On the coming wedding
My friends Roberto and Douglas are tying the knot tomorrow in Amsterdam at four o'clock.
Characteristically, some insane organizer has decided that the Giro D'Italia, with its attendant publicity and public and disruption of traffic (The Tour of Italy, in case it wasn't clear) has to start in... Amsterdam. Tomorrow. Two hours before the ceremony and snaking past the venue. Why? Search me. Douglas growled that it's Italy's last attempt to wreck their life together.
I was out having dinner with Roberto's family last night (plus Doug and Alex). It was a very merry company, of mostly women, all of them very Tuscan, very cheerful, and robustly in favour of good food even if a bit suspiciously strange.
And yet the wedding party is a twentieth of what Kate and Tony were able to gather, and not for lack of friends. When you have to go across Europe to get married, a lot of your friends won't be able to make it.
And therefore, although I am thoroughly delighted to be here for this moment with them, and I love the city and its no-nonsense tolerance and its stripey cobby unfazed cats, and their moorhens building nests out of pieces of foil in the canals, and its sisters of mercy reading unconcernedly in their red windows, and the little Delft Ceramic cocks (and I don't mean the animal), I am also a little sad.
I have to say though, that there ARE herrings on sale in various kiosks around the city. :-)
Characteristically, some insane organizer has decided that the Giro D'Italia, with its attendant publicity and public and disruption of traffic (The Tour of Italy, in case it wasn't clear) has to start in... Amsterdam. Tomorrow. Two hours before the ceremony and snaking past the venue. Why? Search me. Douglas growled that it's Italy's last attempt to wreck their life together.
I was out having dinner with Roberto's family last night (plus Doug and Alex). It was a very merry company, of mostly women, all of them very Tuscan, very cheerful, and robustly in favour of good food even if a bit suspiciously strange.
And yet the wedding party is a twentieth of what Kate and Tony were able to gather, and not for lack of friends. When you have to go across Europe to get married, a lot of your friends won't be able to make it.
And therefore, although I am thoroughly delighted to be here for this moment with them, and I love the city and its no-nonsense tolerance and its stripey cobby unfazed cats, and their moorhens building nests out of pieces of foil in the canals, and its sisters of mercy reading unconcernedly in their red windows, and the little Delft Ceramic cocks (and I don't mean the animal), I am also a little sad.
I have to say though, that there ARE herrings on sale in various kiosks around the city. :-)