Sunday

Food of the day: Due machiati e due dolci. Order at a chair under an umbrella on cobbles, while watching early starters feeling their way into the day. Say no more.

Word of the day: Sempre - always. A word which seems to pop up again and again in conversation. You slowly start to notice particular words and this was one of them. This is how familiarity begins to emerge - ironic in this case, given the dubious promise that this word offers!

At 7am in the old cobbled streets it is cool. Gradually, early churchgoers and shopkeepers begin to appear. Elderly people walk slowly up the hill towards the pealing bells. In the small square fronting the church, some enter, while one or two small groups gather to talk and feed brioche to their dogs. Swallows circle endlessly above, seemingly without any intention other than their immediate one.

We order due marochini e due dolci and watch the coming and going. An elderly man on a bicycle, with crowded yellow teeth and a crumpled but friendly and inquisitive face asks whether we are American. Non, Australiani. With gusto and patience he tells us of a trip he made; he is keen to demonstrate his knowledge of Australian capital cities. I try to tell him that we are on holidays visiting friends, but can only summon the Spanish amigo, so substitute dama. I am uncertain of his understanding of this relationship and get the impression that he may be reconsidering the status of the two people in front of him.

We return to Anna's to be welcomed by her astonishment that we should be awake so early on a Sunday. She is busy getting ready for lunch. It is a house-warming for her new apartment, this being the first time that she has slept there after months of preparation. In Italy, an apartment is re-let or sold bare and all fittings - such as kitchen, lights and laundry - need to be installed by the new occupant.

At lunch, It is a delight to renew our acquaintance with Anne and Giuliiano. Also there are Enrico and Slivana, Grazia and Beppe, Gerardo and Daniela. They all speak excellent English, making me even more conscious of our auto-centric view of the world and my feeble grasp of Italian. It is like listening to dancing music as they banter. They kindly include us by seamlessly switching in and out of English. Giuliano is perhaps the odd man out. He sits back from the conversation with his serious, thoughtful face, then every now and then steps into play with a witty remark or deviation. At one stage, after 10 minutes discussing people's star signs (and requiring 5 attempts to guess mine), during which has observed impassively, Giuliano steps in to make his one comment on the subject: "the zodiac is the stupidest thing".

Then we retrace earlier steps back into town, which is a hive of activity. In the courtyard of the old castle there is a horse jumping event; in the piazza, old and young walk or ride slowly past booths promoting various charitable causes; while in the arched walkway to the adjacent, smaller square a political aspirant makes his point to an appreciative crowd. In the castle, which dates from the late 15th c and was built as an alternative residence for the duke of Milan, there is a very substantial double-level covered roadway some 500 meters long. According to the story, it was built so that the family could leave the castle without having to pass through town.

I practice shopping in Italian and order due gelati - uno fragile e uno limone; coppa bimbo. Like an infant, I am inelegant in speech but am increasingly confident in uttering abrupt demands formed primarily by drawing from a limited but vital store of life-sustaining nouns. I feel a little like a crude yokel stumbling into the dining room, but, as with our last visit, Italian shopkeepers seem generous and rather than take offence, often take delight in the interplay or helping us by suggesting vocabulary extensions. Most of the these, of course, zoom straight by. It's like standing be a stream of babbling water, It's beautiful, but it's not easy to become part of the water, and it doesn't wait for you.