conjugate this

The wad of chewed gum sails through the mellow afternoon sunlight and plants itself with damp precision in the centre of the window blind.

“Who threw that?”

I repeat the question a couple of times in English, to slack-jawed silence, and finally in French. Elodie raises a listless hand.

“What’s that all about?”

She replies, as she always does, in exasperated French. “Obviously I was aiming for the window.”

“…You what?”

“Allors, you’d prefer I try for the bin from here? That’s an impossible shot.”

And so the weeks pass. They say you should never work with children or animals. Teenagers, aside from being nascent statesmen, philosophers and poets, are occasionally both of the above. You set a rule. They ask why. With a gleam of respect in your eye that acknowledges their natural sense of justice and enquiring spirit, you explain the logic behind the rule. They blink at you, blink at each other, and then: “Yeah, but, like… why?” And you suspect that they are mentally three years old. Of course, both ideas are true simultaneously, like the vase and the two faces in profile. If the faces had liprings and zits.

We had a row on the way back from Cambridge last week, over a quick toilet break and the subsequent getting or not getting of take-away Burger King. There were sharp words and eloquent continental gestures on both sides before we all slouched back onto the bus. I sat down with that morning’s edition of The Independent, and they flopped out on the back seats, got out an MP3 speaker phone and started blasting out the Chilli Peppers. I frowned at the political articles and tried to concentrate, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that whoever walks out of an argument and puts on Red Hot Chilli Peppers is sort of spiritually in the right.

I’m going to quite miss them all when I go.

pick it up, carry it

The confines of my world have been restricted to a village of two blocks in Kent. And in the village a tiny university campus, and on the campus 105 children speaking rapidly in a half dozen European languages, and more or less haltingly in English. The work is intense, being around children all day is intense, but so far I don’t mind. I’ll never be anywhere so quintessentially English again. No house looks less than a hundred years old and the oldest, with its windows made up of little lozenges of butterscotch glass, its wooden struts and herringbone bricks, looks like its first inhabitants might have gone visits to London to see Shakespeare performing his own work. In the lanes, bunches of red currants the size of cherry tomatoes glow in the sun, and apple trees lean on sticks like old men. There is no cash machine in the village, and the banks are open about six hours a week. A white-haired local striding out the door of the newsagents as I walk in turns on his heel and returns to the shopkeeper. ‘And is there an explanation I can offer my wife?’ he says. ‘Yes sir. There has been an accident on the motorway, so the magazines weren’t delivered today. They’ll be here tomorrow.’ He considers, nods grimly, and strides out again.

In my last week in Italy I managed to get back to Rome a second time. Those pines and arches, arches and pines, you could just walk all day, and I did. Passing big villas overlooking Palatine Hill—I’d be nervous of purchasing a view like that, I’d never want to get used to it. Rome is so beautiful when you’re out under the sky, you could love it even if the interior of every building was just a plain white cube. But of course, you step in off the street any old where and are sucked body and soul into an encounter with the glories of man-made beauty. I spent most of the day in Trastevere looking for mosaics. The best was a 9th-century number in the apse of a church supposedly built over St Cecilia’s house. Christ and some saints all austere, long-limbed, kohl-eyed elegance. Unfortunately the church itself had been made over in the baroque style. I can’t help it—I wish baroque had never happened. It’s not that I object to fanciness per se. I like gothic, for example. Pencil-thin spires with all the sinews standing out on their necks. Especially when its built in pale, pale stone. But when I stand too long in a baroque church, I feel like I’m at the end of a looooong wedding reception, and I’ve been stuck at a corner table all night with a chatterbox maiden aunt, and in an attempt to console myself I’ve eaten far too much wedding cake.

Mostly I just walked around the streets of Trastevere, which is one of those magical suburblets that manages to be right in the centre of everything and still supremely livable and alive. Good, cheap trattorias, skateboard shops, political bookshops with deep sofas, free wifi and wine by the glass. In half an hour or less I had mentally installed myself, identified the exact apartment I would live in (first floor, corner of the block with lots of windows, ivy-covered), the bar that would be my local, the run-down warehouse that I planned to core like an apple, installing a huge atrium in the centre, and turn into a magnificent free arts and sciences museum for children. With slippery dips and little one-person elevators in clear tubes instead of stairs.

In the evening a series of marquees along the Tiber set up shop selling beer and cous cous and roast pig. I found a spot at the prow of the Isola Tiberina to watch the green water purling around the feet of the Broken Bridge, as triumphal an arch as ever I’ve seen, even if it is stranded and crumbling in a river. A quick walk across the Circus Maximus, which I shared with joggers in varying states of fitness and clumps of purple-flowering weed; a scooter-buzzed intersection; a drop down into the quiet of the night metro, and that was it. Back to my final week in Arezzo, to the divesting process, a strange and strangely exhausting reversal of the begging, borrowing and stealing that goes on when you first arrive somewhere. The elated, false munificence of giving away what you could not, in any case, have kept, until your home is the pack on your back, snail-wise, and you’re ready to split.