When Annie Hawes buys a hillside cottage in Italy for no more than the price of a dodgy second-hand car, a capable young Englishwoman becomes a surprisingly incapable Ligurian 'signorina' - in the overgrown garden of a small, stone house amongst the olive groves of Liguria Fortunately the hard-core olive-farming folk of Diano San Pietro are on hand to ply her with huge meals, plenty of ridicule and all the old-fashioned know-how needed to get by