From Jester To King XXIV

My next stop Italy, a place I not visited since my youth, and boy was I glad to be back. We were there for a wedding and didn’t have much time to get from the place we were dropped off at to the place where the function was to be held. So we made good speed. Everything came back in spades: the piazzas, the stradas, the colours of the roadside paving stones that distinguish parking restrictions. The streets were dirty but not in a way that didn’t suggest that some thought had gone into the process. I might have seen a dead rat but I can’t be sure; it was a snatched glimpse of something resembling a tail. There was a sing-song quality to everything and I too found myself singing, but on passing one of those open-fronted food stores, its more than well-fed proprietor must have heard my dulcet tones because he called out for a rendition in Italian. You see he wanted to know what I was singing about and do you know I can’t for the life of me remember! I must have been singing in English though and I had to let him down gently with a no parlo Italiano as I rushed past. There were few people; apart from a man running his dachshund on old-fashioned roller-skates -- yes it was the dog on skates and not the man -- the skates were the ones that are bare metal frames, I don’t remember seeing anyone. And this man too had a happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care quality about him such that the mere sight of him automatically lifted my spirits. Smile and the world smiles with you. Forza Italia!