Lake Maggiore

As a little girl, with an imagination larger than my wildly untamed hair (my hairbrush refusal was my mother’s morning battle), I often wondered what it would be like to skip right into a kaleidoscope. An imagined sugar-rush, spinning-tea-cup-ride surge of delight as every kind of colour and shape danced their flamboyant, unrehearsed, flamenco routine.

I’ve been to enough weddings to know that rain on your wedding day doesn’t necessarily a happy bride make. But ask a superstitious Italian, and instead of cursing the rain clouds, you’ll embrace the special day downpour – your soaking instead believed to be a symbol of fertility and cleansing, luck and love drenching you from the skies.

Sitting on a small but perfectly positioned balcony at the Regina Palace Hotel, one of the best appointed residences in the small but not insignificant Italian town of Stresa, and you could be forgiven for thinking you’d stepped back in time a good half century or so. Which is by no means a criticism.