The dispiriting Peter Principle holds that employees get promoted until they no longer exceed expectations, resulting in mature organisations being populated by incompetents. A parallel phenomenon explains why it's so challenging to find clothes to pack for holidays. Most wardrobes host predominantly immaculate but disfavoured clothes; the preferred ones are selected frequently and wear out, leaving a residue of ill-judged impulse purchases which we're loathe to discard as they're still pristine. Finally I adopted the usual stratagem: plan for all eventualities, then double it resulting, as usual, in a drum-tight suitcase.
I had persuaded Sally to abandon her normal brinkmanship involving arrival two minutes before the departure of trains by bribing her with the BA lounge at terminal 5. Ten years after opening, T5 is already acquiring a worn patina. A recent refresh means that it hosts more high-end outlets than Regent Street, confirming its real purpose as a retail mall with a few aircraft incidentally parked outside. But the lounge is less faded grandeur than stained cushions, the main inhabitants being comatose gapyearers crashing on sofas while recovering from illicit weekend breaks at budget accommodation with evocative names such as the G-Spot Party Hostel. The doubtful glamour of club class was further eroded by a delay which segued into a queue behind prioritised long-haul flights. Weekend shopping in Dubai trumps European holidays.
Soothed by celebratory champagne, we glimpsed crystalline Alps and I wondered whether there was any chance of being dropped off early. Snowy outcrops became parched fields and as we descended, the flight deck announced perkily that despite the delay it was still a nice day in Bologna with a temperature of 34C. I winced.
Bologna has the sort of airport that's more like a provincial bus station. As we crossed the tarmac children waved from the terminal. The woman next to us beamed and confided to Sally, they're my grandchildren. Sally nodded, bemused. Our flight was the only arrival but the baggage took an unconscionable time to appear. Passengers clustered around the carousel seething indignantly. Like all travellers, having been impatient to arrive at the present point in their journey they were now equally eager to move on to the next. The rubber flaps partitioning the passengers from the oily side of the airport birthed successive suitcases and I was seized by a momentary desire simply to pick up the nearest. Like the excitement when you realise you've inadvertently acquired another shopper's supermarket trolley, a tempting portal in the thin but impermeable membrane into another life until you spot the corned beef and Mr Kipling cakes.
The airport exhaled us into a waiting bus. Twilight is fleeting in these latitudes and it had grown dark while we were crossing the invisible boundary from not-Italy to Italy in the terminal. We followed the route to the train station on our satnavs as the bus bounced past the obligatory peeling buildings, shuttered against the implacable heat. Indeterminate suburbs, less orderly and more contingent than London sprawl. Abandoned hovels and empty lots bespoke cheaper land and indolent commerce. The encircling crumble of ochre, puce and tangerine, mandatory in any self-respecting medieval Mediterranean city, resolved into a core of municipal buildings. Lounging piazzas were dominated by severe brick churches and palazzos with blank walls and high, barred windows for pampered prisoners of the past.
The walk from the railway station followed the endless arcades for which Bologna is famed. Stores consuming the power of small towns illuminated unpriced, therefore priceless, scraps of high fashion. Away from the grand boulevards, doors large enough for barns and secured with heavy ironware, lend a brooding quality. Towers arise unexpectedly at the ends of vistas framed by colonnades, evoking the unsettling fantasies of de Chirico. Eventually the streets shrink to carless canyons lined by bolted wooden gates emblazoned with menacing graffiti. Grimy grocers, doors ajar, are occupied by sulking owners slumped in front of counters. Number 12 separated a diminutive Odeon from a louche bar. We had arrived.
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