In other news...

Did I mention that I was going to Rome?

My dearly beloved hub lost the thread of himself early last winter and booked a weekend away to the Eternal City, as a present for me on the occasion of me getting older than I already was.

It's taken no mean feat of organisation to arrange the finer details, which is what I had to do in order to be able to go anywhere. There will be children stashed in other people's under-stair cupboards; there will be children stashed in other people's dog kennels; there will be children hanging out of other people's lightbulbs - but not out of me!

Yes - a child-free two and a half days, in the company of the hub. Just you watch me move across Rome!

I've always wanted to visit Rome, since I read Middlemarch and then Portrait of a Lady. The female protagonists of both novels go to Rome and visit all the sights: one with her newly married dry, dusty old fart, the other is single but ends up seduced by another American exile (entirely the wrong man for her, but there you go).

In both cases the authors used their knowledge of the 'Grand Tour,' as visiting all the important European cities used to be called, to extend the emotional backdrop - using settings intertwined with the emotional state of the heroines.

Now, I'm not as dramatic as that, but I do like a good ruin - I shall be taking pictures but will be looking for the quirky ones, like the one in my guide book: he's headless, handless and ahem-less, with a set of testicles any bull would be proud of! Hmm. Wonder who he was meant to be, then...