RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 23/10/05

Some unseen, secretive bastard steals £300 from me by electronic means back in the UK. I find out a week later. The police need a report on my return.

Padre Cecco, 74, short sighted, thick glasses and prune-skin face, walking through Citta on Sunday afternoon composing sermons, pondering a mystery: “Why is it, no, how is it, no, is it possible that the distance between those fallen autumn leaves on the paving stones in Piazza Perugino (as they fall there every year) could be markers of time? Metaphysical as much as corporeal? Not the leaves themselves but the spaces between? The leaves are way posts, yes perhaps spiritual ones, beautiful honey brown each, some stuck flat to the concrete others curled and dry, more prone to fly away, and between these life passes. The reflection of many Sunday afternoons and of the proceedings of a life between each. The young families with their children in pushchairs, wrapped up against the start of winter; the four soccer players with their strange haircuts; the group of tourists parading slowly through the main street and the market; that bunch of local people whose faces I recognize, each of them, strolling after mass this morning having their photo taken with that man in the woolen hat who looks very familiar to me yet is not one of my usual congregation. There is quite a stir going on now.” Padre Cecco stops and looks amazed at the face of the man he now knows is an actor from a famous television series. A police drama series. Cecco’s favourite. Cecco is excited. Cecco joins the hubbub around the actor and his small entourage signing autographs, having photo’s taken with wives and siblings. Cecco forgets pondering mysteries and shakes the hand of the actor with the bulbous nose, a man whose face he knows in every detail, a companion almost there every other night in his living room with him: solid, honest, intelligent, heroic. A character to admire and aspire to. Cecco is overwhelmed with gratitude. But the stranger who is not a stranger cannot answer the praise with any sense of reality or equality, for Cecco is simply one among many.

Items on the market, Citta della Pieve:
- china plate with image of an old steam train arriving at a station, replicated in embossed blue pattern
- 2 German army helmets from WWII
- an Italian tank soldier’s helmet from WWII
- a bronze angel statue with huge unfurled wings, ready to fly
- a selection of humourous postcards from approx 1930s, beautifully drawn and coloured
- so many poorly painted images of Christ performing different miracles, seemingly always beneath a sky so dark blue as to be representing a world in permanent night
- a thick metal bracelet of unknown origin (it is claimed) made to look classical/pagan, but not original for sure