Crrronk!

Nothing quite saps the spirit quicker than a 'crrrronk' grinding noise coming from somewhere under the car that appears out of the blue when you're over 1,300 miles from your local friendly mechanic.  Vicky and I look at each other in panic.  She checks she really has put the car in gear, lets the clutch out gently but there's still no response.

"Oh no!  This happened to me with the Audi once," I said.  "I'll get out and push, you steer."

The problem is that we're stuck at a motorway toll booth.  It’s two o’clock in the afternoon.  We've just paid the two euro fee and there are about six cars waiting in 40 degree heat behind us just south of the road rage capital of Italy, Naples.  I look at the toll man and make the universal car is dead sign by pointing and miming slitting my throat with the back of my thumb.

Now I’m pointing at him to see whether he can help us push the car over to a safety lane by the crash barrier I can spot about 200 yards over to the right.  And since even my moderate running exercise regime is unlikely to have registered enough strength to push a fully laden Ford Galaxy with roof box, bike carrier and the kids in-car entertainment paraphernalia, I reckon it'll probably take a couple of people to haul us up the very slight incline.

He shakes his head.  He's making it perfectly clear with both arms outstretched palms up that he can't leave his post.  He sympathises etc. but I'm on my own.  Then I remember the guy hanging around hawking tat for a euro?  He's eyeing me suspiciously.  I play the dead car mime again and beckon him over to start pushing.  He pauses for a minute and then comes over.  Business must be slow.  He shovels his merchandise into a plastic bag and helps me to push.  I'm thrilled and get a rush of adrenaline, legs pumping and then out of the corner of my eye I see there's a car coming straight for me at speed from one of the toll lanes on my right.  I know I can't stop or we won't reach the safety spot.  At the last minute he swerves round me horn blaring and shouting in Italian.  I carry on straining and pushing and a moment later we reach the safety of the crash barrier.  I thank the man profusely but all he’s interested in is some money for his trouble.  I’ve clearly mistaken his public-spirited gesture.  He’s hit a raw nerve.  I'm so incensed that he didn't do it as an act of kindness that I shake my head and wave him off.  It's not until much later once we’ve sorted out how we’re going to fix the car that I realise how tight-fisted I’ve been.  All I had to do was buy a two-inch orange plastic skeleton or a pan scourer for a euro.

I chewed over it all night. "Bad karma," Vick said.

I felt so ashamed that two days later, when we were approaching the toll from the south on our way back up north, we looked out for him across the dozen or so gates in the hope that we could repay him.  But sadly, he was nowhere to be seen. 

Lost in Italy

You need bread.  It's a national holiday.  All the local bread shops and supermarkets are closed.  You stop and ask a local woman where you can buy bread.  You only catch that it begins with a 'P' and that it's 10 kilometres away.  You don't have Sat Nav, you’ve never been to this area before and you realise you've left the Italy road atlas on the villa kitchen table.  Do you:

a)    Drive back to villa to fetch the road atlas;

b)    scavenge from the two local restaurant bins and pass the scraps off as all that was left in the bakery; or

c)    take a punt, aim in the general direction of the pointed finger and hope you'll pick up a road sign with the town beginning with 'P'?

Clear blue skies, the optimism of 9 o'clock in the morning, sun, high spirits, peace and quiet in the back of the car and a rare opportunity to hunter gather.  No contest.  I drove out of the village heading East and was immediately rewarded with a sign that included Ponte di Ferro 10.  Bingo!  That must be what she'd said.  Spirits high.  I cranked up the Scouting for Girls CD and wound the windows fully down.  I lost the signs after about 8 k's, took a left turn, passed two puzzled locals, sensed I'd gone wrong, turned round, passed the puzzled locals again and then carried on heading down into a gently undulating but very twisty Umbrian potholed road edged with lush hedges and well-tended fields.  At the bottom, there was a sign for Ponte di Ferro and soon after a set of traffic lights and just opposite the lights was a queue of people outside a shop, which I presumed was the bread shop.  I parked up and ambled over to the shop doorway which was open wide with about 10 people queuing quietly and smiling.  It was all very good-natured stuff.  And it was definitely the bread shop except there wasn't any bread.  There were the telltale breadbaskets behind the counter, little glass display counters with cream cakes and a few token rolls.  Against all the odds I'd found the only bread shop in Umbria open on a national holiday.  Just no bread.  I went back to sit in the car to wait.  Three other cars arrived and parked up.  Their owners swung out, poked their heads into the shop, ambled out again and sat back in their cars.  Two ladies arrived on foot and joined the queue.  The question was, did I wait for something to happen and trust that the queue being Italian wouldn't have the patience to wait around for too long or did I go back to the villa since I'd only nipped out for five minutes to get some bread?  Twenty minutes elapsed.  Just as I was about to throw in the towel, a dusty white Fiat Doblo van arrived, reversed into the parking spot next to the back of the shop and out stepped a vision in a baker's cap that left me wondering whether the male punters were here on time for the bread or the chance to flirt with the staff.  She began unloading tray after tray of fresh, warm wonderful bread, which was still toasty warm by the time I got back to the villa.  Sadly, however, my triumphant return to the villa with two 'grande' breads was punctured by the discovery that they were both unsalted.

