Winter arrived in December with a vengeance. It brought 30cm of snow in one night and a minus 21 degress celcius the following night. Two days later, it all disappeared as we zoomed up to plus teens, even as high as 19 degrees C on one sunny afternoon.

I guess this is proof of my integration into Croatian life. Our new band started playing gigs in December with a mixture of country, bluegrass and Croatian traditional stuff. I've learned how to sing "Yoy Ano, yoy Anitse, nena kishu nena kishu bez kabanitce" in one of the choruses. All I have to do is learn what it means!

This our very first gig, it was in a small bar where drinking is a very serious activity. The guys told me to arrive at seven, which I did but found they had arrived earlier and already set things up. This left me front and centre - I get there earlier these days.

This is Heinz Schenk, one of the leading drag racers and engineers in this part of Europe. He brought his test equipment and expertise all from his home town of Graz, Austria, down to Zagreb to help me and some friends sort out the suspension of their Chevy Malibu race car. We certainly learned a thing or two from him, mostly we learned how much we have to learn.

This the Malibu of our good friends from Zagreb, Edo Galić and Jasminka Beganović. Inside it lurks no less than 10.4 litres of racing engine plus plenty of other goodies. Little wonder the car has traction problems but we'll see how well all the changes we made will work when summer comes and the drag race season starts.

We had a family gathering at ours during the month and we were talking about how and why so many cats have arrived at our back door when, by a spooky coincidence, this little fella appeared. He looks good here but originally he had some nasty injuries, all manner of parasytes plus cankered ears. The vets here are amazing and relatively cheap so we soon got him fixed up and he now sports the name "decet" which means 'ten'.

We are looking for a home for decet but 'Zuza' (the cat formerly known as "seven") is fed up with all these new pretenders arriving, she wasn't too keen on being sterilized either! Here she takes up her "none shall enter" guard-cat duties. Unfortunately, she is regularly found fast asleep at her post.

It snowed .... and snowed .... and ...... Everything looked so beautiful but the temperatures were down in the minus teens for most of the week.

It is a law that every householder must clear a path on the footway out front. Those who are unable nearly always get helped by the neighbours - which is nice. Really, it is!

It's 24th December and it's time once again for Silva's dad to cook fish 'paprikash' in a huge enamel bowl ... outside. Luckily, it was about 14degC so frostbite was avoided this year.
Here is Silva proudly clutching the first bouquet she's ever received, it came curtesy of (puffs out chest) MY DAUGHTER Clare. It was such a surprise that Silva told the delivery lady that "there must be some mistake". Jupi and Dragec's finger get in on the scene as the carp fish are quietly boiling away in the pot.

The first and last time you'll see me in a family photo. Petar was behind the camera and chooses not to tell you when he about to hit the button - hence full gobs and surprised expressions.... except for Jupi, he always looks surprised. It's something to do with the way Silva gives him his haircuts. This is proof that people do gather together and actually eat fish paprikash on 'Badnjak' day (Xmas eve).

Back ache.

Sadly, I am mostly horizontal as the new year starts. My contentment with life and my laziness in failing to exercise sufficiently have probably contributed to a repeat of the back problems I suffered three years ago which took five weeks to pass. I'm hoping I've caught it a bit earlier this time and can fix it sooner.

My "Big Dogs" project is gathering pace and has required me to dash all over central Europe to meet people in an attempt to make things happen during 2010. If you don't knoe what I'm talking about, take a look here but keep it quest as I'm not yet ready to launch it into the public domain. I feel a bit like P T Barnum ... but with cars

As I write this, today's news headlines that the only remaining Croatian owned bank has just had it's board of directors arrested for dodgy dealing. One "customer" who earns about £5,000 a year got a loan for millions ... is the typical example. People here feel such shame that Croatia seems to be run by a band of cut-throats and common thieves. There si also a presidential election going on which appears to a battle between the gangster element and the emerging "real" democrats. I dearly hope the mayor of Zagreb (a wrong'n) loses the 2-man shoot-out. One problem is that the diaspora is very nationalist in it's outlook and they have votes under the Croatian constitution. This means that a country of 4.5 million people also has 4.5 million voters, many of whom have never been here. Crazy? You couldn't make it up.

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