He couldn’t wait until Sunday.

Friday evening we had been out at one of the shops’ Christmas ‘do’. His colleague insisted she take her partner so I was invited too. We went to a place a long way out of Milan, near the shop. It was fabulous. Gnocchi Fritti is one of those wonderful Italian foods that I had never heard of until I had lived here for a while. Pronounced knockey free-tee, it is a thin, deep fried dough so that it puffs up with air and resembles a very small cushion – a few centimetres square. They are deep fried and served hot. Once you have one you slice or pull it open and put in some lardo, salami or other meat and then eat it.

Whereas that might not sound particularly appetising it is one of the best ‘comfort foods’ I can think of. And, if the meat is particularly good, so much the better. In this case we were at the Trattoria Campanini, a delightful restaurant in Busseto. This was a special Christmas do and, therefore, menu. It included the gnocchi fritti (seemingly without end), three different pasta dishes, wine, water and desert. Mine was some chocolate mouse thing and was the best of all the sweets, although they were all good.

It had been planned that we would stay at a local hotel. Unfortunately, Milan had a traffic block on both Friday and Saturday so we had to return that night. However, it was a lovely evening and the guys and girls from the shop were really nice – a good crowd.

The next day, even if we had arrived home very late, we weren’t up so late at all. After the dogs and breakfast, F was itching to put up the tree. On the way home from walking the dogs he had bought some red crepe paper to cover the bucket.

So, the tree was put up. It’s a nice (actually perfect) size for the table it is on and the room in general. Then came the decorating of the tree. F, being a visual merchandiser (it used to be called window dresser – although he does more than that, of course), had already decided how it would look. It was to be, basically, red. The lights he had bought were white, the decorations mainly red. I had one set of red lights so they went on too. Then came the ornaments. He had bought special red ribbon to use to hang the ornaments. I did the threading of the ribbon for the ornaments – I’m not so stupid that I thought I could actually hang anything!

There seemed (to me) to be an awful lot of ornaments going on – but in the end it did look beautiful. You can see why he does the job he does. Then there were lights (white again) to be fitted round doorways.

He used some of my (gold) stuff for the hallway – which had to be thoroughly cleaned first.

The flat really does look wonderful and is very festive. I am really looking forward to Christmas. He too as, not only is he pleased with the decorations, he is also planning the Christmas day menu! I tried to take photos of the decorations but have lost the cable to my camera. I will try to find it and post at least a picture of our glorious tree.