You need a supermarket shop for that night's campsite meal.  It's 40 degree late afternoon heat.  You're on your first ever solo driving trip in Italy.  You can't speak Italian if something goes wrong.  You haven't a clue where the local supermarket might be.  Do you:

a)    stop and ask for directions at reception on your way out of the campsite;

b)    turn left out of the gate, heading towards Venice; or

c)    turn right out of the gate, heading towards Jesolo

Vick didn't stop at reception.  It was too hot to wait in the queue and how hard could it be to locate a supermarket in outskirts of one of Italy's major cities?  She turned left and within five minutes was completely lost.  An hour went by.  Then another half an hour.  I kept checking my mobile for bad news.  I started to worry. Where on earth was she?  And then just when I was starting to seriously panic she returned, rolling her eyes as she whizzed past.  Success!  She'd found a supermarket but had absolutely no idea where it was.

Which left us in a bit of a quandary when our new Dutch neighbours, seeing that our tent was already pitched and that we were all eating supper, asked where the nearest supermarket was.  Vick stayed silent.  “Try asking at reception”, I said.  “If you’re feeling adventurous, I spotted a sign saying 'Casino' just outside the campsite on the right.  I know that Casino is a major supermarket brand in France so maybe it’s also a supermarket here.”  They returned two hours later with take-away pizzas from the camp restaurant.  The 'Casino', in fact, turned out to be, well, just a casino.  And they'd failed to find Vick's supermarket.  So you can have your Sat Nav and road atlas, but when it comes to getting lost and hunter gathering in our family, we shan't go hungry.

Italian Campsites

A few minutes spent surfing the internet yielded three possible campsites within striking distance of Venice, Rome and Sorrento.  Friends were lending us their camping fridge so we needed an electric hookup.  Check.  It was going to be blisteringly hot.  With car space at a premium, we'd double bluff the rain gods and pack our raincoats just to make doubly sure it wouldn't rain.  Also the four nights we’d spend at each pitch we'd break up into two days' sightseeing and two days by the pool.  Surely all the sites would have a pool?  And stone me, Fusina, overlooking Venice from the West with a very handy 20-minute vaporetto shuttle service, didn't have one!  Back to the drawing board.  Another quick search and a check on Trip Advisor for Alba d'Oro, which my online translator defines as "golden dawn", which sounds lovely and I suppose makes sense as, facing East, it should pick up the morning sun rising over the lagoon.  And it has a pool.  Then we had a bit of a wobble over Sorrento's Santa Fortunata ("holy lucky") write-ups.  Comments about having to pay for the pool and the steep walk down to the beach seemed to be taking the edge off the fact that it had a pool, sounded clean, was within range of our day trip to Naples to taste the original Italian pizza and had sea views across the Bay of Naples.  However, the alternatives came in for a pasting from a variety of contributors busily laying into the ants, expense, traffic, unfriendliness and uncleanliness.  Conclusion: stick to our original plan.

Interestingly all three were billed as four star sites presumably on the basis that they all had a pool but thereafter the similarities ended.  Whereas I Pini ("the pines"), 30 minutes north of Rome, had friendly staff, kids entertainment that actually entertained kids and the Dutch, a cool pool slide and reasonably priced food, the other two didn't.  I Pini was so far in advance of the rest that we stayed an extra night betting that Santa Fortunata wouldn't even come close.  We were absolutely right.  Despite the blatant profiteering in evidence throughout Italy, the I Pini matriarch, who'd originally come over from Melbourne and fallen in love with an Italian, trusted me to pay her back when I was five cents short buying some cheese and beer from the shop.  We'd been having an animated discussion about the state of Australian cricket as I searched in vain for enough change.  I was so shocked at this simple gesture that I got a lump in my throat.  The kids pool was the size of two tennis courts roughly shaped like a peach and barely more than ankle deep.  Whilst the kids raced energetically down the slide clutching giant rubber rings sporting "vacanze.it" logos, the adults wallowed on the lining edge lapped by the cool water ripples relieving bodies of the ferocity of the 36 degree heat.  The restaurant food, whilst basic fare, was by far and away the best food we ate throughout the tour and, as an added bonus, was served by smiling staff.  Although the kids might argue that it was trumped by the piece of Pisa pizza in Pisa which we used as a photo prop for our last minute cheesy tourist snaps.

