Music is a girl's best friend.

It is not diamonds, like Marily Monroe sang, which is a girl's best friend. Not always, anyway.

In my case it is music. Music has always been a passion of mine. My best moments are spent on the floor with loud music washing all over me. That is how I relax when I feel life just overwhelm me.

A long gone friend of mine plays the piano, very musical, don’t know how to read notes but he plays by ear, faultlessly.

Many years ago I lived abroad for a year, and it was during this period of time I met him. It is great to meet people you can have uncomplicated fun with. We would do things like play chess, and even if he is brilliant and I barely know how to move the pieces, we laughed a lot.

He was learning the language of the country, with his terrible strong British accent, I would correct him and we still had fun.

I was there when he decided he wanted to start playing the piano. He was allowed to use the theatre/ concert hall at the facility when there were no rehearsals going on. So I joined him, helping to place the grand piano on the stage and just listened.

Sometimes I wish I could do what he did… he just sat down, let the fingers run over the keys and then he played: Chopin, Vivaldi, Mozart, Metallica, Aerosmith, Prince, Michael Bolton, Toto… I would lie under the grand piano and it was intense.

Sometimes he would ask me to sing. I am by no means a singer, but with some luck I hit the key now and again, and we had a great time.

When he left to go back home I missed the fun and the laughter, but even more so I missed his ways with music. I missed having fun around music, I missed not taking it all so seriously, I missed that someone smart, with great talents, took my friendship for what it was and made me feel good about it.

Since then music has not been only a passion for me. In many ways it is my very best friend.

This year's weather.

I am so terribly fed up with the weather we have had this year. I can’t really say it is unpredictable (7°C and rain on May 17, 7°C and rain on Midsummer night and 7°C and rain on Christmas Eve) but honestly: I am not a fish, yet I feel gills and frogman’s feet growing on me.

Every morning I open the door to my house looking fairly ok, even my hair is done! By the time I reach my car I just look like a sad excuse for a respectable woman. (Believe me: I have no high standards for appearance but even I admit that looking like someone who just crawled out of a pool fully dressed is not recommended as a look suitable for work. Especially as I am supposed to be a rolemodel. (Yeah, I know; go figure!).

Rain itself is no problem, we have umbrellas for rainy weather, but not only do we have cold weather and rain: the wind never stops, and it ruffles up the bits not too soaked in water to cling to my body.

Now, I have to admit I love weather! I am the kind of person who embrace the elements, I see the beauty in the forces of nature and can contemplate the forest or the sea with great gratification. I can dance barefoot in the garden in the rain, or stand on a cliff by the ocean, unfold my arms and face the horizon just to become one with the forces raging.

Still, there are limits. Even I reach a point of satisfaction.

They say storms usually get female names because they are wild, wet, beautiful… and when they leave they take almost everything with them. There is a core of truth there, but now and again it would be lovely to walk my dog and come back home without leaving puddles on the floor and knowing the odour of wet dog disperses through the entire house… (getting so familiar with the stench now I can hardly actually smell it).

I should be grateful for the plentitude of water both because of our clean hydroelectric power and because we never have to worry about thirst, but I really need to dry up now… just for a little while. Just to remember what it feels like to look trimmed.