Notes on chocolate: pistachio bars on a family holiday in Italy

Sweet memories: Novi Piu bars are hard to get hold of in Britain, but they are reminiscent of Marou’s Ironman. Photograph: Wing Chan

I am in Avellino, southern Italy. We have taken my mum home to her final resting place and the trip has been sad, but healing. Plugging into my enormous Italian family never fails to make me feel part of something deep and sustaining. I have bought chocolate for them (largely, Waitrose No 1 bars), a poor substitute for the lavish hospitality I am shown every minute of every day.

I eat a bar of Novi Piu looking down the river, remembering tales of my mum washing the family linen on the riverbank