As Catherine and I clattered and thumped our way into our apartment building yesterday, lugging skis and snowboard and wearing boots of lead, we looked forward to collapsing in our rooms. We reached the tiny lift, only to hear a stream of rapid Italian directed at us from the dim reaches of the farthest end of the corridor.

'Spaghetti bambino di taverna o solo mio!', a middle-aged woman with an air of authority, said. Or words to that effect. She came towards us with dark eyebrows raised, obviously expecting a response.

I pointed to my chest and said, 'Inglese.' Unfortunately she assumed the rest of me was still Italian, and continued her verbal assault. 'Vespucci leonardo trevi fontaine maserrati!' She pointed to the ground.

'Er.. no comprendo.' I said, in Spanish. Catherine looked scared. She didn't want to be buried in the basement by a mad woman.

Finally Signora De Niro tried some broken English, which was actually quite good, though heavily accented and interspersed with the local linguini. 'There is ski deposit in basement,' she advised. She pulled open the lift door and ushered us in. 'Grazie, grazie,' I mumbled, nodding thanks, and then she got into the lift with us.

To be clear, the lift in the ABC Apartemento is small. Tiny. Piccolo. It is claustrophobic when there's just Catherine, me and the ski equipment. On a good day you might be able to squeeze four people in, as long as they were all called Anthony Daniels, so the three of us were going to become close friends by the time we reached the sixth floor. I reached around Signora De Niro to press the button, trying not to kiss her as I did so, but she instead waved my hand away and pressed -1, the basement level.

'Non troppo di alfa romeo,' she cautioned, pointing to the step down from the lift to the basement floor when we arrived. We disassembled ourselves from the elevator and she beckoned us to follow through the gloom, then pointed round a corner to a series of tall thin lockers, the ski storage.

After stowing our gear she then showed us a basement-level door we could use, and explained a few other things, before finally ushering us back into the coffin. 'Ciao! Ciao! Molto antipasti!' I said and we parted the best of friends. 'Vermicelli!' I added as the lift doors closed.

This morning I was walking down the stairs, partly for the exercise, mainly to avoid the confinement of the elevator, when I startled Signora De Niro who was mopping one of the landings. We buongiornoed each other and I smiled to assure her that I wasn't an axe murderer. She machine-gunned some Italian at me, but I have a vocabulary lined with Italian-ignorant Kevlar, so nothing hit me. Then she remembered that my understanding was limited to 'Ciao' (though I can fluently order as many wines as you'd like).

'No ski today?' she enquired.

'Yes, si, er... later, after,' I said, gesticulating to the near future.

'Dopo!' she exclaimed, nodding.

'Si, dopo!' I agreed, assuming she meant only dim-witted people went skiing. I raced down the remainder of the stairs before she gave me the name of a local psychiatrist.

When I returned from lining the coffers of the local mini mart I pressed the lift button. It arrived quickly, and when I opened the door I saw it wasn't empty - there was a bucket of sudsy water, and a mop leaning against the wall.

I rode to the sixth floor with the domestic equipment. No doubt she'd seen the dopo arrive back, had abandoned her cleaning and fled before I could try and kiss her again. As the lift arrived I leaned down and drew a heart shape in the suds, then sent it back down to the ground floor.