Gird

There's a moment in The English Patient - it may only be in the film version - when Almasy's friend Madox says that perhaps he can't help reading too much into events taking place around him because the relative blandness of his earlier life compelled him to read a great deal "into hardly anything at all."

I mention this apropos of little more than my inability to get this diary going again, even though our Med escapade ended over a month ago. I keep trying to devise an entry which will somehow encapsulate - in three whip-smackingly succinct paragraphs - the events, insights and emotions of the last two months... and, of course, I keep failing. I keep trying to write down all the many things I could - and did - read into the experience of living in an unfamiliar flat in an unfamiliar town, and I keep coming unstuck.

So I shall settle for this instead... and you can read what you like into it...

There's a place in Nice - Fenocchio, it's called - which serves the most unusual ice cream flavours I've ever come across. They've got your vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. They've also got vanilla & meringue, white chocolate and strawberry candy. But their extensive menu even includes items such as chewing gum, lavender, jasmine, rosemary and thyme, amongst various other surprising concoctions. When the Divine L and I visited the place, I asked for five different scoops topped with chocolate sprinkles, whipped cream and hot chocolate sauce. My little snack came served in a goblet of melon-like proportions. The size of this thing - and, I expect, of the grin on my face - caused several passersby to stop, smile and wish me Bon appetit. So there you go: we'd all be much nicer to each other if we went around eating massive ice creams.