Travelling Companions

It’s an easy hop from Lausanne to Florence by train.  In fact it was bliss as I managed to read a whole Sunday newspaper, that usually takes me a week at home, doze for an hour and double bliss read a few chapters of Eat, Pray, Love.  The train to Milan was clean and airy but the train from Milan to Florence was vile.  If that was first class I can only think that they must have unspeakable yuck on the floor in second class.  And why have people forgotten how to dress?  I sat opposite a woman a little older than myself, or perhaps not - on the Lausanne to Milan stint – who had obviously dressed for comfort only and was wearing a pair of those birkenstock type sandals, okay, okay personal choice, but you should have seen the toenails!  I can take unvarnished clean toe nails but these were long and yellowing.  After a slight debacle in Milan due to the Italians deciding to rename the Florence train Salerno but not tell anyone, I breathlessly scurried down the platform with the honeymooning Americans and mini-Japanese only to find that those toe nails were going to be accompanying me all the way.  She was a sweet woman.  She spoke Italian, English and French into her mobile phone and looked after my luggage but those toe nails made me suspicious not only of the state of her gums but whether she paid her taxes.    

In the privacy of our room my sister regalled me with the following story. In duty free at Luton airport Madre got over excited with the perfume samples and with slippery hands, accidently dropped one.  She then went up to the cash desk and told the shop assistant that “someone (SOMEONE!) had dropped a bottle of perfume.” 

The thing about getting old is that you don’t get to choose which parts of you fall apart first.  Madre is great on her feet, can walk for miles but her ears have gone on their own walkabouts.  Even a hearing aid is defeated by the wax production of my mother’s ears.  Sally-Anne (sis) and I have to turn the volume up and like all those who are hard of hearing, she speaks too loudly back to us.  The patrons of Hotel Berchielli were all aware of the  plans of the three women at the corner table this morning, but what killed my sister and I was the following announcement on arriving back from the buffet with her cereal bowl.

“Prunes,” she said for all of Florence. “You can always tell it’s a good establishment if they have prunes.”

So there you have it and now you know why I get so worked up about yellowing toe nails.  It’s in my genes.

Copyright Jules Ritter, raining in Florence June 2008