I've just come back from five days in England and, as much as I loved seeing my friends and family, having a glass of wine in a pub, and just soaking up the atmosphere, I really was glad when we landed in Olbia. Admittedly, leaving behind the dull grey skies and returning to brilliant sunshine had something to do with it. 

As of May 1, Mario and I have been in Sardinia nine years.  In that time we've lived in Assemini and Cagliari and Villacidro (the latter temporarily) in the south and Cannigione and Olbia in the north. I never had a problem living in the first four but Olbia is where I'm happiest, quite simply because it ticks most of the boxes for my ideal place to live. 

For starters, we're a four-minute car ride away from the airport, with flights going to mainland Italy, Europe and London Gatwick. I'd quite like easyJet to add Barcelona to its routes so that I can get across to visit my brother in Barcelona more easily but since Ryanair already flies from Alghero on the other side of the island we won't quibble too much about that.  

We're also a five-minute walk into the centre of town and on the main bus routes. I'm more than happy to get in my car and go wherever I need to go, be that Cagliari, Sassari or simply to get to the supermarket to do the weekly shop. But I love walking and much prefer to get places on foot. And, of course on a night out both of us can drink without arguing about whose turn it is to drive and thus turn down the second glass of wine. 

Most of my earliest memories are of being at the beach. Not being able to see the coast sends me into attacks of claustrophobia so we're lucky that we can see the harbourside from our balcony and I walk along the water's edge on a daily basis. We're also less than ten minutes away from the beach and the river, so I get to go canoeing whenever I want. 

Olbia may be small but it has a much more Italian feel than any other town on the island. People have moved here from all over Sardinia, Italy, Europe and the rest of the world and friends become surrogate family. Everyone is so welcoming when you arrive because they've been through the process themselves. 

Sometimes I bemoan the lack of culture but then I talk myself out of it. When I lived in Liverpool, which has more galleries and museums per capita than any city outside London, I think I visited them a grand total of three times- twice to cover a story for the Liverpool Echo and once to dine in the cafe. If we did have galleries here, it's unlikely that I'd go because I'd be too busy doing something else. 

My choice is surprising because on paper I'd never have chosen Olbia. I'm a city girl. I like the chaos and the buzz and the opportunities that living in a big urban sprawl offers. That's why I always thought I'd prefer Cagliari. It's got narrow, winding streets, it's ancient, it's got a Roman amphitheatre and a burrial chamber engraved with poetry in Latin and Ancient Greek. The shopping is brilliant. And, of course, it's on the coast, rising up from the sea like an amber jewel bathed in sunlight. It should have made my heart sing. But, sadly, it didn't. 

So, yes, in the end it was Olbia that stole my heart. Olbia with the ugly architecture. Olbia which is an ancient town that has completely built over its past and is only just discovering it now. Olbia that, rather strangely, has its university housed on the first floor of the airport. 

Put simply, Olbia makes me happy. 'Olbia polis' means 'the happy city' in ancient Greek so, perhaps, it's not so surprising that I chose to make this my home after all. 

I've been asked this question several times over the last month and while this now strikes me as completely normal, I always found it so strange that I had to pop in and see someone so they could ask me the question that desperately needed an answer yet wasn't urgent enough to require a phone call or email. 

There's no limit to the type of questions that you might be asked. This month I've been asked if I'd be interested in my cv being put forward for consideration for one of those blink-and-you'll-miss-it opportunities (hmmmm, let's think about that) and whether I'd like to get my hands on a rather lucrative teaching contract (again, I need to stop for a coffee to really think about the pros and the pros of that one). 

It's in stark contrast to the way things are done in Britain. At the end of March, I wrote an article for The Times (I screamed silently - what about me?) about coming to terms with my brother's suicide and sibling survivors being the forgotten victims. I'm never really sure of effect my words have on others but I've been told it made quite a few people sob. The outcome of all that is that the Samaritans then asked me to speak at their annual conference in September though that's not confirmed. 

Of course, that exchange took place over a couple of emails. Had we both been in Italy, it might have looked rather different:

Samaritans: "Hi, I'm from the Samaritans. We read your article and found it really moving. Do you think you could come to our offices?"

