It’s pitch black outside, but I’m wide awake. The sound that has woken me is the fragile glass panels on our bedside lights shivering against each other. They used to do this in our house in Essex if a particularly heavy lorry went past.

But we’re deep in the Italian countryside, in the early hours of the morning, and it’s a physical impossibility for such a vehicle to drive down our lane.

The room seems to shift ever so slightly when I turn over in bed. I’ve only experienced this sensation once before (when sober, anyway) – on holiday in San Francisco.

As it dawns on me that we must be experiencing some kind of ‘mild earth tremor’, the lights calm down. The next thing I know it’s broad daylight.

Thinking that perhaps I was dreaming, I Google ‘Italy earthquake’ – and you know very well what I found. We live 170 kilometres from the epicentre of Sunday’s quake but still felt the reverberations.

We were well aware of Italy’s geographical history when we chose to move here. The plans for our house had to pass rigorous inspection by our local earthquake committee.

The lowest floor of the house is built into the hillside and a narrow corridor runs between the outer wall of the building and the hill itself, reinforced with concrete on both sides. The idea is that it will create a barrier should the surrounding land start to shift at any point.

Even knowing that our house is relatively safe should the worst happen, I’m still surprised at myself, that I fell back to sleep so easily.

Talking later to Italian friends, they too, take the threat of earthquakes in their stride. When you rationalise the situation, it’s easier to understand why. Crossing a busy London street is far more risky ….

(Some) relatives in the UK, on the other hand react very differently. ‘You didn’t tell me you have earthquakes there’, said one, due to visit later in the summer.

Fear, after all, often isn’t rational. I may be calm about earthquakes but put me in an aircraft seat and I turn into a squirming wreck. It’s no good telling me how much safer planes are than cars – I know it’s only my willpower keeping that thing in the air.

We love Italy, amongst other reasons, for its stunning landscape and the way its history is embedded in the tiniest villages. But landscape like this has been formed by cataclysmic events and when every town has a wealth of ancient buildings, the impact of such events is bound to be worse. All these things are intertwined.

At the end of the day we all make choices about the risks we are prepared to take, which we think are worthwhile. If the epicentre of the earthquake had been on our doorstep, I’m sure I would be feeling very different right now. But unless or until that day comes, I can be rational enough not to lose any sleep over it.

Pic courtesy of

Eating out is one of my favourite things to do. When I’m in England I scan Trip Advisor and press reviews before we visit a new restaurant, wanting to make sure it’s an evening to remember for all the right reasons.

Here in Italy my approach is completely different….in our village (2,000 residents) there are no shops, but five restaurants, between them capable of seating around 1,000 diners at a single sitting.

All the restaurants serve pretty much the same local specialities. But we always receive the warmest welcome at La Gavarina D’Oro – opened more than 20 years ago by my neighbour Francesco and now run by his children and their families.

So deciding where to celebrate James’ birthday last week was easy.

The Gavarina doesn’t have a menu (well there is one somewhere, just in case ‘strangers’ ask for it, but it doesn’t list half the dishes on offer).

The first time we came here, speaking no Italian whatsoever, we were invited to try the local speciality, panigacci. Not wanting to offend, we agreed with trepidation in case it turned out to be some unspeakable part of an animal.

In fact panigacci are a kind of flat bread, cooked over a huge open wood fire in the corner of the restaurant. They are served with sauces, or salami and cheeses, or even nutella. You can have a three course meal based entirely on panigacci – and many people do.

As James’ birthday falls on Easter Monday the restaurant is crammed with 200 guests of literally all ages, mostly seated on family tables of up to 20.

Baskets of panigacci fly around the restaurant. The waiting staff rush in and out of the kitchen with plates of roast meat, steak and pasta, weaving their way around four and five year olds wandering up and down.

Children are clearly more than welcome but there are no special kids’ menus here, no packs of crayons or placemats to colour in. A baby of eight months at the most is fed a plate of chopped up spaghetti bolognaise from the kitchen. Toddlers munch on panigacci with salami and gorgonzola.

As the evening goes on, many of the younger guests fall asleep on their grandparents’ laps. Older children play outside on the restaurant terrace.

(We have been here also on quieter evenings, when one end of the dining room has formed an impromptu goal mouth for Francesco’s four year old great-grandson, Goielle and his friends’ game of football).

A single baby of just a few weeks gets fractious, but nobody minds when his father walks him up and down the restaurant floor – the noise levels are so high that you can’t hear his crying anyway.

Even though the restaurant is packed to the gills, Clara, Francesco’s 73 year old wife, who still runs the kitchen, comes out to say hello, with open arms and a kiss for us both. Their son, Massimo and his wife Sonia chat while we drink a farewell glass of limoncello.

A couple of years ago, the Gavarina received a visit from an English family, with their bodyguards. Francesco was upstairs having a nap at the time and didn’t know anything had happened until two weeks later when his cousin announced she’d read in the paper that Tony Blair had eaten at there.

‘It just goes to show,’ Francesco said with a shrug when he told me about the visit, ‘Everybody likes panigacci.’