Responsibilities

Richest per capita (or nearly) in the region, the Comune has decreed we are too poor to put up Christmas decorations in the village. There is one, mean Nativity scene attached to the wall of the old post office. And I don't like it.

Every year the banging and crashing and roaring of hoists on lorries makes me cross as they festoon the house and its outcrops with lights and shooting stars. 'They'll wreck the intonaco' I moan, 'they have been making that racket for hours and they still haven't started in the church square.' I groan. Every year one of the local civic organisations (or even two or three) borrows a cantina to set up the manger and its wonderful figures. My absolute favourite was the Tennis Club with short-skirted angels in white, and Mary and Joseph with golden Slazenger haloes; even the ox and the ass carried raquets in their front hooves, like the Lamb of God.

Some years there is a tableau in the Piazza, with the shepherds carrying baa-ing lambs across their shoulders, fires burning outside the grocer and the ironmongers, and the three wise men (played by villagers from appropriately distant lands but settled here now) leading asses laden with gifts.

This year - nothing. I have been down to size up the entrance, usually closed with wooden doors, but suitably cavernous and with walls of enormous, hewn stone. I'm eyeing up the dollies, long put away, to represent the Christ Child, we've got the old mangers somewhere. Draperies? If the moths haven't got them, trunks full. Lemon trees often stand for the figures in the Nativity scene, and flowering staffs and things. I can do pomegranate trees too, and straw; can't do the animals but we can rig up a bit of mooing and baaing off stage with a suitable soundtrack.

They'll have to listen to English carols though.