Me: Sure. (this causes lots of head sratching. How should I dress? Is it formal? Are we going for coffee? Am I about to get a job interview on the spot? Do they want my advice?)

On the day I imagine myself rolling up in a blend of smart-casual that nods to the 'yes, I always look this polished even when I'm running around doing errands' to be taken into the office for all of two minutes before being asked 'so, would you be up for speaking at the conference?'. You're always expected to give an answer on the spot before being uncerimoniously despatched seconds later. 

These days I've come to the conclusion that Italians invite you into the office to ask you whether you'd like to accept the offer of a lifetime for no other reason than to see pure joy on your face. The more mega-Watt your smile, the happier they are. 

So the first time an Italian tells you to pop by because they need to ask you a question, don't panic. Just start practising that acceptance speech. 

On the upside, I mentioned how things are slowly getting easier because Italy is finally catching up with the rest of of Europe. Of course, much of that has been due to the dire economic situation Italy's found itself in and the reforms that the caretaker prime minister Mario Monti has pushed through as a result (two sentences don't do justice to the situation or the steps that have been taken to reverse Italy's fortunes but I'm not interested in discussing that here). One of those is the società semplificata di responsabilità limitata or, to put it into English, a semplified limited company. 

The beauty of this reform is that you can now launch a start-up for just Eur1 and also bypass all the longwinded, faffy red tape that usually goes hand-in-hand with doing just about anything in Italy. For example, instead of making an appointment to see the notary, you simply send an online notification to the Registro delle Imprese (Companies' Registry Book) of your new venture and hey-ho, you're in business. 

Monti explained this decision on the Italian current affairs show Otto e Mezzo when he was grilled by the journalist Lilli Gruber. He said: "I don't know how many Bill Gates there are in Italy but if there are any, we don't want complicated and time-consuming procedures to prevent the birth of start-ups. 

On a personal note, there is one aspect that miffs me mightily. Monti's governemnt brought in these reforms a month after my 35th birthday, the cut off age for taking advantage of this new law. Since I'm too old (eek) to pay my Eur1 and start a new business, I hope you do. 

So while we've got the heating whacked up to the max (for as long as the gas lasts) and I'm guzzling back lots of hot drinks to keep warm, I thought I'd be the bearer of some, frankly, fabulous news. 

We've teamed up with the bods at Studio Legale Annino, which is a law firm with offices in Milan, Rome, Velletri (RM) and Cagliari, to offer you expert advice for (wait for it)...absolutely nothing. 

See, I told you it was good. 

Every Friday they're going to choose one of your emails to answer and I'll publish the email and the answer here. So if you need legal advice about life or doing business in Italy, get writing. Send a brief email to my yahoo address emma underscore s underscore bird at yahoo dot co dot uk with the subject header: 'howtoitaly/studio legale annino. 

Meanwhile, watch out for my interview with Allison Lyndsay Sutherland, a South African industrial psychologist who works with Studio Legale Annino and is behind the bilingual service to stop foreigners being taken advantage of when they don't speak Italian and don't understand the legal system. 

I look forward to your emails. 

Mario's currently dealing with the business side, be that starting a business, expanding a business or needing business advice. He's also damn good at writing emails and letters that get results so if your Italian skills aren't up to the job, he's the man for you. Mario's email address is: mario.berri@studi-professionali.it. 

You can also follow him on Twitter @marioberri where he tweets in both English and Italian. 

My memories of 2009 are hazy. One minute I was gulping down too-hot espresso that scorched the back of my throat while mentally running through a lesson plan and checking in the mirror for any stray wrinkles that had crept up overnight; the next, tears and snot were streaming down my face, and I was puking up baked-beans on toast (you can take the girl out of England...) on Mario and his new pinstripe suit as I listened to my mum telling me my brother had killed himself. I never really believed that life could shatter into a million, tiny pieces. But, as I found out at 8.23am on March 31^st, 2009, it can. And it did.

How I got through the rest of 2009, I’m not too sure. For an ex-fashion and textile journalist, my wardrobe was appallingly uncoordinated. I just pulled on the first thing I picked up, ironed or not, washed or not, and didn’t bother to look in the mirror because I know I wouldn’t recognise the sad, bereft woman who stared back at me, her exhaustion accentuated by the huge, dark circles under her eyes and the bald patches where her hair had fallen out in clumps from the stress. 

