I had kept the pine cone for dessert: I knew I would enjoy each shade.

I had also decided this for practical reasons, since I would have embroidered the scales in full stitch and that moving the fabric on the hoop would have inexorably crushed them. A little padded stitch, with no great scenic pretensions, just to round off the design.

Tell me you’re done.

                No. The pinecone fell on my head. It had already happened to me once many years ago in Follonica.

But do you know I have to take the embroidery to Formigine in a week?

                Are there pine cones in Formigine?

I’ll get in the car and I’ll come. Let’s see if you make jokes then.

My tyranny does not know what yearning pervades me at the idea that the days grow shorter, that the sunsets recede like the tide in the afternoon, and that the quiet evening stroll at dusk mutates into hasty night-time escape. Like a lizard I need to pause on the little wall in the sun, to feed my good mood. The darkness of winter compresses me.

Perhaps that is precisely why I let myself be flattered by the idea of an atypical, colourful and nostalgic Christmas.