Marysia is ten years old. How did that happen? She is wearing a teeshirt, that belonged to her brother or sister which I brought back from Salamanca in 1992. It has worn well. I think it lasted many years after that.

We are in Menaggio by Lake Como which happens to be one of my favourite place on earth. I first went I believe when I was fifteen when my father took me on a long motoring trip to Italy to visit all the places he had been in during and after the war. I was a sulky teenager and didn’t want to go. I just wasn’t interested, but I had no choice. Three weeks of gorgeous weather, good food, a nice boy somewhere on the way and utter boredom. I sulked. Oh, how I regret it now. Why didn’t I listen to all my father’s stories. Why do I not remember them? After all, I heard them often enough in all the years he was alive. I wish he was here now to tell me one more time, to explain to me the finer details of his wartime experiences.

I remember he even took me to the house of a girlfriend in the Casa Brancadora d’Este. I remember at the time thinking she was pretending to remember him, but she gave us a tiny espresso, and showed off her wartime artefacts which she kept in a glass case in a large room. Pride of place was a Nazi helmet, I believe.

But although I was fed up, I never forgot the beauty of the area. so when in 1998 we decided to go on a family holiday to Italy, after a terrible time in Tuscany the year before , we went to Menaggio.

I had found on the internet, that magical new experience, a lovely looking motel in the hills above the lake, and we went there. It was a fabulous find – not luxurious, but oh, so welcoming. Hotel Merloni. It’s still there, I think.

We returned year after year to the same place, until finally we succumbed to our desire for air-conditioning and chose a hotel by the lake itself. But the views. The vegetation. It is one of the most attractive areas of Italy. It was developed for travellers and visitors in the nineteenth century, so is full of villas and gardens, and more importantly, everything has a certain style. No high rise buildings, no chains, no fast food. (Pizza yes, but family run restaurants.) It was – and is – so refreshing. of course at the end of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the 21st inflation hadn’t hit the world so hard, so things were relatively inexpensive. And delightful

Of course this picture could have been taken any year we went – an I think we have been more than fifteen times altogether. But this fountain with its waterlilies is one of the inspirations for our little pond and fountain at home. Ours prhaps is not quite as ornate.

This is a part of the garden of Villa Carlotta. the beauty of lake Como is the vegetation – palm trees and pine trees side by side. It rains a lot, and the sun shines a lot. Perfect.