2010 carried on in much the same way, with me wobbling off to school in my mismatched clothes and students, parents and teachers doing their best to look after me. The caretakers at the state schools I was working in would cook nutritious food and make sure we had lunch together; parents would press homemade bread and biscuits into my hands, and students were unquestionably well-behaved, sensing that all of my energy was going into to teaching them. Once, when my teenagers begged to be allowed to sing a song in class and then chose Bob Marley’s Three Little Birds – the very same song we’d had playing in church at Matt’s funeral – I surreptitiously wiped back my tears and joined in. By the end of the year, I decided that I needed answers to the questions that would torment me as I shut my eyes and tried to sleep. Was I to blame? What could I have done to prevent my brother from ending his life? But the question that tormented me most was why.

So I phoned the coroner, wrote letters and requested a copy of his report. The envelope came in the post and Mario and my friends made me promise I wouldn’t open it until one of them was with me. The problem was that the equation which ended up being my brother’s life was in that envelope and just as my nan never wanted to be without my grandad’s ashes, I suddenly had a real attachment to the coroner’s report. I slipped it into my schoolbag and vowed I wouldn’t read it until I got home that evening. Except, I reasoned with myself, it wouldn’t hurt to open the white A4 envelope and check it really was the report, would it? And then, a couple of hours later, as I ran my fingers across the inch-thick documentation, I decided it would be a good idea to check that the coroner really had sent the information about my brother and not someone else’s. With a beating heart and quickened breath, I peered in. It was definitely about my brother because his name was on the letter the coroner had written to me. And so, feeling brave, I dared myself to look at the front page of the report and then wish I hadn’t. As much as I already knew the bare facts, seeing ‘death by hanging’ staring back at me in black joined-up handwriting was too much to handle.

When I got home that night, we opened a bottle of red wine, toasted my brother and then I handed the report to Mario. For two hours we didn’t speak. He sat on the sofa and began reading what was essentially a review of my brother’s decision to tie that noose around his neck and tears silently rolled down his face. And, for two hours, I sat on the other sofa watching him, with tears silently rolling down mine. But, as I painfully discovered, knowing why was no help at all.

2011 was the year of change. The second anniversary of my brother’s suicide coincided with me starting a teaching contract at the university (an ambition of mine since I started teaching nine years ago) in Olbia. I slowly felt myself edging forward into life again only to be set back when one of my favourite students hanged himself on Good Friday for the same reason as my brother. At first I was incredibly angry with him but it slowly dawned on me that I couldn’t have prevented his death anymore than I could have prevented my brother’s and, as difficult as it was seeing that empty chair in class, I knew that a part of my grief had gone.

May played a triple whammy. Mario was in hospital for complications linked to his radiotherapy eleven years earlier and I was shuttling backwards and forwards to the hospital, which was an hour away in Sassari. At the same time as Mario was being operated on, my nan was diagnosed with cancer and the next day I found a lump in my breast. It suddenly brought me back to the here and now. When my nan died less than a month after the original diagnosis and the morning after I’d flown back to England to visit her, I drew back her curtains in her living room which had become a makeshift bedroom, listened to the birdsong and smiled at eighty-six years of life well-lived.

As for me, the radiologist at the European Institute of Oncology in Milan did an ultrasound and found several lumps the day before I was due to fly back to England for my summer holiday. Going private in the UK was out of the question because the costs were prohibitive and now that I’m Italian resident I’m no longer eligible on the NHS but I knew I had to be proactive and remain positive. I changed my diet, upped the exercise routine, retreated to a rented cottage in Devon and took my nan’s dog, who by now had been adopted my parents, for plenty of walks at the beach. By the time I flew back to Sardinia at the end of August, I felt ready to take on the world.

