It’s the light that hits you first. Three hours from London and it feels a million miles away. On the train from the airport to the city centre we passed trees adorned with oranges, looking like Christmas trees decorated with lights. With all this you expect warmth, but the air is cool and I am glad of my winter coat.

Our apartment is old and has been well renovated. The rooms have high, domed ceilings and elegant nine-foot high French windows, making the interior airy and bright. The young man who let us in warned us that we may need to use the central heating with the radiators as well as the warm air that blows out of the air conditioning units, and we do.

The streets are scruffy, but only in a Southern European way. The bins where all rubbish goes are not overflowing, as in Rome, and this morning there was a man sweeping the pavement of leaves, which is not something you often see at home these days.

We visited the Palazzo dei Normanni this morning. It dates from before the Norman invasion in 1072, when the island was under Arab rule, but was transformed by the Normans. How one part of France managed to send large enough armies to conquer two areas, at opposite ends of Europe, six years apart, is amazing. The Arabian influence is most evident in the wonderful mosaic work in the Palatine Chapel. Going round we listened to an audio guide which grew to be rather tedious. The explanations were too long and too wordy (The philosophy seems to be, ‘Why say something in six words when you can say it with twelve’).

We thought we’d watch a programme from bbc iPlayer last night, but it seems the BBC have blocked the ability to watch from abroad using a vpn. I would willingly pay for a TV licence to be able to do this, but you can’t. Might have to watch Italian TV.

The journey has gone so smoothly that we touched down five minutes early and there I was braced for a delay. We are currently sitting in the airport cafe having a sandwich. Not a very exciting start to our adventure I know, but it’s comfortable, and even though we are travelling ‘light’ we still have too much luggage to wander around Palermo until we can check in to our apartment at 2pm.

We think we can catch a train from here to near where we are staying (up the road from the Palazzo dei Normanni) but the name of the station here at the airport does not seem to be recognised by Trenitalia. We shall have to put our sketchy Italian to good use and ask someone. Oh well, we have plenty of time to get to where we’re going.

PS I have a confession to make – I have previously said we would be going round Italy with two suitcases and two small rucksacks, but I have to admit to failing to manage to pack the growing number of items we deemed necessary for our year away into the planned baggage, so we have added a cabin bag (it’s as large as is allowed on board) and my empty rucksack is inside it. Also, we have new rucksacks and they are not as small as the last ones. I tell myself that our bags will get lighter as time goes on as we use up the half-empty tubes of various creams that I couldn’t bear to throw away before we left. Better not buy too many souvenirs!

Well, we’re out. It’s been really manic since Thursday when the ‘man and van’ helped us move our furniture into our storage unit. He arrived at 10 and we didn’t stop until we were back home and sitting down to ‘lunch’ at 4. Between then and now we must have taken another ten carloads with bits and pieces, each time rearranging and ‘jiggling’ to stow everything away.

The car (Ford Focus, practical, but unexciting) was sold this afternoon and it is just hitting us now that we have nothing really big left to do other than give a few more people a change of address and go back to re-arrange the unit yet again. I’ll post a picture when we’re finally done. It’s like a giant 3D puzzle.

We might manage a glass of wine tonight – we’ve decided the champagne, or more probably Prosecco, can wait until we’re in Italy as it’ll be a lot cheaper. We are postponing Mark’s birthday to next week too. It was actually a few days ago when we didn’t stop from dawn to dusk and I had also left his birthday card in a drawer in a chest of drawers in the middle of a tower of furniture in storage. I made one instead on a scrap of paper.

Two more nights in Blighty and then we’re off.

We have decided that our old mattress is not worth storing so we have just manhandled it down the stairs and onto the drive where it is waiting for the council to pick up tomorrow. If any neighbours pass a disapproving eye in our direction we are going to say, ‘It’s shocking what people will fly-tip these days, isn’t it?’

The packing seems endless at the moment. Mark has already taken a load of boxes to the storage unit, but he assures me there is plenty of space left for our furniture which our ‘man and van’ are taking on Thursday. We will be down to an air bed and couple of chairs the last few days.

We have both sorted through some old clothes that we can ‘wear and ditch’ the last few days we are here so we don’t have to start our trip with dirty washing. My mother used to worry about being run over by a bus the day before going on holiday and being caught in her ‘second eleven’ underwear. As a friend of mine said, if you were run over by a bus, the state of your underwear would be the last thing on your mind.

We are slowly finding homes for items we don’t want to keep. Our dearly beloved sofa of twenty years has just been collected by its new owners leaving a large, empty space in our living room. We had wanted to give it to Horsham Matters, a local charity, but any fire retardant labels that the sofa had once had were sadly not to be found, and without them it could not be sold on. Luckily, there was nothing to stop us giving it away so it has found a new home via Freecycle. We must remember to look on Freecycle when we return to the UK as we might have impoverished ourselves by that time!

Elder son, Guy, has taken our microwave and food processor (now have to chop by hand). Younger son, Alasdair, is keen for our vacuum cleaner which is ironic as he’s never been that keen to use it here! He will have to wait until we are out of the house though as we want to leave the place spick and span for our new buyers.

Better get on and sort through some more books.

The question is how light do you go? To my mind a year in Italy means a whole range of clothing (having said that we are hoping to get considerably more use out of our summer wear than our winter garments). As we will mainly be travelling by public transport we don’t want to over-burden ourselves and so are just taking two suitcases and two small rucksacks between us. I’ve reduced our clothing down to seven pairs of shorts/trousers each (possibly eight in my case) plus tops.

Mark sold his sports car on Monday which was a bit sad. We’ve had loads of fun in it and have had the roof off most of the year unless it has been raining. Oh well, we are now moving on to other adventures. We will hang on the practical, but boring, car until the last moment.

Must get on with supper.

Anne

It is just sinking in that we are moving on after having lived in our present house for over 21 years.  We have a lot to do – pack up all the stuff we want to keep and put into storage, and also find other homes for all the things we no longer need.  And Christmas is in the middle of it all of course!

Time for me to finish writing the Christmas cards I think.

Back soon,

Anne