Small pizza slice tattoo on the ribs

The oven on Vico Lungo has been playing up since Tuesday, so Nonna Fiore keeps sending me to the tray with a wooden paddle like a soldier with a broken spear. Your cousin Enzo swears it is the damp off the bay. I say it is the saints, who are bored of our prayers and want a bit of fun. Either way, the Margherita came out last night with its tip sagging over the edge like a tired man at a wedding, and I ate the whole thing standing up, watching the cheese run onto my fingers.

Do not tell your mother I was crying into the flour. I was not. Your grandfather's peel is still hanging on the nail where he left it, and when I took it down the handle was warm from my hand, which is foolish, I know. Mrs Esposito from the flat above asked why I was humming Puccini at six in the morning. I told her the dough rises better with an opera, and she said that was the same nonsense he used to tell customers.

Here is what I want you to do. Go to that cart on the Sheffield market, the one you wrote about, and tell the man he has the cheese wrong. Then ask for pepperoni, the round ones, three of them on one side where they will look like coins under a lamp. Send me a drawing if you cannot send a photograph. I want to see whether they still droop the way ours do when they are done right.

Write back soon. Tell me the English oven is not a coward.

Your loving Zia Carmela