That two-week slump of idleness in Germany came back to bite me in the bum big time. A mate from Sydney who’d been living in Italy – the ever-athletic Kylie – arrived in town; and she didn’t come quietly.

‘You’ve been WHAT?!’ she cries.

‘Sleeping till 2pm EVERY DAY!?! That’s DISGUSTING. Now, just you tell me something, you giant sloth of a girl - ‘ (here she lowers her face down to my level) ‘ - exactly what HAVE you achieved in the last fortnight?’

‘Well, um…’ I stutter feebly. ‘Um, I did go to the gym one time. Because I had a free voucher. But it’s…well, it’s just that it’s been raining, so…’ I trailed off meekly.

‘Raining? RAINING?! It’s been three below and SNOWING in L’Aquila and I’m up at 5:30 every morning for a 10km run followed by ten thousand sit-ups three dozen chin-ups a couple of hundred one finger push-ups and three hours of pilates! And that’s just before BREAKFAST!

‘YOU,’ she seethes, grimly collecting me by the throat, ‘you, my girl, are in for some BOOT CAMP of the highest order.

‘Right,’ she says briskly, straightening up (I’m surprised she doesn’t have a whistle around her neck). ‘First step is to set the alarm for - ‘ (insert ungodly hour here) ‘ - and you’d better be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, my friend, or I will have no choice but to open a CAN’ (of whoop-ass, I’m assuming she meant).

‘By the way,’ she says, snatching a couple of bottles of vodka and three packets of chocolate biscuits off my shelf before flouncing out - ‘I’m CONFISCATING these.’