Arguably the most bizarre place was Alba d'Oro.  If you're looking for a place to lay your hat, within striking distance of Venice, with beds from £13 and makes no attempt to hide its toga partying reputation, then Alba D'Oro is the campsite for you.  Quiet it isn't.  In fact, for decibel level, the partying comes a distant second to the commercial aircraft taking off and landing at Marco Polo's runway a stone's throw from the campsite.  Part of the unguided site tour was to climb the two-metre grassy knoll and view the air traffic taxiing and roaring off so close that you could actually see the pilots.  There was no let up to the ear bashing from 6.30 in the morning until midnight, when the backpacker toga and foam parties were in full swing.  So, in essence, your choice of pitch is reduced to neighbouring the Aussie and Brit backpackers at the eastern end of the camp or skirting the runway to the western end.  We opted for the western end and settled down to a competitive game of airline bingo.  For sheer noise level, the proverbial 11 on the amplifier crown was taken by Ryanair taking off, which shook the drinks on the camping table.

A note on the Italian practice of charging full adult fares for over sixes.  Nothing can prepare you for the sheer cheek of being charged adult prices for your kids.  It made my blood boil every time.  I might be sympathetic to full priced seats on a plane or a train but a campsite?  When faced with, "how many are you?" I'd claim a pyrrhic victory with, "two adults, two children you'll charge for as adults and one child under six".  But the prize for the worst profiteering offender must go to Santa Fortunata, which, drawing on its wholly lucky proximity to the Amalfi coast, was the only place mean enough to charge us an additional cost just for the privilege of being able to bring our own car into the site.

So, in summary, I Pini was everyone's favourite.  The wooden spoon must go to Santa Fortunata for the gross profiteering, the dust bowl ground conditions and the awful signage – whatever you do, don't go down the 150 steps to the private beach mistakenly thinking it's the campsite beach just because the sign says "beach".

But however awful Alba d'Oro was, I'd like to think that the next time any of us comes into land at Marco Polo airport, we'll look out of the window just as we're coming into land and smile sympathetically at the poor campers braving the aircraft din and remember what a wonderful time we spent in 2011 touring Italy with the tents. 

Italian Wildlife

A scream pierces the siesta heat haze.  It's coming from the pool area.  Adrenal glands fire into action and I'm on my feet spilling the book that lay on my face.  As I get to the door my senses are on full alert, eyes sweeping the terrace and pool in a trouble diagnostic pattern.  Issy and Will are both alive, sitting in the shade looking at Moll quizzically, there's no blood anywhere.  Adrenal glands downgrade the threat hazard to amber. 

"Ugh!  That's disgusting!"  she screams.  As I bend over to look at what she's pointing at I see it's a frog taking shelter in the top corner of pool just where the water lips the stone edge of the filter system.  He's almost entirely hidden by the ledge minding his own business and no doubt cooling down from the intense heat.  Unfortunately eagle eyes has spotted him and has decided that frogs in any bit of water anywhere near where she is paddling is not acceptable.  She's fallen into the horror movie trap of being so terrified she's compelled to lean even closer to eye the frog almost invisible in the shadows.

"Moll it's only a frog, he's just cooling down for a moment, he's not doing you any harm…"

"Ugh!  Disgusting!" she cuts in not listening to me.  Is that another thing you do when terrified?  Not listen to your dad?  I can either try and fish him out or persuade Moll to ignore him and he'll climb out perfectly happily on his own steam.  Moll backs away scrunching up her face in disgust.  Can't think why we thought she'd need the drama classes she's booked into once the new term starts back in England.  The frog edges himself out with his back to the side wall, climbs up onto the poolside and then hops nonchalantly off to find some shade under Will's pool chair.  He's not as excited as I am about the frog's progress as he's too busy nuking storm troopers in his Star Wars  DS game.

