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Rome is great. Loud, lively and invigorating. In fact its so invigorating I might go somewhere quieter for the New Year’s to have a bit of a rest.

A Roman Christmas

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 11:12:08

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pool played on a table no bigger than a card table, Fabian taught me lethal French insults (guaranteed to get me assaulted in any French town) and Gabriel gave me his interesting insights into Italian culture. Being a keen observer of human nature and a student of Italian he was an authority on all things Italian and for that matter on all things in general. When asked his opinion he would hold forth with a lengthy discourse of the merits of various pursuits, places or people. Occasionally he would break into boisterous and invective laden Italian which he delivered at three times his normal volume. His finest moment came when he noted to me that as Roman women get older and older their skirts get shorter and shorter as if "the number of inches in the skirt is proportional to the number of years they have left".

My only personal encounter with the women of Rome was somewhat different. It was the kind of near death experience that you are subjected to when you attempt to cross the road in Rome. Being a cosmopolitan, take-traffic-in-your-stride kind of person you stride masterfully onto the road heading for the other side. As soon as you step out from the curb you are driven back by horde of hairy armed Italian drivers bearing down on you in their Fiats and Alfa Romeo’s with murder in their eyes. Thoroughly shaken you retreat to the safety of the pavement and wait patiently for the lights to change so that you can cross without being flattened to a pulp.

This time as you step off the pavement, confident that you have the law on your side, you are struck to the ground by a swarm of mopeds that materialise from between the cars and take the brief opportunity the red light presents to steal a march on their larger road-hogging cousins.

As you lie in the gutter, bruised and battered, you can vaguely hear the stream of outraged abuse that the retreating 'maidens' hurl in your direction. The traffic ...