And now for something completely different - rain, lots of it. Those of us who live in the Lazio countryside are back to that time of year when the autumnal monsoon means we switch to "storm mode". Computers are unplugged, candles at the ready, wood fire is blazing, pots and pans strategically placed and the high (high ground) road chosen when travelling to Rome. We first arrived in Rome in October 12 years ago. After one day of sunshine, the weather changed. It began to rain and continued to rain, heavily, for the next six weeks. We thought it was just our bad luck, a case of an exceptionally wet autumn.
It was during that first autumn I picked up the meteorological information that Rome has almost exactly the same annual rainfall as London (not Dublin, mind you), except Roman rain is mainly concentrated into the months between November and February. Last Saturday we had 11 in of rain in less than eight hours.
Irish readers know all about the effects of too much rain. To some extent the Irish landscape and infrastructure is better prepared for dealing with rain than northern Lazio. The first heavy rains of the Lazio autumn seem to reap a grim harvest - in flood-related incidents in the greater Rome area last Saturday, a 16year-old motorcyclist died, 10 people were seriously injured, two apartment buildings collapsed, 13 families had to evacuate their homes, the Roma-Velletri train line was blocked by a landslide and more than 100 cars were involved in traffic accidents.
Our village of Trevignano, situated in a sort of volcanic bowl around Lake Bracciano, tends to have a rough time when the first heavy rains come. Drainage channels, blocked with leaves, branches and other debris, are usually overwhelmed by the torrents of water bursting down from the surrounding hills, all heading for the lake.
There is nothing unusual in this. The first autumnal rains cause serious damage all over the world. In our little corner, however, the difficulties are exacerbated by the landscape itself and by recent history.
As part of the papal states from medieval times to the end of the last century, Lazio has developed differently to central Italian areas such as Tuscany, Umbria or the Marche. Those areas tended to produce a tenant farmer class which worked and cultivated the land intensively (albeit for the local Conte or Barone). Much of Lazio remained untilled and was used as hunting estates by the great Roman noble families. Even today there is a huge estate at Vicarello, near Trevignano, which continues to be, among other things, a hunting reserve.
Land not cultivated intensively for centuries is badly drained, susceptible to flooding and shedding much of its topsoil to heavy rain. Building construction in the Lazio countryside, not always with planning permission, aids the potential for mini-landslides, since building inevitably means uprooting trees and vegetation which might otherwise absorb or hinder flood waters.
(This is not exclusive to Lazio, since much of the blame for the disastrous flooding in Piedmont three years ago, when 59 people lost their lives and 9,000 were left homeless, was attributed to abusivo, illegal building).
The net result is that a Saturday night drive to work in Rome was quite an adventure. Torrents of mud, debris and stones cut off one end of the village. Those equipped with an ordinary motor car would tend to squelch to a halt.
THE main road to Rome is simply too low-lying, almost at lake level. Last Saturday it became totally impassable to all but those equipped with amphibious vehicles. Those of us, wily in our resident ways, know this well and use a little backroad, high in the hills.
The modern Roman, less familiar with country ways, drives into the flood waters and gets stuck.
Even if you stay indoors, heavy rain inevitably leads to power failures (this time mercifully short), hence the need for candles and open wood fires at the ready. Saturday's deluge was accompanied by dramatic lightning which caused your correspondent to unplug the computer - lightning has already scored an expensive direct hit on The Irish Times in Italy.
Such storms seem apocalyptic, yet the next morning normal rural life resumes, albeit with mud-caked debris spattered here and there.
At this time of year, normal rural life means the olive harvest which, we are informed, will be a good one, as has been the vendemmia (grape harvest). After the long hot summer, you would expect good grapes and olives. You would also expect heavy rain.