No carnival is complete without attending a masked ball. Here’s ours, ‘La Pentolaccia’, at the local historic regency-style casino, complete with prize-giving for the best costumes.

The event was very well attended and, although the DJ’s selection was not to everyone’s taste we enjoyed ourselves in an evening passed in what must be one of the most spectacular ballrooms in our region.

But what is a ‘Pentolaccia’? It’s a game in which blindfolded participants try, one after the other, to break a pot suspended above, full of sweets and surprise prizes, with a stick.

In Tuscany it’s usually played on the first Sunday of Lent. It would have been a little difficult to play it in the elegant milieu of Bagni’s casino, the first public one opened in Europe, but it was great to realize that we were back enjoying a public activity which hardly a year ago would have been difficult to envisage in the awful plague conditions the ghastly pandemic had imposed on us.

May Bagni di Lucca continue to rise above the social austerities that have so beset our world in the last few years. After all, laughter is often said to be the best medicine!