What a lovely wedding it was! The interior of the marriage hall was decorated by Jacques Cousteau, the happy train drove us to the reception, where the bubbles refused to disappear, followed by a self-serve dessert in a fantastic ice-cream shop! All right on the sea with lovely company, food and drink.
Here it is. The unveiling of the toe. I could have snapped a beauty just we we hopped out of the sea, but had I put this blog before the stemming of my Gemmola’s gushing toe I would be a single man today.
Gemmola’s pretty dress hangs in the breeze of the olive grove as we prepare to get to the Salle de Marriage.
Martina’s new wedding shoes are… original, shall we say.
You know who you are.
(The following contains descriptions which may be rendered very graphically by your imagination. If you are sensitive, and a non smoker [but only if you are both] please skip this post and search for Frozen Custard instead.)
Yesterday afternoon Martina and I watched South Africa draw with Mexico in the first game of the world cup. We had limped there together and the Sangria was beginning to work nearly as quickly as the anaesthetic was wearing off her little foot.
Along came an older gentleman, fairly incapacitated due to a lack of oxygen in the blood, it seemed. He gurgled through a hole two inches beneath his adam’s apple. Struggling to speak, he loosened his scarf and pulled out a small mirror to inspect the excavation. Then he proceeded to gurgle up a cacophony of substances. ‘Gurgle’ does not really capture the sound: imagine a symphony of cement and gravel being shoveled, backed by several imbalanced dice being rolled in a wooden dice-thrower, and accompanied by some twangs of out-of-tune, about to snap vocal chords. Or, imagine a digeridoo, lined with two inches of slimy, un-homogenised mucous, playing Carmina Burana, kept in rhythm with the repetition of a bushman’s saw rasping through a rotting redgum railway sleeper.
The stage is set. After several bars of the symphony a set of very long tweezers – a conductor’s baton – pause the chamber reheasal. With eyes firmly on the mirrored excavation, the conductor reaches inside and grasps first slime, then bloody mucous, now something indistiguishable. The baton is inspected and hurriedly wiped on a tissue each time before being reinserted. And each time the conductor reaches too far, he winces as the pointy metal hits the back of his oesophagus.
The show has many encores, bur we cannot stay on. My companion’s blood loss, shock, stitches and waning anaesthic have proven too strong an oers d’oevre for such a dramatic concerto. We must leave.
South Africa 1, Mexico 1. My smoker friends 0, when you do this to yourself and expect my companionship.
(Well-paid job offers with anti-smoking agencies may be forwarded to ahatzis(at)tpg.com.au)
I must get back to breakfast. Aurevoir!
It was only three stitches. Here’s Martina’s new footwear, after I taped her flip-flop to her foot. Ingenious, if I do say so myself. (When the dressing is changed, I promise a more gruesome photo). Sadly, we missed a lovely long lunch with Abi and Adam.
Marti kicked what she thought was a rock while treading water at the casino beach in Menton. I think it must have been a broken bottle. The cut runs along the length of the top of her second toe on the right foot, clean, an inch long, and to the bone. Filleted, disected, like de-boning a chicken thigh (her toes are much more attractive than a chicken thigh of course). She’s being stitched up in emergency as I write this. They wouldn’t let me in with her, so I asked the doctor as he wheeled her away to give her a tetanus shot for being naughty. There was a lot of blood initially but we taped it up and got a taxi. She nearly fainted, probably from shock. My guess: six stitches.
Waiting in emergency:
My temporary tape-up:
It was quite a hike from the train station to Saint Michel campground. The altitude increased 1000 feet over a distance of 800 meters! Our bag didn’t help. But is beautiful up here – our tent is in quite an old olive grove.
The view over Menton from about half way up our climb to the campsite..!
There’s someone in my tent again!
Move over Notre Dame, here’s Milan’s Duomo…
Patrizia, Giuliano and Giannino live in the town of Cerro Maggiore, near the station of Rho, a short train ride from Milan. In Greek, the letter Rho (ρ) is also the name of a south-east Aegean island. A rocky outcrop near Kastellorizo, it was inhabited for many years by a remarkable lady, the ‘lady of Rho’. Every day of her life there she raised the Greek flag in very close view of Turkey. Rowing there from Kastellorizo with her husband and mother, she was soon alone as they both died shortly after arrival. She rowed her mother’s body across the sea back to Kastellorizo alone for burial, then returned to Rho and continued the flag raising until she died.
Follow this link for the fascinating story:
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_of_Ro?wasRedirected=true
Photos: ‘Pig Island’, an art installation in Milan; Can someone tell me, is this Tibulus and Fibulus, or Romulus and someone else? Leaving Milano Centrale.
After the few places we’ve been recently, Milan seems nice and cheap. Martina’s first pizza was almost as exciting as her first coffee. When you can get a ristretto for 70 cents that’s better than anywhere in Melbourne, you know this is Gemmola heaven. Patrizia and Giuliano picked us up and are hosting us, but Giannino is in Rome and we won’t see him before we leave.
Photos: Our first pizza – Patrizia, Martina, Anna, Ari and Giuliano enjoy a first pizza in Milan.
Italy loves Pizza nearly as much as us:
The first cafe e panini got the Italian genes kicking in Gemmola:
