My half-term with an angry nun and dreamy priests
‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” No, not me – the stout little nun who blatantly queue-jumped as we lined up to visit St Peter’s in Rome. The Spanish tourists behind us were laughing and taking photographs as she barged her way past after we’d been shuffling forward for an hour, bristly face resolute.
I wondered aloud whether her vocation might not confer priority boarding, as it were. She looked stonily unimpressed.
“Mummy, why does she look so cross?” asked my 10-year-old. “Is that because she is fed up obeying God?”
“No, darling, it’s because she’s fed up obeying priests,” I replied. “A lifetime making cups of tea, cleaning and answering phones, yet she doesn’t even get an accessall-areas lanyard. Loving God is the easy bit. Loving other people is a lot harder.”
We paid top dollar for our Vatican visit; an eye-watering €200 (£177) saw us gain entry at 7.20am before the crowds.
It was well worth it to have the Raphaels almost to ourselves and enjoy a respectfully silent
Sistine Chapel. Our half-term trip to the Eternal City was a glorious baroque-and-gelato fest. Highlights included the three Caravaggios in San Luigi dei Francesi, and the restaurant on the Via del Governo Vecchio that liberally served us prosecco shots as we queued outside.
We browsed battered ecclesiastical treasures in the Sunday morning flea market, listened to buskers in Campo dei Fiori and, after several days of pleading, the family allowed me to buy what I referred to as “the hot priests” calendar.
The Calendario Romano was on sale everywhere, including the Holy City, and featured a handsome young cleric on the front and a dozen more dreamboat clergymen inside.
I’m not entirely sure it was aimed at my demographic, but it elevated my soul, especially when I held it aloft as a group of deacons passed by and cried to one bespectacled soul: “Are you Monsignor February?”
There was a bemused pause, then a whisper, and finally raucous, shared laughter that was sweeter than a baptism of bells in every last one of the city’s 600 churches.