After ten or so minutes of him starting to dig, residents started to come out to complain and tell him to stop, and that he couldn’t continue. This went on, and arguments ensued. Not a happy situation.

Not happy at all.

After the initial problems of disagreements about what was possible and what not, I then got a plumber in and slowly but surely work started.

Written here (as previously), in this way, perhaps it could well be thought of as just two freak occasions – firstly that of the heating bill and then that of the flooding. But it wasn’t so simple. Every time it rained hard, there would be the constant fear that the drains would fail again and I’d be fighting the elements once more. And for the heating?

I’ve no idea if it rains more here now than it used to do in the past. But when it rains, it really rains! As I said before, our apartment is on the ground floor, but below us we have our garage, and a laundry and some storage space – and so from the road outside there is a drive which goes down to our garage and another couple of garages. On the other side of the condominium there is another drive which goes down to the other garages, which is a much larger affair.

It’s a long time ago now, but everything was going well. Our daughter started going to a new school, and our son was still going to Mrs P. Winter came and went.

Here in the north of Italy, winters are invariably cold and snowy. We’re in the mountains, and not far from some good places for going skiing.

Perhaps it is difficult to understand, the quirks of nation geography, but it is an important factor which is a never ending component in the realities of life near the Italian northern border to Switzerland.

Obviously, it was all quite exciting really – our own new place to live – two wonderful little kids, and everything to look forward to.

Lina finished, I suppose it was, after we moved house – for the second time in a couple of years!

So we returned to where we had left the cars, and then I followed Lina and the Mad Lawyer to her house. It was a very nice detached place with a good size garden, and on first impressions, it was very impressive.

Our final destination was a very pleasant little place quite near the lake in an old shopping arcade next to what is now the casino of Lugano. The place was full and bustling, but we had booked and so we went straight in and were led to our table.

On the evening, we arranged to meet up and from there go on together to a Mexican restaurant in downtown Lugano. When I got to the prearranged rendezvous she was not alone, but with a friend. A female friend. The mad lawyer.

She had said several times over the course of months that she wanted to invite me to dinner sometime, and I in reply would say, ‘Yes, yes.’ And smile, and go on with what we were doing hoping she would forget.

I think probably Lina had come to the conclusion that she was in reality wasting her time trying to learn English. She may well have had many talents, but alas English was not one of them.

As you know, I am a musician, and at that time I had been subscribing to an English music magazine Future Music for several years, which I had sent by post. Nothing strange. It’s a monthly publication and in just about every issue there would be competitions.

Lotteries Rob’s Hypnosis VIP | Youtube | Facebook | Twitter | Amazon | iTunes | I was, and to a large degree, still am cynical about many things. I don’t think that I’m easily taken in, not normally anyway, and when I met and got to know Lina, my witch as I thought of her, …

I’ve really no idea how much Lina affected RS and his way of working and living or indeed thinking, but evidently not all that shines is gold, as they say. I’ve no idea if his conference was a success or not, nor even which swanky Mercedes model he finally plumped for. I lost touch with him and his group; as I did so also eventually with Lina.

When we were supposed to be having our weekly lessons invariably the phone would go intermittently, I would become invisible (to her at least) and she would chat away without any apparent inhibition.

But something which surprised me was, a little, that when I spoke to people about this kind of thing (Lina and her wacky ideas) many were sympathetic to this kind of thinking or approach. In fact on one occasion when I was going into her place, I met a friend’s wife coming out. Strange. Yes, very strange.

When I first started chatting with Lina, and started to understand what she did for a living, I imagined her clients to be sfigati – an Italian term used to describe ‘losers’.

I once had a friend who was unlucky. Not like most people are unlucky. But really unlucky! Everything in M’s life was unlucky, and she always seemed to have problems and arguments with people…