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I have come to stay in Amalfi. I can’t face going back to Britain—not yet—and to be here is a great relief after the swarming strangeness I encountered in Rome.
I’ve taken a room in a house on the Piazza Spirito Santo. There is a small bar downstairs, where I sit in the shade of vine leaves and drink Coke Light, or sometimes the local lemon liqueur, which tastes like the sherbet-lemon boiled sweets I used to buy as a kid in Manchester, ground up and mixed with vodka.
The crusty old barman doesn’t have a word of English. It’s hard to tell his age. The flower bowls on the outdoor tables are filled with little bundles of twigs that look suspiciously like fasces to me, but I’m too polite to ask.
