Expansive plans to visit unmissable outlying towns, hatched on the terrace at midnight, are snagged in sleep-deprived torpor by morning. Lofty aspirations to plumb the city's Renaissance heart decay into flaneurism as we trawl back streets for coffee and gelateria through an enervating concoction of limpid heat and acrid cigarette smoke. In the apartment, the reluctant air conditioner shreds stale air.
Like the students whose quarter of the city we share, we become nocturnal, venturing out late in the evening when languor has dissipated to merriment. In the porticoed arcades, meandering locals make unsignalled pauses to greet lounging acquaintances or josh with friends occupying cafe tables punctuating the thoroughfare. Our usual urgent pace dwindles as we rein in urban briskness to avoid trampling them on the crowded pavements. In an accelerated evolution, over a few days, our higher latitude behaviour has adapted to this new environment, a microcosm of climate change.
Retail life has adopted split shifts to foil the oppressive climate but the evening sessions are too short to compensate for afternoon closing. Topping up supper provisions at a supermarket, our request for a slice of succulent rare beef was turned down. "Five minutes to closing" was the gnomic response. I indulged in a momentary northern European fury before realising how neatly his phrase captured the Italian leitmotif.
© David Thompson 2015
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