Dear Readers, Life in Italy is marked by the reassuring succession of festivities; Christmas and New Year's Eve are followed by the Epifania, which is followed by Carnival, which opens the way to Easter, Liberation Day and Labour Day until we are all celebrating Ferragosto on the beach on the 15th of August. Now, while the majority of these events are on set dates, Carnival and Easter follow moon phases. This year we will celebrate Carnival in late February and Easter in late April, which means, as a mum, I will face the "Quando arriva il Carnevale?" (Is Carnival here yet?) question for an extra month. My daughter and her friends manage to accept that Christmas celebrations are over on the promise that Carnival will be here soon. So we have already started to look for a costume idea, making masks and trying special make up on. After all, Christmas is officially over and this surely means we can start delving into the next holiday preparation regardless of what the moon says.