Awaiting Her Master

Molly suddenly realised that the love of her life was missing.  Where?

Obviously in there!

Sometime One Just Gets Lucky

I was sending a text standing on a friend's doorstep because the cellphone signal was very poor in the house.  Something fell between my nose and the phone (without touching either!).  I looked up to see a bird fly off the gutter.  Now that's what I call being lucky.

Rant

I spend a great deal of time extolling the virtues of the health service on the Island.  Few public servants have a particularly easy time these days despite what many of the rest of the public think.  Sometimes, however, they do make it difficult for the public to sympathise.

Not having had a call returned I popped into the Health Centre on the way home from town this morning.

Me "Please may I see the lady who looks after the admin for the specialist nurses."

Person 1 "She's got someone with her.  Can you wait 10 to 15 minutes?"

Me(albeit reluctantly) "OK."

Person 2 a few minutes later "Sorry you can't just see her now she's a busy person.  You'll have to make an appointment."

Me showing some impatience "I have to make an appointment to see someone so that I can talk about an appointment she's already making for me with a specialist nurse?  I've popped in here because I can't get through on the phone."

Person 2 "She's on holiday.  I'll get someone to telephone you but it will be Monday."

If you can make sense of that then you are a better man than I am Gunga Din.

San Jimmy Banana

I have absolutely no idea how it happened but when Wendy and Martin (my New Zealand Family), Carol (my wife) and Catherine (a dear friend to us all) went to Italy in 1992 we all fell for San Gimignano and one amongst us christened the place San Jimmy Banana.  For us that has been its name ever since.  It was probably the most commercially aware of the tourist towns of Tuscany twenty years ago so although I've been back since then the changes have not been quite so great as, for example, in Volterra.  Having said that one now has to pay to go into the Duomo and no photos are allowed there either.  The queue outside the only public toilet I saw inside the walls  was long (cafés are obliged to let the public use their facilities) but at least the outflow from it was not pouring down the street as it was last time.  All in all it is still a beautiful place with a marvellous history and the fact that all we tourists want to go and see it is testament to that.

Notice on the door of the public toilets at the car park below the city

The Southern Entrance Gate

Just inside the main gate

Handbags everywhere and in every colour, shape and size 

The 'main' street

Looking back towards the main gate

One of the Antony Gormley** statues looks on 

Wild boar are everywhere usually with something stuck in their mouth. 

The main square with yet another Antony Gormley statue

A little potter's studio or rather a potter's little studio

with a splendid trades sign

Yet another Gormley way up high....very high

....that high

Our lunchtime café - superb formagio

The street out to the North 

An absolutely splendid purveyor of goodies

The terrazzo where Wendy and I sat and listened to a musician (and bought his CD) 20 years ago.  It was lunchtime so we had the square to ourselves  (The siesta seems to be a thing of the past in towns like this).   Now the terazzo is fenced off and is the entrance to the Duomo and only available to those who pay.  The inside of this Duomo is completely covered in frescos.

**There are (or were) Antony Gormley statues everywhere.