Sunday 27 September 2015

700,000 euros a year get thrown in the Trevi Fountain


Using Rome's deep underground Metro system as much as we did brought another irritation into consciousness to add to the huge list of everyday irritating things: the way that the rubber handrails of escalators never keep up with the steps, so you have to keep repositioning your hand every few seconds. There. now I have reminded you, this will haunt you forever too.

I found a bar close to the hotel which specialised in catering for international youth - very similar in feel to our own Bell Inn here in Bath, but with the facility to pack back packers together on a racking-system in communal dormitories. I went there every night and sat listening to English in a variety of accents, it feeling a little like home from home.

After a while, I became fed up with being surrounded by hedonistic youth - particularly as I was pretty much ignored by the pretties - unlike The Bell, where they fawn over me in respect and admiration.

I also became fed up with being surrounded by white-haired culture-buffs of my own generation, so there was no escaping the conclusion that I was just fed up with being surrounded by anyone, regardless of age.

People have often commented that Rome is just never quiet. There is always an ambulance or police vehicle trying to negotiate unregulated intersections, sounding their identical sirens - in the same way that cicadas are absolutely identical - and the sirens are modelled on Johnny Weissmuller's call as he swung through the trees on a vine. Think Johnny Weissmuller having contracted the same condition as Stephen Hawking, swinging through the trees with the same voice simulator, and you will know what I mean. There. That's another thing I have put into your head.

Bottle collections, overhead aircraft hitting the air-brakes as they approach the nearby airport, more pre-dawn bottle collections (I played a large part in this, for which I take my share of the blame), heated conversations which sound like arguments, ordinary car-horns as cars have heated arguments, music - live or otherwise, the building sites which are everywhere, cutting steel and yet more travertine marble - it never stops, it only goes into lulls.

One night, I found myself remembering a radio show from my childhood - 'In Town Tonight' - and I had not even thought of it since my childhood. You have to be well over 60 and British to remember this program and the introduction: "Once again, the mighty roar of London's traffic comes to a halt (the mighty roar comes to a halt here) as we bring  you..." I bet Weave remembers.

It has always been the same, only the noise has changed. There is a photograph of Piccadilly Circus taken in the late 19th century, and the whole area is blocked by horse-drawn, Hackney carriages. In 18th century Bath, they would pay a boy to lay straw over the cobbles outside the house of a dying person, to deaden the noise of cart wheels on the road. Much of Rome is cobbled, and almost every car has a severe rattle on the rear axis, presumably as a result of the cobbles and the holes where they have gone missing - these holes are everywhere.

We got back home, sat in the kitchen at lunchtime and marvelled at the quietness. We temporarily forgot the warning of our taxi driver, that the university students had come back to town and an important rugby match was about to be played out over the weekend...

Two Bellites. Now you know what I am saying.

13 comments:

  1. You forgot to mention if you enjoyed yourself. I think I am too old to enjoy large, crowded places.

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    1. So am I, but I have only just discovered this.

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    2. Oh, and I cannot say that I enjoyed myself. My next holiday will be in a wheelchair, I suspect.

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  2. I can sort of relate to the bar you describe but prefer to keep away from them and head for a bar frequented only by locals who quietly seem to not really give a toss at one foreign tourist drinking with them and if you're lucky will get your drink on the bar the next night before you even have to ask. I prefer city holidays for the reason that they are noisy crowded and nobody really takes much notice of you.

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    1. My sentiments exactly, but those places are hard to find.

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  3. Oh yes Tom, I remember - didn't somebody shout 'Stop' or something like that just after your quote? They don't make 'em like that any more. This is Henry Hall and tonight is my guestnight.
    I must say that I have never seen that many round the Trevi fountain but then we always went in the October half term, so probably once most of the crowds had left. Nowhere to touch it though.

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    1. They shouted, "IN TOWN TONIGHT!!!!!!!"

      We didn't bother to 'discover' the Trevi Fountain this time, and only went to the Spanish Steps by default.

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  4. I have to say that I am missing comments from people like Jane and Lance, Sarah and quite a few others who I hope are still alive and well.

    I don't really desire a high comments count (honest) but I do quite care that people are alive and well. It's a Big Yellow Taxi sort of thing.

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  5. 'Once more we stop the mighty roar of London's traffic'. Let's get things right Stephenson; it is etched in my memory.

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    1. Yes, but you are a good deal older than me. You were probably dealing on the Stock Exchange when that program was aired.

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  6. I also remember" In town tonight" ! I am about to hit the next big birthday after 60, and we didn't have a TV until I was 14, so a lot of radio was listened to in the 50s.

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  7. I can't deal with Rome, and couldn't even when I was the age of the people in the Bell

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