Rome

Aaaah! It's part a sigh of relief that it's unchanged, part that it still feels welcoming. Of course it's unchanged - as you come in on the train you pass the city walls built by Marcus Aurelius, and as regards welcoming, well, there are Romans and there are tourists and whilst the two categories bump into each other on the cobbled streets of the centre they are not really together - it is rather a voluntary apartheid, each group living its own separate existence. It's easy to spot the difference - the Romans are well dressed and make an effort to look attractive.

I suppose I am somewhere between the two - low marks for looking attractive - but, particularly since I got my residency and announced Civis Romanus Sum to everyone (albeit in happier circumstances than St Paul) I have felt myself an undeserving part of it.

I hadn't much time and I walked through the piazza Navona - you can see Bernini's fountain without asking, without paying! - there weren't many people and the cobbled streets at the back were empty except for my favorite accordion player - the worst in Rome I believe, against some pretty stiff competition - who stopped his appalling rendition of the theme to the Godfather to play an even worse La Vie en Rose, thinking I liked it (I had once suggested it because he had played the Godfather over and over for an hour and I couldn't write: it was all I could think of to alternate so I found myself walzing under the Arco della Pace going DA - da da da da di DA...., sober, incredibly).

At the butcher I bought a capon which I stuffed with marjoram and roasted in the French style with a little white wine in the pan. The woman at the vegetable stall berated me for having not been there for a while and said she supposed I would want her minestrone mix. I bought far too much, and some turnip tops just sprouting, and some peaches and some garlic. She said I couldn't possibly have the minestrone without a handful of basil in it (she was right) and gave me some.

I just looked in at the church to make sure the two Raphaels were still there. They were (in a corner to make sure nobody noticed).

Lunch was in a bar near the station, bruschette with mushrooms, olives, tuna and tomato; lasagne with pesto; half a litre of wine, water and coffee, a fraction over ten quid. The train was on time and clean and cheap and I gave a euro to a crippled girl at the station whose smile warmed my journey back.