It’s 10 ten years this year since we started our little wine adventure in Tuscany. In those ten years we have acquired another farm, three children, a dog , grey hair , facial wrinkles and a nervous tic. We nearly had two porcupines, but that, as they say, is another story. I’m often forgetful of how much we must seem to be Living the Dream, making wine in Tuscany, and there are certainly dreamlike moments ,( actually, given this is rural Italy, there are some eye-poppingly surreal ones too, but we’re back with the porcupines again), but there are a fair few nightmares too. I guess what we’re really doing is Living Our Life, just like everyone else. I have never really acclimatised to the Italian mentality, (quite a few Italians struggle too), but here’s an example…One of the Joys….the state provides a yellow school bus service for the benefit of children living behind the back of beyond. Now, even though this would be hugely convenient, as we live just beyond behind the back of beyond, I’ve never signed my children up for it, and this because the minibus has no seatbelts. I haven’t spent 6 years buckling them in, every single trip, only to surrender them to some gum-chewing inadequate who combines driving a minibus with smoking a tab, texting his girlfriend, checking his appearance in the rearview mirror and opening a box of fruity Tic-tacs. Finally, the mummies at school have ganged together to write a letter to the Minibus Tsar, outlining their general sense of hurumph at this state of beltlessness, and the Tsar’s response has been Sellotaped to the school door. (I paraphrase here, as they do go on a bit, these Italians)….” thanks for the note, but all you dear women need not worry that there are no belts for your Little Twinkles, as, in the event of some horrific pile-up, all fatalities are FULLY insured.”