Show Me the Place

Pat and I spent our thirty-sixth wedding anniversary apart: she flew to the UK to spend the week with a handsome younger male* whilst I travelled to Rome to spend the night with someone else**.

    To explain. Matt and James had very generously bought me, as a birthday present,  two tickets to the Leonard Cohen concert at the Foro Italico in Rome, intending that Pat would go with me. Unfortunately she had already booked a flight to England to look after Quinn. Charlie therefore persuaded Dave to say he'd go with me, and Sue to allow him.

    During a concert lasting almost three hours Cohen sang, in addition to classics such as Bird on a Wire and Chelsea Hotel, several of his less well known songs. Show Me the Place was not amongst them; it should have been.

   I'd travelled by coach from Pedaso to Fiumicino to meet Dave, arriving about three hours before his plane was due to land. Having bought Camilleri's latest Montalbano story, Un covo di vipere [A Nest of Vipers], at a motorway service station on the journey to Rome I was looking forward to carrying on reading it in the Arrivals Hall. Unfortunately, that's when the nightmare began. There are three terminals at Fiumicino: Terminal Three for long-haul flights, Terminal One for flights from continental Europe, and Terminal Two for flights from the UK. I quickly located Terminal Two Departures, and both Arrivals and Departures for Terminals One and Three, but could see no sign of Terminal Two Arrivals - the one I needed.

  Show Me the Place, I begged a baggage handler. He gave me directions, but although I followed them I failed to locate Terminal Two Arrivals. Show Me the Place I asked another airport employee and following her directions brought me to Terminal Two Departures - of Arrivals there was no sign. As I looked desperately around the Departures Lounge for an arrow to Arrivals, I suddenly found myself flat on my face - I'd stumbled over one of the low tables airports attach to the end of a row of seats. I limped on in my Kafkaesque quest, up and down the road which runs through the airport, crossing from side to side with increasing desperation as the skies opened and it began to pour with rain. I eventually ended up back at Terminal One Arrivals and asked a security guard to  Show Me the Place where I could meet Dave's plane. Go to Terminal Three, he said, there is no Terminal Two Arrivals!

  Dave duly arrived and we took a taxi to the B & B I'd booked. Unfortunately No 33 Via G Calderoni wasn't a simple building but the gateway to a massive complex of apartment blocks, with no indication of which one housed the B & B. 

I hailed a passer-by: 'Show Me the Place', I begged, but although he lived in the complex he had no idea where the B& B was. Then I recalled that I'd got their number on my phone and, calling them, received directions.

   Having checked in, we set off on the ten minute walk to the concert venue. Crossing a bridge over the Tiber we overtook a middle-aged couple looking lost. "Do you speak English?" asked the man.

  "Are you looking for the Cohen concert?" I replied.

  "Yes, Show Me the Place," he pleaded - or words to that effect. So we did - and here it is:

*Quinn **Dave