Two biopsies, several packs of ice and lots of shopping trips (I wasn’t going to let the opportunity to splash the cash on gorgeous accessories go to waste - sometime in 2011 I rediscovered the restorative power of high heels and Chanel lipgloss) to Milan later, the lumps turned out to be benign but they were still growing so the IEO referred me to the Humanitas Cancer Centre and on December 1 I was in my room, giggling away late into the night with my roommate Francesca, who was in for reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy, and not feeling at all nervous. Not that I had reason to. It was a very minor operation, I was awake throughout, and I was only kept in overnight because I'd flown in from Sardinia. Plus, when you have a surgeon who’s examining you intently with the words ‘I’m the best. I don’t intend to fuck this up’, you know you’ve hit hospital gold. You know you’ve hit double gold when the nurse who’s responsible for changing your dressings back in Olbia declares the stitching to be a ‘masterpiece’. And, when you look in the mirror after exactly a month (i,e, this morning) and can’t even tell where you were sewn back together, you know you’ve hit the hospital jackpot.

That’s the personal front. On the career front, I’m teaching four courses at the university, I’m an Area Rep for HSP, preparing high school students for exchange years abroad and looking after the incoming students, and I’ve got the work-life balance finally sussed. My thirty-fifth birthday last month was another turning point. I’m the same age now as my brother was when he died and, although he’ll always be my big brother, he’s now firmly a part of my past.

I was always one for five-year career and personal plans, ambitious as hell and ruthless in my quest to get there. 2009, 2010 and 2011 were nothing like I thought they were going to be, thus proving that there are some things that can never be fitted into an Excel spreadsheet, vision boards or written goals, no matter what the experts claim. But that’s the thing with your life splintering into millions of shards. You can’t glue it back together or expect it to be the same because it won’t ever be that. But you can take solace from the fact that having hit rock bottom, the only way is up.

So here’s a toast to 2012 and the Year of the Bird as coined by my friend Simon Winn, a journalist-turned vicar who was my very first mentor when I set my heart on journalism 20 years ago.  But also to my younger brother, M and my best friends who got me through the toughest of years. And to Sardinia for its healing powers. Because without any of them, I would still be in a very confusing place, weighed down by grief and still wondering how and when to start writing again. 

Buon Anno! 

And that was only after a month's absence from the blogosphere and prompts from one concerned reader.

It made me realise that I've never explained my sudden disappearance both Twitter and blogging and why I've ignored hundreds of unopened emails (yes, I'm sorry about those) at the beginning of April.

It was only meant to be for a few days. But those limped into weeks and months with only my closest friends and a few concerned fellow bloggers/Twitterers knowing the reason why I'd lost my writing mojo. Suddenly, six months had passed and I hadn't so much as lifted a finger to the keyboard to reveal why.

So now I am.

My brother ended his life at the end of March and when you're dealing with a bereavement that you never ever expected to have to deal with, the online world becomes very trivial indeed. How could I have enjoyed carefree banter with fellow Tweeters or give advice about living in Italy when all my energy was spent on getting up in the morning and struggling through the day?

I'm taking babysteps back into the web 2.0. You can find me on Facebook and I'm vowing to be back on Twitter soon. I've also got a few blog posts up my sleeve about what Italy's taught me over the past few months and I'll be publishing those in the next few weeks.

Please bear with me.

We're a small but bustling language schoo in Arzachena, and pride ourselves on being dynamic and innovative. The social side is big with us, too, and we hold monthly Speak English pizza nights.

If you'd love to join our team of teachers, here's what you need to do:

Be a native English speaker

Have EU citizenship/working papers in place

Be CELTA/Trinity-qualified

Have a passion for teaching

Speak at least some Italian

Tell us why you are the best teacher out there for the job

Give us an example of your passion and initiative

And here's not what to do:

Don't send us a general application that you're sending to a million different places

Don't send us an application full of grammar and spelling mistakes

Don't apply if you don't meet the above criteria

Don't mention in your application form that you've always wanted to live in Rome/Florence/Venice. We're in Sardinia.

Don't attach a general business CV. We're an English school not a corporation. It's the teaching experience we're interested in first and foremost.

Don't send us an email asking for more information about Sardinia. If you want the job, you do the homework.

Send your application (including CV) to emmaDOTbirdAThowtoitalyDOTcom

I'm looking for qualified teachers and non-qualfied native speakers to work in the Gallura area of Sardinia. If you're interested, email me your cv and covering letter, outlining why you're the best person for the job. Please note, due to EU laws, only those with EU passports may apply.

Email: Info at howtoitaly dot com