In the evening, the pool attracts a sine wave of swallows combing the surface of the water for an evening aperitif.  I can't work out if they're thirsty or hungry as there's a good concentration of bugs littering the surface.  There are too many to count with any degree of accuracy as they're in perpetual motion until they take their bow with the sun dipping behind the western hills.  And then it's the turn of the bats in the twilight strafing the water for a drink, which I think is an incredibly clever feat of sonar navigation as they're coming in at pace.  And then the chirrup of cicadas reaches into your consciousness.  Thick, noisy and yet strangely comforting.  We had some in the pine tree above our tent just north of Rome which Vick insisted were birds until she conceded that most birds would be tucked up snugly in their roosts at 11 o'clock at night notwithstanding the racket coming from the camp entertainment area.

Gecko-watching was a popular sport in Sorrento.  Walking anywhere in the campsite was rewarded with a rustle of leaves, twigs or pine needles followed by a flash of green, scurrying of tiny feet and accompanying tail.  What is it about geckos that instantly puts a smile on your face and reduces you to pointing and yelling, "Look! Geck!", like a demented idiot?

Whilst the ants busied themselves around us in all our campsites, it was the impressive wasp population we shared the villa pool with that were arguably the most impressive.  Not one of them misbehaved all week even with Will and Moll wandering around barefoot through the 'drink zone'.  The drink zone was a small area, about a metre square, just by the top of the steps where the kids would get out of the pool.  Little water puddles collected in the indentations of the terrace stones, which the wasps happily arrived at, drank their fill and then flew off over the villa to a hidden colony in the woods surrounding.  At any one moment there were a dozen hovering about like helicopters landing on an aircraft carrier.  During the siesta, without any pool activity, they were forced to land on the pool surface - a precarious operation.  Losing their balance meant an epic struggle to free their wings from the extra weight.

But the creatures I felt most sorry for were the six ants that emerged from our camping gear back in England and shivered about the kitchen floor when exposed to the shock of the high summer temperature UK-style before being summarily squished by Will's flip flops.  Or maybe putting them out of their misery was a blessing in disguise.

Busking in Montpellier

As I turned the corner, my heart started thumping.  Eyes scanning the crowd, muscles on red alert.  Fight or flight?  What if I played dead?  What if I lay down on the ground and did my rasher of bacon impersonation?  I try looking at the people walking past.  Eyes not focusing properly. Blink. Blink again. I try rubbing my eyes with the back of my sleeve.  I can only focus on the first two or three people streaming past me.  And there on the left is my spot.  Walk past my spot.  Turn 180 degrees.  Walk towards my spot.  Eye my spot. Visualise myself at the spot. Walk past the spot one more time. Then just as I'm turning the corner, I get a voice in my head.  It's my gran.  Well okay it's not actually my gran but it's her voice, calm, thoughtful, not at all ghostly, resolute. 'You can do it,' she says gently.  'Seven deep breaths.'

I breathe in once.  Heart pumping so I'm sure people can see it through my shirt.  The question is do I get to the spot and take the breaths or do I time the breaths so I've hit seven by the time I arrive back at the spot?  Second breath and I'm back at the spot.  I put my case down and take another breath.  Look up.  Still can't focus properly, hands clammy. A sweat droplet just brushed the underside of my arm. Fourth breath.  I look up.  It's a beautiful day – vivid blue above, squintingly bright sunlight and Shit!  How many breaths have I got to? Either four or five. No, it must be four.  Take another one but not as slow and steady as the others. A lady with a neat red suit pretends not to see me. Breathe in, breathe out. Flip the first of the three stainless steel case hasps. Then the second. I've got to do this bending over, which makes the seventh breath too shallow. I can feel my lungs contracting.  I'm going to need an eighth breath.  But, do you know what, I'm really going to do this.  Third hasp popped. Guitar lid open.  It's one of those beautiful solid wood acoustic guitar cases with real leather that wouldn't look out of place transporting illicit liquor or tommy guns in an old black and white depression-torn 1920's American gangster movie. I look at the guitar.  Heart screaming. Show time.  Except it isn't really show time.  Just a bunch of shoppers, lovers, restaurant-goers, cyclists and dog-walkers ambling along Rue de la Loge.  But I flip the lid back down. I can't do this. I'm gripped with terror.  I've almost given myself a D-I-Y lobotomy.  I'm not thinking straight.  Another drip. A Jack Russell sniffs the case and is dragged away before it can lift its leg.  And then the voice comes back.  No, it's two voices.  'You can do it!'  'Run!' 'Just open the case and start'. 'Run away!' 'You're hungry.  You have no money. Just do it.' 'Now!'

