Home from Rome

Benedict Ambrose and I have returned from Rome after almost two weeks away. We began our travels by bus and we ended them by taxicab, for we overestimated B.A.'s strength and general health. 

There was a terrible, terrible moment on October 22 when I looked behind me on the endless Roma Termini platform towards our train and saw B.A. struggling under the weight of his small knapsack. His poor face was red and sweaty, and he was literally staggering. I did not then recall that famous line from Withnail and I-- "We've come on holiday by mistake!"-- but it was clear that an error had been made, most likely by me.  

The errors compounded when we caught the Pisa train and I brooded on B.A.'s exhausted face instead of watching out the door for our station. Normally I would have counted exactly how many stations the train was supposed to stop at, especially if (as in this case) there were no announcements and no electronic signs. And indeed it was almost impossible to see our station (let alone its sign) when we stopped at it, for it is under refurbishment and was almost entirely dark. I didn't realize where we were until I saw the very familiar buildings slide by, and in fact, from the hubbub I gathered that other people were caught out, too. We all alighted at the next station, where I had a very noisy cry. 

Is this where the middle part of middle age loses sight of youth and meets old age? It certainly felt like it. However, not even when I was 27 could I have carried a backpack, a knapsack, my handbag, and a man weighing 10 stone (168 lbs), shrugged off missing a foreign railway station after dark, and summoned a taxicab as if I could fluently avoid being cheated over the fare. Fortunately, I had the sense to check my phone and accept our landlord's offer to pick us up. 

We had a lovely three days by the sea. We ate one huge lunch in the sun, a smaller one which watching the rain and wind whip up the Mediterranean, and a small one in a tavola calda near the railway station. We then spent a week at a luxury hotel (deep bathtub AND shower cubicle; very large bed), attending a press conference and then the Roman Life Forum. We went from there (by taxicab) to an AirBnB on the Via dei Pettinari, which is beside the FSSP church in Rome, Santissima Trinità. We went to the latter for Mass three times: once for Sunday, once to pray for the late Fred Stone (a former leader of Una Voce Scotland), and once for the Feast of the Holy Souls (see photo). 

I reflected at one point that we had been in our usual holiday town this year both before the tourist season began and just as it was ending. We were therefore spared crowds and oppressively hot weather. In May B.A. had just received his new cancer diagnosis, but after a day at the seaside, he physically felt great. In late October, having been weaned off his beloved steroid medication, he really did not. However, when he felt well enough to be out and about, he was, and when he didn't, he stayed in bed. I, his penny-pinching wife, fought down my detestation of cabs as a waste of money. We hailed one at Stazione Roma-San Pietro on Thursday, near Chiesa Nuova on Friday morning, and at Haymarket Station on Friday afternoon.

I'm afraid this is not much of a travelogue. I was at work, really, so the one tourist destination I spent much time in was the park around the Villa Doria Pamphili, which is huge and dotted with umbrella pines. It has lovely 18th century landscaping and romantically battered buildings, as well as Romans young and old going for jogs or walking small dogs. It shares in Rome's perpetually running public faucets, from which B.A. drank the one time he felt well enough to walk in the park with me. We strolled from bench to bench, taking long rests. It was very pleasant. 

My computer had Netflix as usual. I stayed up very late watching the 2019 Little Women, the 1994 Little Women, and then the 2019 Little Women again. Clare Danes was a fantastic Beth (though Eliza Scanlen was very good), and Florence Pugh actually made Amy sympathetic, although I wish she had been paired with Christian Bale's Laurie, not Timothée Chalamet's. The latter seemed a tad too pixie-like for Laurie, but otherwise Greta Gerwig's film was perfect. We all know it was a huge artistic error for Louisa May Alcott not to let Jo.... Well, you know what I'm talking about. When I was 11 or so, I rewrote the ending to Little Women, and so I thought it so cool that Gerwig did, too. 

Any similarities between Beth and B.A. have occurred to me only now, and I have discarded them.