That sinking feeling

It is usually about this time of year that H.I. and I return home from a holiday abroad, but despite a couple of unwanted trips to Northern Germany, we have not been anywhere this year. Actually, it was because of the German trips that we have not been anywhere else.

She would be quite happy to get on the next plane out of Bristol to mid Spain or somewhere, but I just cannot face having my trousers pulled half down by a surly security officer as he pretends not to fondle my genitalia. Honest.

The trouble is that - being a teacher - H.I. is obliged to take her holidays at exactly the same time as the rest of the world, his wife and their 6 children take theirs, and starts to get itchy feet as term-time looms. 'Last Minute Dot Com' is a company which we have never felt able to favour with our custom.

Just to rub it in, even the weather is shouting at us now. It is saying, "Have to hurry! Only a few days/weeks (delete as appropriate) of sunshine left! Feel that melancholy, autumnal thoughtfulness in the weakening heat and the lengthening shadows!"

We often say that we will go away at Christmas, but never do. The time when we really do need to go away (mid-january to mid-march) is usually pretty busy for teachers, even part-time ones. I casually mentioned my idea of Scotland (again) yesterday, and she just pulled a sour face and said "NO", in a terminally decisive sort of way.

I have a real urge to go back to Venice, but this time in the damp and gloomy winter. Let's face it, Venice is a damp and gloomy place anyway, so you might as well make the most of it. It's just as easy to get lost down the narrow, medieval alleys in the daylight as the darkness, but at least in the winter there would not be quite so many fellow tourists to push past as you take yet another wrong turn whilst chasing a midget in a red plastic hood.

The last - and first - time we went to Venice, it took us precisely 3 hours from leaving our front door in Bath, to entering the massive front doors of the Palazzo Zenobio, which was our 'hotel' for the 8 days we stayed. We sailed through Bristol airport, having parked the car on site, got on an air-conditioned coach on the other side (costing 3 euros), briefly consulted a map, then strode confidently across a couple of bridges before I spotted the Palazzo on the other other side of an airy canal. I recognised it through photos, and marched confidently up to the intercom to announce our arrival. Three hours, door to door.

Palazzo Zenobio does not like to advertise that it occasionally takes guests, but the income from visitors helps the Armenian monks who own it to pay for it's upkeep. Casanova used to have a bedroom here, and - for an extra fee - you can stay in his room, which has a huge, carved wooden bedstead in it, one floor up from the magnificently kitsch ballroom; it is called, not surprisingly, 'Casanova's room'.

I want to see if the slightly unfriendly woman who manned the office is still sitting there, typing god-knows-what on an old-fashioned type-writer. If you went down to the office at dawn, she would be there, typing away. If you came back from a restaurant at midnight, there she would be, still typing. Once I looked out of our window at about three o'clock in the morning and craned my head around the wooden shutters to look down and see her in her office, typing. She was still there at the following breakfast time (even though Zenobio does not serve breakfast), and she was there the morning we checked out - typing away beneath a signed photograph of a bygone Pope shaking the hand of an Armenian monk.

As I am sure you do not need to be told, every crumbling, brick-built church houses treasures beyond belief, and every 10th building seems to be a Palazzo.

It's still sinking. We ought to go back before it goes under.