After living in London for eight months, I had learned that every Great Romance starts with the phrase, “have you got a lighter?”
The story of this Italian romance lasted no more than twelve hours, but it was undoubtedly a Great one.
At 10pm in Rome I was sitting on the steps of a fontaine in Trastevere, watching Italians drink in congregations by the river.
It had been about eight hours since I had landed. I had floated around Rome partly via electric scooter, had lunch and collapsed in a wave of heat stroke next to the Colosseum on a patch of grass near to all the groups of tourists while I looked up nearby hotels. I had checked into a room and freshened up, taken a sun-lit stroll through the park, strolled past its busy basketball court and back past the Colosseum again. I ended up back in central Rome, where the dusk was setting in and turning into the hint of an evening.