Above you see some pictures of the traditional New Year’s jam session at Pegaso bar in Arcola (http://www.pegasolive.it/). This year they did it the more informal way around a table rather than on stage and included musicians of the Irish band the Tullamores, including our neighbour Marco on banjo and guitar and the proprietor of the Pegaso Andrea on guitar, vocals and mandolin as well as members of Tandarandan(http://www.tandarandan.it/), playing traditional music of the Lunigiana, including our neighbour Mauro on accordion. I put in a stint of traditional “freestyle” Irish dancing à la Michael Flatley of Riverdance! It was a great night again as usual, but my legs are still a bit sore….

I hope you all got into the New Year ok. We celebrated at our neighbours Marco and Susanna. Somehow we where still eating when the clock struck 12. The weather since the last post had been mostly very nice, albeit cold, except for New Year’s Eve itself. As darkness fell a cloud enveloped our hilltop village, making for very unpleasant damp weather, and did not lift until morning. That meant that whereas we normally get a prime view of all the firework displays for a 100 miles around, all we saw this year was the odd hint of a flash in the fog. Well never mind.

The festive season now coming to an end (still Epiphany to come up on the 6th) we started get stuck into some work again today. I’ve had the chainsaw fixed and it works better than ever before. The old chain that I had to replace was as blunt as, as, as… as a really blunt thing, and the new chain cut through the cherry tree which needed felling like a hot knife through butter. We filled the car to bursting with wood. I really should have it registered as an agricultural vehicle to pay less.