It's that time of year again in Tuscany. Olives are being harvested and everyone's suddenly an expert on olive oil. You discover that all the city-bound Italians you know have got a little piece of land "in the hills" and are spending their weekends getting back to nature and dirtying their hands picking olives. This is the only time of year that their massive off road vehicles actually see some action. You're likely to be offered a fett´unta (literally a very unappealing sounding `oily slice´) a great deal more appetising than its name implies, a slice of toasted bread with a hint of garlic and dripping with new oil. How do Italians manage to make something as simple as an oily slice of toast into something so tasty and so highly revered?

Let's not forget that Italians thrive on complications, drama, details, scandal, conspiracy. Switch on the TV and you'll be blasted with the shouting, dancing, crying and generally leaping around all in thirty seconds of the same programme. The political situation is so complicated that I doubt even the Prime Minister remembers how many parties are in his (current) coalition and don't even get me started on property law, work contracts or anything to do with banking. The only thing that is religiously kept straight forward is the food. Italy may claim to be a Catholic country, it may even be home to the Vatican but anyone who's lived here knows the truth, the true God here isn't a friendly old bearded man, sitting on a fancy golden throne in the clouds, it's an unlabelled bottle of freshly pressed extra virgin olive oil.

Resistance is futile and the food here really is as unbelievably wonderful as they say, but food snobbism is rife and the omnipresent food police love taking any opportunity to trip up unsuspecting foreigners, or indeed their own co-nationals. I witnessed a steamy argument between two Italians this weekend about the correct way to cut chestnuts before cooking them on the fire, not to mention a very tense moment over how to roast potatoes. There were strained faces when I produced the chocolate birthday cake I had dared to make for my father-in-law and it was nibbled at with the sort of trepidation you might expect from someone if you asked them to approach a rabid dog. Obviously nobody had thought to ask my British opinion about how to cook the roast spuds.

It must be said that the quality of pub grub in England does seem to improve every time I return to the UK (so it should, I could buy a pizzeria in Italy for the cost of a ploughman's and a pint these days) but the quality of food in peoples' homes seems as desperately frozen, processed, additive-filled, re-formed and vacuum-packed as ever- despite Jamie Oliver et al's best efforts.

Having said that, I strongly resent being looked down on by Italians, because the British don't obsess so much about olive oil. I have tried to explain that the damp climate is more suited to very green grass than growing olive trees although this is usually taken as an utterly invalid and pathetic excuse and an indication that we clearly just can't cook. Most of my Italian friends are openly amazed that British people are able to survive. Quite rude really, although I'm equally amazed they manage to put up with the glacial-like speed of the clerks in the post office. I'm banking on the fact that within fifty years global warming will have accelerated so much that Britain will have a Mediterranean climate while Italy will be a barren desert, forced to import gallons of British olive oil every year. I'll relish my revenge as much as I enjoyed the last fett´unta I ate.