Forget the Cubist nudes and standby for a serious retail experience instead
IT rains in Italy at this time of year. Not every day, of course, and mostly in quick- fire, thunder- racked bursts. But the Italian climate is also capable of delivering misty, grey, drizzly days of the sort more typical of Bray or Ballyhaunis than Bologna or Brescia. Of the sort when it is best to light the fire and remain indoors. Of the sort when there is no silver lining to the cloud cover.
Just our luck that we hit upon one such damp and downbeat day as we take a break in the grand old city of Vermicella marking our wedding anniversary.
We packed the sun-block and the sun-hats and the sunglasses in expectation of unrelieved blue skies. Hermione brought her itsy-bitsy and I embarked equipped with the briefest of Speedos in anticipation of leisurely swimming-cum-tanning sessions.
The talk on the plane was of strolling through shimmering heat to take coffee on the terrace outside some carefree cafe. We set out to swap our clumsy jeans for shorts, our clumping shoes for sandals and our chunky cardigans for light tee-shirts, all under a canopy of dazzling cloud-free heaven. Mediterranean bliss beckoned.
Then we wake up instead on our first morning away to the sound of rainwater dripping from the olive trees and to the sight of the locals trotting about their business under umbrellas. Such a soggy spectacle is not at all as per the advertised schedule.
The loved one reacts at first with indignation, as though this unsatisfactory state of affairs is something to be brought to the attention of higher authority with a view to obtaining a refund. My own glum instinct is to grumble that foreign kitchens never have decent tea-pots, bemoaning the lack of today’s Irish Independent..
But decades of the marriage which we celebrate here in Vermicella have forged a can-do approach to life. We are not here to whinge. We are in Italy to enjoy ourselves. A city as venerable and noble as this must have plenty to offer visitors, even in the rain. Hermione: ‘We need to find something culturally significant.’ Medders: ‘We need to find something that the Vermicellians do.’ Together: ‘We need to find something we cannot do at home.’ We are singing loud and clear from the same hymn sheet. A challenge has been set and we will rise to it. We did not come all this way to lie all day in bed. I begin picking my way through the scattering of brochures left by our thoughtful landlady while Hermione whips out her smart phone.
A flier issued by the Museo del Arte Moderna (approximately) proclaims an exhibition of Cubist nudes.
Paintings of women which appear distorted by a hundred prisms? Nah!
A leaflet published by the Museo Classico del Arte Classica (or thereabouts) invites us to view their Old Masters. Gloomy portraits of rich geezers in daft costumes? Nah!
Hermione reports TripAdvisor is trending, with news that archaeologists have opened a Roman basement in down town Vermicella to the public. All that venerable ancient Roman dust would be sure to play merry hell with my sinuses. Nah!
There’s a Dolce and Gabbana fashion shop just around the corner, charging four figure sums for fake fur shawls. Nah! We could light candles and pray for dry weather in one or all of the city’s 76 churches. Nah!
Or how about a workshop making ceramic candle-holders? Nah! Then the smart phone alerts us to a sale of cut-price egg whisks in the Hipomercato Gigantica (give or take a syllable or two) on the edge of town. We don’t need an egg-whisk. We did not come on holiday to spend our time in a supermarket. Or did we? Medders: ‘I could get new underpants.’
Hermione: ‘I could check out the salami.’
Medders: ‘We could find the cheapest bottle of wine.’ Hermione: ‘We could find the most expensive bottle of wine.’ And we could discover too whether Italian supermarkets, as rumoured, stock tinned Brussels sprouts.
Yeah! Forget the Cubist nudes and standby for a serious retail experience which ticks all boxes.