Now And At The Hour Of Our Death

The following was scribbled yesterday morning, reverently, into a lachrymose notebook whilst waiting for a train to Palermo....

There is a tiny chapel in the train station of Agrigento and, I must say, very little else. Which is why I find myself sitting here at the back of this wholly deserted room, surrounded by the usual, enormously tasteful Catholic gewgaws and a sweetly patronising message from the Good Pope (the one before the Nazi). Also, because today is a national holiday in Italy, the train station is empty but for a few elderly American tourists, and here in this chapel, it's just me and this old bird...



Anything could happen.

Sadly, my time in Sicily has not been all good. It started out wonderfully, however, and everything was going great, until halfway through my second night, a couple of people with whom I had been getting on really enormously well turned on me, swore at me viciously, pushed me away and left me drunk and weeping in the middle of the night, in the middle of a strange town, without even the name of the hotel where we were staying. I’m still not sure why it happened, but I do know that it ruined the whole trip for me. Or at least this leg of the trip.

Actually, I do know why it happened – it happened because I made jokes about the relationship between our two nations, and because I was talking to a girl that one of the other men fancied. Imagine that. Me. Making someone jealous.

I don’t want to say anything else about it here as I’m going to write to the two people involved and see what they have to say about it in the cold light of day. I'm still reeling from it all actually, and it's left a very sour, and very sad, taste in my mouth.

But life goes on, and I suppose, on the bright side, one day it’ll give me something interesting to write about. But not now. For now at least, we forget, and we move on, back up North to Faenza and hopefully, everything crossed, to the adorable Pea.

Now, come on, Mary, you old bugger! Give me your goddamn blessing!



Thanks, love.