V is for Venice

Anyone who has been there will know why this city deserves a chapter heading to itself. Anyone who hasn’t yet been there should go soon, before it sinks into oblivion, as - from the way Italian governments behave with restoration funds put at their disposal shows - it is likely to do.

People whinge about the smell in summer (so why don’t they go at another time of year?), but they are probably the sort of people who find something to whinge about anywhere in the world. And in Venice they are so blind to the glorious beauty of all that is around them, that all they can think about is the smell. They should go to Benidorm instead and smell the fish and chips, lager and vomit. There won’t be a chapter about that resort in these erotic memoirs.

I think I’ve been to Venice about seven times altogether, usually just for two or three days, and it’s certainly not too often. Three of those visits stand out, for different reasons.

The first was in the Spring of 1971, I think. My father had died in 1969 at 65, about three months after taking his retirement, and it had been difficult for my sister and myself to help Mum out of her grief. However, sister and Mum nevertheless came out to Geneva just under a year after Dad’s death, and I took them to the Locarno in the Ticino, the Italian-speaking part of south-east Switzerland.

The trip (Mum’s first time on the "Continong" proper, though she had been once to Jersey) was very successful. The only tiny blot on the landscape was when the maître-d’hôtel in the restaurant of the place where we were staying in Locarno asked Mum (who had chosen trout), which one she wanted from the selection swimming happily around in a tank.

She practically threw up on the spot when she realised it was going to be killed specially for her, and then rapidly changed her order to steak!

The following year Mum suggested coming out with her (older) friend, Eileen. Now Eileen had never been anywhere. Certainly not abroad, and probably not even to London. Her horizons - largely for financial reasons - had been limited to Merseyside. They flew to Geneva to stay with me for a few days, and I had warned them to bring some lighter clothing, because I was taking them away to a slightly warmer spot for three days, though I did not reveal where it would be.

We took a train from Geneva - the Trans-Europ-Express Lemano - to Milan, and there we crossed the platform to await a train whose destination was indicated as "Venezia". They didn’t speak any Italian and so didn’t cotton on.

Two of our three reserved seats turned out to be occupied by a young Italian couple, and I gave him the rounds of the kitchen in my bits of various languages until he was shamed into giving up his seat so that both my two ladies could sit down. His wife (bit of stuff?) didn’t budge of course, so I had to stand throughout the trip.

Which proved very long. For ill-explained reasons we left late, were delayed several times en route, and eventually reached Venice over four hours late, with nothing to eat in the meantime.

At long last we drew into Santa Lucia Station, at about 10.30pm, and I carried the bags down to the edge of the