizes parked up above the reservoir. As we dropped down and took the motorway past Torino, the heat became impractical. Humans in the front were ok, but poodle in the back was suffering, so we tended to drive for about an hour, before parking up and trying to wait out the worst of the day. En route to Firenze, we admired a few Italian cities (Pavia, Padova, Modena), chiefly staying the shade of the loggias, and enjoying gelato and ice-cream.

And to end for today, a quick note about coffee: the French cafès couldn't make a decent cup, and the prices were ridiculous. What a relief to live in Italy!

Tomorrow: Italy, the first 84 days!