We took Candy and Quinn, who’d been staying with us since Wednesday, to Ancona today. On the way to the airport Quinn began chanting “Water rat, water rat” at motorists we overtook. Pat and I enquired what he meant and Candy explained: early in the journey - momentarily forgetting we had a child in the car - I’d commented on an incompetent and dangerous driver we’d overtaken, “What a twat!”. In - fortunately - mishearing the remark Quinn had given it a wonderfully surrealistic twist. From now on Italian drivers are Water Rats.
We’d first stumbled into Magritte World on Thursday when we went to the zoo in Falconara Marittima. There was nothing particularly noteworthy about it apart from the unaccountable absence of one of the commonest of earth’s species: homo sapiens. In a visit lasting several hours we didn’t see a single human being apart from ourselves and the zoo’s employees. If a zoo is a location which allows people to gawp at exotic animals, was the place we went to, in the absence of visitors, really a zoo? A question best left to the philosophers (over to you again, Dave), methinks.
On Friday we went to the Frasassi Caves which, though it pains me as a west-countryman to admit the fact, dwarf Wookey Hole into insignificance. Owing to complications involving Jane and un-metalled roads whose details I will spare you, we were in danger of missing the tour so I dropped Pat, Candy and Quinn at the entrance before parking the car. Getting to the caves I rushed through the barrier, told the employee who enquired if I were German that I was English, and was waved through to catch up the English tour. When I caught them I found the group consisted of a young American couple but no Pat, Candy or Quinn. In my panic I tried to hurry on to see if they were in another group ahead. The Italian guide wouldn’t let me and in my confusion I kept talking to her in Italian whilst she kept addressing me in English. ‘I don’t think he’s English,’ remarked the American man every time I replied in Italian to the guide’s questions. Suddenly Pat, Candy and Quinn appeared from behind us. Apparently I’d rushed past them when I arrived without noticing them leaving them to join the kraut tour. Upon my greeting them, the bemused American turned to his partner and the guide and cried, ‘Oh, he is English.’ It was then I finally realised I’d joined the world of Does He Take Sugar?
