An Italian Journey: A Sort of Latter-Day Mini Grand Tour

David M. Addison

Format ISBN Price   Paperback (5x8) 9781420869309 £ 10.50

The formidable Iona, aka La-Belle-Dame-Sans-Merci, determined to instil some culture into her alcohol-appreciating and apparently sex-starved husband, accompanies him on a tour of the architectural and artistic highlights of Italy, like the Grand Tourists of yesteryear.

 

Unlike those tourists though, who often spent as much as two years, if not longer, on the journey, La-Belle-Dame-Sans-Merci has only one week in which to transform her husband as they explore the delights of Naples, Pompeii, Assisi, Florence, Siena and Rome.

 

And if that were not challenge enough, he displays an amazing propensity for opening his mouth and putting his foot in it, not to mention getting himself into a number of extremely embarrassing situations…

Born in Banff, David Addison was educated at Aberdeen University and subsequently taught in SW Scotland and the Central belt where he was not allowed to use it any more.  He also taught for a time in Montana, and for an even briefer time, in Poland, when the Solidarity movement was at its peak.

 

He is married and has two grown-up children, who, thankfully, have both left home.

 

Having taken early retirement, he spends his time and the children’s inheritance by travelling as often as he can and collecting material for his latest book.

 

Travellers beware!

“You speak Italian?”

 

He must be in his thirties, with straw-coloured hair, stout and perspiring with the labour of carrying his extra avoirdupois in the heat.  He looks as if he has caught a bit of sunburn.  He’s obviously a tourist.  No one else would wear a bashed hat like his in a place where people would know him.

 

I say no and am about to pass on when he says, “Do you speak English?”  We’ve been talking English all this time and it’s a pretty safe bet that someone wearing a Panama hat and dressed like Robin Hood probably does speak English like a native.

 

“Can you tell me the way to the railway station?”

 

“I’m afraid not.  I’m a stranger here myself.”  How thick is he that he’s asking someone dressed like me the way to the railway station?

 

“Well, in that case, can you tell me where we are now?”

 

That’s something I can do.  “Oh, that’s easy!  That’s the Ponte Vecchio over there.”  I turn to point it out to him.

 

He seems to be straining to see it.  “Can you show me on the map?” he asks.

 

“Certainly.”  I know I’ll be able to do that easily.

 

“Let’s cross over the street,” he says. 

 

I suppose it is a bit narrow here and the other side may be fractionally wider, but I presume he doesn’t know that I’ll be able to tell him where we are very quickly and it’s not worth crossing the street, but he’s already moving off so I follow him over.  I look at the map while he stretches it out.

 

“Right, let me see…There’s the river so the Ponte Vecchio must be there… there it is, so we must be here.”  Simple really. If we hadn’t crossed the street, he would have been able to see it for himself.

 

“Show me your papers.  Police.”

 

What?  The speaker is a young swarthy man in a baseball cap with two days’ growth of stubble on his face.  He’s dressed in black trousers and a navy polo shirt.  He’s got a companion who looks older and stouter, wearing lighter clothes and a straw hat, like a tourist, but I don’t get much of a look at him before he disappears behind my back.

 

 

 

 

What’s that noise?  I lie awake, listening, straining my ears in the darkness.  There it goes again.  It sounds like a dog whining, as if in pain or dying of hunger.

 

“Iona?” I whisper.  Although it is dark and our beds are far apart, I know she is awake although it is only 6:45.

 

“Mmm.  What is it?”  She sounds cross.

 

“Can you hear something?”

 

She takes the pillow off her head.  It’s one of her foibles.  She’s such a light sleeper that she puts her head under a pillow and if I am snoring, she uses ear-plugs as well.

 

“What is it now?  I am trying to get some sleep!”  She sounds even more irritable.

 

“Can you hear something?”

 

There is just enough light for me to make out that she has lifted the pillow from her shell-like.   Obligingly, the dog performs again, a long protracted high-pitched howl.

 

“There!” I say triumphantly. “Did you hear that?  Sounds like a dog whining.”

 

She makes a non-committal sort of sound and makes a big production of turning over.  But wait a minute!  There’s no sound of any traffic and the glass is three inches thick, so how come I can hear a dog whining?  Where is it coming from?

 

I concentrate all my hearing powers to this mystery.  I am now convinced it is coming not from outside, but from the wall behind my bed and I no longer think it is a dog whining.

 

“Iona!  Iona!  Listen!  I think it is someone doing it!”

 

“Oh, for God’s sake, what is it now?”

 

“That noise.  I think it’s someone doing it!”

 

Amazingly, she doesn’t seem to have the same interest in this phenomenon as me. 

 

“How disgusting!  So what! You don’t need to listen!  And thank you for telling me!  Thank you very much!”  She beats the pillow up as if it were a substitute for my face.

 

 

Other Books By This Author

A Meander in Menorca

Sometime In Sorrento

Bananas About La Palma