Strange things to buy in Venice.

In my last post I showed you how goods arrive at their destinations. Here I have some of the things you can buy. I have not included anything from a street stall, most of which are crammed with bags and scarves and masks and little models of St Mark's. All these were in shop windows (except the one that was on my table ... that will become clear). I do not claim that this is not representative of things you can buy in Venice - simply things that caught my eye.

Suppose you've been walking all day, your feet ache ... would you buy these?

Speaking personally, I value my knees to much - though I can see that they are rather wonderful colours.

If you don't fancy shoes, how about jewellery?

When I saw this, it struck me that it resembled a collection of green nipples. But maybe green nipples are your thing ...

You can buy dolls in many shapes and forms.

These are dressed in their finery, and are presumably meant to sit on the side and be admired. No use to my granddaughter then.

I can't see her playing with these, either. They're glass, and the colours are lovely, and might look good with the sun behind them.

Maybe the grandsons would like masks? There are masks all over Venice - and some of them are truly beautiful. I'm sure many tourists swaddle them in bubble wrap to get them home. And how many unpack them and wonder - what are they going to do with it now?

It's all getting too much. Time for this:

Deliveries, Venice-style.

Some years ago, before Over the Hill was published, a mentor suggesting I don't write about anything you might see on the telly. So, given that pictures of Venice are everywhere, I thought I'd give you a different view or two.

Have you every wondered how all that stuff - the food, the goods in the shops, the furniture in your hotel room - arrived? Anywhere but Venice, it comes on a lorry, or van, or maybe you trot off to the shop and can carry it yourself (though the shop has to get it from somewhere.) In Venice, of course, it's much more complicated. For everything comes by boat. Anything heavy is lifted off by a small crane.

While boxes of strawberries are hauled up one box at a time.

Then what? Well, big things like tables fold up and go on a trolley.

And heavy things, like barrels of beer, have to be wheeled through the streets - these trolleys have special little wheels at the front so they can go up and down the stepped bridges without the driver rupturing himself.

And, at the end of the day, comes the rubbish man, with another wheelie trolley, to take away the detritus that is left behind.

And in my next blog, I've got some photographs of some of the extraordinary things that come into this city on boats!

What did you do in Venice?

What did you do in Venice?

I got lost.

What do you mean, lost?

Indeed - what do I mean, lost? As a child was taught that 'lost' is something terrible. It means someone nasty might take you away. That storms would rage and winds would howl and there'd be no gingerbread house for me, oh no, I'd be cold and wet and what's more nobody would love me.

But lost, I've learned, can be many things - rarely starkly good, or bad - rather it can be uncomfortable, or inconvenient, occasionally alarming. And it can also be an opportunity. Lost is the place where we find the unexepected. It is the place where we can look up and see the sky is a different blue, the buildings a strange shape, the people with smiles you don't recognise.

Some years ago I was Hue, in Vietnam, for the Chinese New Year. I was studying a map - useless, when all the street names were in a different script - when a man came and used his one sentence of English: What is your name? He led me to his home, to his frail parents and his gentle wife and his sister and three children who bounced around my knees. The children knew we didn't need words. I spent the day with them. I have no idea what was going on, what I ate, nor what sense they made of me. It was a wonderful, 'lost', opportunity.

I didn't meet unexpected families in Venice. But I wandered into a church and found a picture by Tintoretto. I was tempted by tiny passageways that led to a courtyard where the sun shone on flaking pink walls and tiny white flowers shimmered. And I sat in the sun, in my lostness, and watched tourists studying maps.

On arriving in Venice at sunset

There's nothing exceptional about Marco Polo Airport. It's all corridors and lights and hurrying people. It would help if their directions were better, but, hey ho, I found the boat into the city eventually.

It was about 6.30 in the evening. It had rained all day, but clouds were being frightened away - though it was still grey to the west. But here the sun was low over the water, taking over from the rain, glittering, like diamonds scattered across the lido. White water - in the wake of the water taxis - whooshed into rainbows.

Sun crept across the buildings. Marble was stained with evening yellow. Solid red walls became a luminous orange, or deep rose-pink. The spring-green of trees as bright as jewels. People, wandering along by the water, insignificant beside the magic of the buildings.

There was the chug of the boat, of course, and the smell of diesel, but that soon forgotten as we edged towards the city, bouncing in the wake of vaporetti and water taxis. The slap of water against the boat. Closer to the buildings, the sun lower in the sky now - and the shady corners darker here, like little mysteries, places to hide dark deeds. If my grandchildren had been there we'd have told stories of derring do, of swashbuckling, and maybe of love - for the sun went down and stars dared to twinkle.

I could have told myself stories, of course. Scribbled them down, even put them on this blog.

I didn't. I went out for pasta and wine. (Well, what would you have done?)

ps. If anyone hasn't seen the excerpt from Bombs and Butterflies on my website, you can find it here.

When Life is like Ketchup

Many years ago, someone suggested that life is like ketchup - you shake the bottle for ages and nothing happens, and then it comes out in dollops.

Well, I came home from Laos to dollops of it.

You know what it's like - Mrs Next Door phones to ask you to look after Little Jenny while she goes into hospital to have another baby, of course you will, when? Now? Now? Well, of course.

Get down, Little Jenny, you say, kindly, when she climbs on the freezer that is in the middle of the kitchen floor because it doesn't fit in the space the old one came out of even though you measured it twice. Be careful, you will fall. Woops. It's all right, have some ice cream; oh, no freezer, no ice cream, nor frozen peas to put on your arm that looks a funny shape. Oh heck, how to tell Mrs Next Door Little Jenny has broken her arm.

So the phone rings. Old Aunt Gladys as put her head in the gas oven - she's fine, but in hospital and wonders if you can go and check she turned the gas off. Of course, when? Now? Now ... of course. Even though she lives 200 miles away and has neighbours but they don't have a key because, well, you never know with neighbours do you (her words, not yours). Maybe you can take Little Jenny to A&E in the hospital where Aunt Gladys is. But Little Jenny will only get into the car if you give her ice cream, because you promised ...

We all have times like this. Even so, nothing quite prepares you. There are moments of clarity, when you understand exactly what needs doing and can do it. And other moments when common sense disappears over the horizon with its arse on fire.

Slowly - so slowly it feels as if it will never happen - everything settles. You peer above the parapet to find that the sun still rises, the magnolia is blooming and you are amazingly, here to tell the tale.

That's the bit I've reached. There are still loose ends to tie up, but the world is reshaped am I'm fine. Well, in need of a little R and R. So I bought a flight to Venice - at the end of next week. It's what I do to reward myself after times like this.

What do you do, at those dust-settling times, to look after yourself? Your reward for keeping the show on the road as best you can?