Waiting

On Friday evening I took the car to a garage in Locorotondo for four new tyres and was told by the mechanic that it would be ready in "un'oretta".  Like any time estimate in Italy this can mean a lot of things, literally it's "approximately an hour", but in reality it could be anything from a half to three hours.

I'd come prepared and left the car to stroll around the town with my camera.  Here's me going for a moody shot reflected in the window of a backstreet house.

Locorotondo on a late Autumn evening before the restaurants open is as quiet as the grave and I wandered around the side streets trying to capture some of the lonely and slightly sinister atmosphere, a bit like a deserted fairground, which was appropriate as there was a fairground setting up on the outskirts of town, by the football ground advertising "live animals".  I took my godson Joshi to it once and I can still remember the tense and exhausted demeanour of the bald lion tamer who looked more like a drug dealer than a circus act.

The time passed remarkably quickly and I returned to the garage exactly an hour later (so very British) to find the mechanic, a little to my surprise, just lowering the car back to the ground.  "A post ..." he says, short for "tutte a posto", meaning "it's all ok".

On Sunday Sue and I went to a big shopping centre near Bari, largely because Sue's dental surgery is now beginning to heal more and she is desperate to get out of the house.  In the middle of a crowded mall my 'phone suddenly starts to vibrate and I can see it's a UK number.  I hear the voice of Sue's brother Mike and I immediately know that something is wrong.  You get to a certain age and you are always expecting this kind of call.  Sure enough Sue's dad Jim is in hospital with breathing difficulties and the family is spooked by the A&E consultant wanting to know if it's appropriate to put "DNR" on his records.

So now Sue is waiting - for a plane to Heathrow at Brindisi Airport.  Actually the news last night seemed more positive that Jim would be able to get over this latest chest infection, but she wisely followed her gut and booked the plane ticket last night anyway.