When we arrived in Umbria to live, we groped our way right down from Turin through a dense yellow fog and from that day on were forced to revise our expectations about the weather. This area of Italy, possessing no coastline at all, has a continental climate of extremes. Winter is winter. Summer is truly summer. It is not the place for someone who likes their whole year to pass in a blur of comfortable uniformity.

We had heard of fortunate ex-pats sunbathing on their terraces on Christmas day; this I am prepared to believe. Direct sunlight here, while giving an extraordinary clarity to everything it touches, is also extremely warm at any time of year. While it lasts. But every other sort of weather is very fully represented.

We live on a hill aptly named Windy Hill. There are two prevailing winds. The 'tramontana' from the North is a searingly cold wind; the traditional 'lazy' wind that blows through you rather than going round you. The 'scirocco' from the South is warm but just as unwelcome because it usually brings rain, and since Italian houses are constructed in the belief that it never rains and indeed that water does not really exist, the rain gets in everywhere - under the doors, round the windows, through the basement walls.

And can it rain! Thunderstorms are frequent in this mountainous area. They can be heard approaching across the valley, booming and echoing, attended by great fissures of light splitting the darkness (they usually happen at night). These days we take the precaution of unplugging the telephone and the laptop because once a bolt of lightning hit the television aerial of our semi-detached neighbours, causing a noise that sounded like every pane of glass in the house imploding, plunging us into darkness and projecting a piece of our lamp switch and some vital innards of our phone several feet into the air.

The best thing of all about the winter is the wonderfully uplifting sight of the snow on the mountains. I never get tired of looking at its pure white creaminess. Cars come down from the mountains to the snowless valleys with a coating of snow several inches thick. But sometimes it snows lower down as well. In our first winter we were involved in the construction of a snowman, which lasted until our golden retriever knocked it down in his efforts to seize the carrot nose. Snowchains are compulsory equipment on some roads. Fortunately I've never yet had to fit them in anger.