I open the case again but just as it flips back against the hinges I close it again.  I'm in the middle of some bizarre fan ceremony with a guitar case lid.  This time I close my eyes as if I'm summoning up the spirits of my ancestors and open the case. Pick up the guitar. Put the strap over my head.  Reach into my trouser pockets, search round and then take out a black Gibson plectrum.  It's warm. I drop it on the ground and realise I'm shaking.  In fact both my legs are shaking too.  I rotate the case so it's facing the passers by and then wait.  Not the faintest idea of what I'm waiting for.  It's like waiting for the wind to drop just before you play an iron shot on a links or before you serve a tennis ball when the breeze is up.  And then the fingers in my left hand move automatically to a chord.  They are not my fingers.  An invisible force has taken them over.  I pinch the plectrum with the fingers of my right hand.  Pinch harder.  Hold my breath like I'm about dive below the surface of the pavement and then I start with the hardest and loudest strum my guitar has ever made.  I'm Pete Townsend on speed.  My eyes are tightly closed. I'm wind-milling and find my right knee bent double and my left leg outstretched like a half-Cossack dance.  Then I open my eyes and there's a crowd of three girls watching me giggling, pointing to my hat, which is an old explorer's Pith helmet jigging up and down.  They walk off.  A man in a dark suit with sunglasses pretends to ignore me.  But I don't care. I'm playing. I've done it.  I'm really doing it and I'm smiling.  And then out of the corner of my eye I notice a tall thin guy wearing black.  He's unshaven.  He's relaxed. He's looking at me quizzically.  He has warm eyes which belie his biker's jacket.  He's takes a cigarette from behind his ear, smells it, lights it with a bronze zippo and takes a long satisfied drag.  He seems to have made his mind up about something.  He waits for me to finish my song, steps in close, clapping with the fag in his teeth smiling and hollers, 'Bravo!'

'You are busker, no?'

A comedian.

I nod.

'Zeez no good 'ere.  We French not give money to busker 'ere in street.  You want money, zen eez better in front of cafe.'  He's pointing over to La Place de la Comedie.  He takes another drag of his cigarette and I notice he's got black finger nails.  He thrusts his hand out. 'Vincent'.  I must look either as if I haven't him or am sceptical about what he's saying because he tries again.  I nod.  'Thank you,' I say, 'I'm Charlie.' 

I shake his hand, walk out into the street, put the guitar back in its case, bend down to click the hasps back shut and when I stand up, I find that Vincent's gone.

Bristol Organic Food Festival

Faced with the jeopardy of eating organic chocolate with lavender or sea salt to save the lives of my family, it'd be a close run thing.  Lavender in our household is used as a sleeping aid dried in small pot pourri bags and nestled snugly under the girls pillows.  Will and I have resisted on the grounds that it's a girl thing.  And it gives the postman something to leap over or walk through depending on how energetic he's feeling as he cuts through to our neighbour's garden in the relentless shaving of precious seconds from his mail round.  Sea salt is a boon to cooking but has no place in a piece of chocolate.  As I bit down onto the sample (thankfully only the size of a wonky pea), my sweet and savoury taste buds went into hyper drive.  After a moment of complete confusion, I had an intensely unsatisfying cloying sensation around the sides of my throat roughly where the glands swell up during a nasty cold.

But of course that's the beauty of an organic food festival.  A great opportunity to sample weird and wonderful combinations so prepare yourself for some off notes.  Take nutmeg rice pudding for instance.  I'm prepared to accept that adding a dash of nutmeg to a rice pudding is an old-fashioned culinary classic but making the nutmeg the starring role is wrong.  Very wrong.  Avocado oil.  Avocado oil?  "It has a very high smoke point, so it's excellent for searing fish like salmon", said the well-rehearsed lady at the stall.  Wikipedia puts it at 520^oF, which is not far off how hot the car felt at several points on holiday in Italy.  I note that olive oil is no slouch at 468^oF, which is more than enough to form a crust on a piece of fish, albeit one particularly rich in Omega 3 fatty acids, so although I'll happily concede that avocado would triumph over olive in an oil Top Trumps battle, methinks the avocado smoking point benefit is somewhat overkill.  However the colour was awesome.  Intensely green like freshly cut wet grass and it coated the bread cube pleasingly.  But the taste was a huge disappointment, which is possibly why it's mainly used in lubrication and cosmetics.  Which compels me to allay any Hulk fans' fears over the availability of matching skincare product colours.

