DEPRESSED at the news that the manufacturer of Airfix models had gone bust (no grandson of mine will now ever enjoy the vicarious thrill of filling a plastic Messerschmitt BF 109E with petrol, setting fire to it and throwing it out of the attic window while shouting "Gott in Himmel!"), I cleared off to Italy for a week to recuperate.

Perched in a nice villa on top of a mountain, I decided that a period of abstinence was necessary to prepare me for the trials and tribulations of the last days of the Blah Empire, so I was determined to avoid any news from home. No foreign copies of the Daily Mail, no flicking through the satellite channels in search of Sky News (although searching for programmes featuring stripping housewives was allowed) and no mobile phone. And it worked - to a point.

You see, news is now such an international language that it's hard to escape its all-embracing grip. It started with the dogs. I should explain: the soundtrack of the Ligurian mountains is a chorus of chainsaws, scooters and dogs. At any time of the night or day you can always hear one of them in action.

The dogs work as a team. One will start barking far down the valley and gradually others join in. By the time the rabid hound in the villa next door has started hurling itself against the chainlink fence, the noise has grown into a constant howl. And it was through this medium that I started to receive messages from home.

Don't ask me how it works; it just does.

"The Sikh servant on the Camp coffee label has been allowed to sit down alongside his master, " howled the dogs. "Fred Elliot drops dead on his Coronation Street wedding day. And you forgot to record the new series of The Sopranos, you numbskull."

Occasionally a donkey would join in, usually with news of Peter Mandelson.

SO THIS villa shared a pool with the house next door and there I was the other morning, doing a few lazy laps, when this Italian bloke came out and stood watching me. He was slim, muscular and had his hair seriously Brylcreemed. He was the colour of Ron Atkinson's missus and was wearing a pair of those Speedo things. And a sneer. A real snidey sneer.

I suppose you can't really blame him. He sees this flabby, fiftysomething, pasty-faced English bloke in greying boxers, trying to keep his fag dry while doing the breast stroke, and immediately sees himself as superior in every way. Except I was of sterner stock; the grandson of a Monte Cassino veteran.

So I flicked my ash in the pool, gave this fella the Hard Look and watched him melt away. Back in the house, still searching for the stripping housewives, I came across a documentary marking the fact that it was 63 years to the day since the Italians surrendered in the Second World War.