It’s always strange to be in Rome, except on hassled flying visits. And it’s even more strange to be in Rome in a hotel. It’s the Film Festival again, and the festival is putting us up.

   I have even managed to see a film or two and shall duly report on the general wonderfulness of the event in my Rome guide. In fact, the event is very low-key indeed, as far as films go, but what is always wonderful about the Rome fest is the participation. The whole of the Auditorium area is just a heaving mass of enthusiastic humanity, and much of it is school and university age. It strikes me even more, I guess, after two years in the not-quite-so-heaving country. But whereas the throngs, say, of Christians who attended a rally in piazza del Popolo on Saturday and made the whole pedestrianised centro an impassible nightmare were just infuriating (and all the more so because they were practically mowing down anyone who got in their way as they swaggered, with God's blessing I suppose, along via del Corso when the rally broke up) these jolly movie-hungry crowds are fun. I approve of congregating for culture.

   This four-day break has given me a chance to catch up on developments.

   Like the MAXXI which I have been watching in its stop-and-go progress for so many years. What a fantastic space! All right, there is a lot of space and it’s space which exalts Zaha Hadid just as much as it will ever exalt the contents of the place. But it’s magnificent. And with the right curator, it will go far. Already those great expanses of concrete are being used for projecting works on to, or as backdrops for huge pieces or installations, or just as foils for exhibits that need the space. I love it when you’ve wended your way up all those molten-looking stairs through the labyrinth of twisting rooms and finally you come to a full stop on the third floor against a vast wall of glass. The glass tilts outwards towards the top, giving you the feeling that you too are tilting, teetering… about to take flight over the city outside. It’s disorientating and thrilling. And there was a fascinating show of Luigi Moretti’s work too. What could be better?

A far far cry from Ms Hadid, I have also explored the Domus Romane dig beneath the provincial offices at Palazzo Valentini. (How diligent I’ve been!) The idea of an ancient Roman experience curated by that ghastly TV-sage Piero Angela almost put me off. But he’s not bad, dumbing down only as much as is strictly necessary and having just enough of that Italian schoolmaster habit of considering the hard facts, however unpalatable, as something that the plebs should be subjected to. The descriptions he narrates were good enough, even for nit-picking me. But what really impressed – and usually I’d hate the very idea – were the… what do you call them? Virtual reality games? Computer enhancements? Glorified slides? Projected intelligent guesses slid convincingly from the excavated Roman floors and fittings and up the 16th-century walls to cloth these latter in what might, archeologists think, resemble what it looked like in Roman times. The effect was stunning. What got me thinking most – apart from the obvious appeal of having a sizeable bath complex inside one’s own home – were the suppositions that some rooms just opened straight to the outside, making them a continuation of the garden. How very like our Sri Lankan experiences. But was it warmer then? Or was being in ones hortus so crucial that even in the cold one threw on an extra layer and put up with the inconvenience? I love the little colonnaded impluvium courtyards, and the formal gardens with their watery elements. I’m usually quite down on the Romans, far preferring the Etruscan spirit. But this bringing of garden into the home is something that (almost) redeems them. They suddenly become quite likeable.

   In the midst of all this Roman activity, I also got around to visiting my little garden project in Ostia. There wasn’t much to it before, but so very much is now paved over! I do so hope she manages, as planned, to buy the strip between her pocket handkerchief bit and the palazzo next door. Already she’s dreaming of formal gardens of raised vegetable beds, all in miniature… I mean, she’s dreaming of it because I planted the seed of an idea in her head. We had an odd experience, though, with the vivaio. Marco, who’s doing her building, is also working on a space-age glasshouse for a nursery in Ostia Antica. He seems very keen that we should use these people for the planting. So I dropped in there with my client and her delightful mother. Very questionable, tinker-like people with a small selection of plants which might have fallen with a thud off the back of a not very salubrious lorry. No plants from there, thank you. It’s not like Marco to recommend something so shady. I must get to the bottom of this.

   We’re home again tomorrow. I can’t wait. I’m feeling kind of coated in grime and my ears are sullied. Of course, home has the disadvantage of being chilly and rather damp. We have a powerful dehumidifier now, and amuse ourselves of an evening watching the relative humidity drop as this machine whirs the room’s air past its water-sucking-out aparatus. But the stufa is burning (Ms Faleburle brought us another load of firewood) and I’ve had the gas people round to put a heart attack-inducing amount of LPG in the tank, so we’re all set. Until about ten days ago, we hadn’t needed heating at all in any form. Such a lovely autumn, all in all.

   I must, now, be better about writing. I was torn in two directions: immense satisfaction from the knowledge that if you put “garden”, “design” and “Umbria” into Google, I am number one (I’ve just tried “garden” “design” “central” “Italy” and I’m number 12 – not bad!); immense discouragement because I was writing copy and collating pages which I then just couldn’t get to upload. But sitting here in my hotel room in Rome, unable to focus on work of any kind, has given me time to juggle. And I’m now wondering whether the unpredictability of my uploads wasn’t something banal like just too many files in individual folders. I’ve split them up and rearranged them, and things which have been refusing to appear on my screen for months are suddenly there.

   This is the problem with biting off more than you can chew – or at least trying to wrestle with something which is way beyond your comfort/expertise zone. And even worse if that thing, through miracles beyond your command, generally goes smoothly. It means that the moment it goes snafu, you are utterly lost. But maybe, maybe, I’ve solved my insoluble problem.