Boabab root powder was just one of a plethora of health foods and roots on display with an imaginative range of health benefit properties.  "It's like a lemonade apparently," from a woman eyeing the mixture in a thimbleful plastic sampler cup.  She took a swig, screwed up her face and caught my eye.  Wouldn't recommend it, she seemed to be communicating.  In the spirit of trying new stuff and persuaded by the claims of bringing energy to my body I had a small sip.  Expecting a lemonadey taste, I got nothing other than what I supposed ground up root mixed with water would be like – a bit gritty with an earthy flavour and not very pleasant to look at.  A bit like licking your lips after you've just been tackled on a muddy rugby pitch.

Caramelised onion hummus split the family right down the middle.  I liked it.  Vick hated it.  The kids abstained. As did non-dairy chocolate.  Rice powder substituting the milk content.  Moll couldn't get enough of it, at least until the stallholder asked her to move on.  Iz and Will scrunched up their faces and made straight for the Yeo Valley yoghurt bonanza for a third helping to cleanse the palate.

And then finally to the crepe stand for the kids and the Bristol Caribbean wrap stand for a fiery jerk chicken for us.  Delicious and a fitting end to a wonderful afternoon's sampling.

Santa Fortunata campsite beach

Q. When is a beach not a beach?

A.  When it doesn’t have either a sea-shore or lake–shore covered in pebbles or sand.  Unless of course you’re in Italy where the Concise Oxford Dictionary definition has not yet penetrated.

To reach the cliff-hugging Santa Fortunata campsite ‘beach’ requires ice-cool nerves (tricky in 40 degree heat) and well-toned calf muscles.  Reaching the bottom you are rewarded with a slab of dark rock approximately 40 metres wide by 10 metres deep.  Not a grain of sand or hint of a pebble in sight so no need to pack your beach umbrella or wind break although several fissures could just about accommodate a windmill.

For first timers, the experience is disorientating.  Having slogged down 150 steps (Issy, 13, counted them) in a 1:2 gradient you are hardly disposed to turn round just because there’s no sand or pebbles.  And what is a beach anyway if not a means to enter the sea for a swim or a snorkel?  Judging by the incredulity on the faces of later arrivals, we weren’t alone in our initial disappointment.  But then something miraculous happened.  Or perhaps it was just an inevitable consequence of having no sand to model.  Either way, the girls wanted to go snorkelling.  Molly, 11, took the lead but immediately ran into considerable difficulty with her flippers.  Either her feet had grown 6 sizes in two months or the flippers had wilted in the heat.  I guess Cindie’s ugly step sisters drew no such conclusions when faced with the glass slipper but they would surely have recognised the intense concentration beads glistening on Moll’s face.  The inevitable conclusion was that these were in fact Will’s, 5, flippers and that they’d made their way into Moll’s snorkel bag by accident and that Moll’s were back up the cliff face still in the car roof box.

The roman god of miracles struck for a second time as Vick, remembering we needed some food for later, volunteered to play mountain goat.  Meanwhile Will found a spot on a double rock slab and settled down to 3 hours non-stop DS gaming.

Getting into the water on the left side of the ‘beach’ required a technically hazardous launch from the rocks.  Only later did we discover that there was a custom built walkway and steps on the right side of the ‘beach’.  Never one to shirk a higher difficulty tariff, I used a combination of feet first lotus position, Papillon’s theory of seven waves and a fixed grin for the kids to show them that a left entry could in fact be achieved without getting hurt.  Scraping my elbow on the way in was not an option.  I did not want to present a tasty morsel for Italy’s resident or holidaying shark population.  And then once in, you really are in the beautiful Mediterranean.  Salty, warm and teeming with blue fish about the size of your hand.  Wonderful!   Refreshing.  This is the life.  Who said this wasn’t a beach?  What does the Concise Oxford Dictionary know anyway?

And when Vick returns with the right flippers and masks, we can’t get the girls out of the water.  Shrieking with delight.  Remembering their sub-aqua training drills and hand signals from Horfield pool.  Splashing to the left and right watching the fish, who remain very sensibly just out of reach.  And all this in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius looking majestically over the Bay of Naples.

“Dad?  If it erupted now, would we get covered?”

“Yep, no doubt about it Moll.”  But what a lovely beach to get covered on.