It was lunchtime and the town was deserted. Gone were the immaculate mothers with their kids in little sailor suits, shoes and hats, all brand new and matching. Gone were the smoking, mini-skirted women who stood cherry-lipped and tanned chatting to slick men, with smart Amani suits and shades, who leaned on walls and juggled change deep in trouser pockets. Gone were the rucksacked school kids, chattering and chasing around the old ladies who hobbled along almost in slow motion with yappy dogs and hair in a bun and little trolleys full of bread.

Gone were the traders from North Africa with their fake Lacoste T-shirts, dodgy Bic lighters and plain chocolate skins. Even the black-toothed gypsies with their coin-filled saucers and postcards of St Violiene had taken their snot-snivelling sons and trouser-grabbing daughters off somewhere for a siesta leaving the pavements briefly free of pleading and prostration.

I felt like the cowboy stranger in a spaghetti western, wandering through dust and sun as the rest of the town hid behind shutters sharing pasta. Outside it was just me and the pigeons peck-pecking at stray fruit scattered around a huge heap of cabbage boxes, leaves and decapitated artichoke stems piled in the market square.

Despite the large slice of pizza I'd consumed earlier I still felt pretty hungry and went in search of something more to eat. But the small supermarket where I'd bought my water and oranges was closed, along with all the other shops - rows of snoozing clams, their edible contents caged by glass and steel.

One cafe was actually open, but only, it appeared, for the sweeping of floors and emptying of ashtrays, which was being done so quietly, I dared not go in and ask the man with his apron and broom if he would care to sell me a cheese roll and uno eau minerale frizzante, in case he was not serving but sleep walking.

Eventually, having given up any hope of finding anywhere open, I wandered back to the huge piazza that stretched, about the size of two football pitches, between my hotel and the Basilica di St Violiene. By chance, as I headed down an alleyway to one side of the Basilica, I passed a small chapel. And when I say small, I mean small. It was hardly larger than my hotel room. From the outside the chapel looked like some kind of outdoor toilet, or a bike shed for priest's Lambrettas or a store room for spare cassocks. It was the kind of building you wouldn't normally give a second look. But as I walked by, the door was slightly open, and I just happened to glance inside and saw, in the flame-light of candles, colours - colours, fuller and deeper and truer than any colours you would expect to see in such a place, colours that drew me in like a midnight moth to a naked hundred watt bulb.

Inside the chapel the ceiling was a brilliant blue spangled with golden stars, and as my eyes became used to the yellow smoky light, I saw that the walls were decorated with frescoes telling a story, the story of the life of Mary and Jesus.

King Herod's men wade in a pile of dead babies (each with a single stab wound) whilst anguished mothers look on helpless. In the foreground a soldier holds aloft a sword to kill a baby still cradled in the arms of his mother whilst other mothers plead with other soldiers to stop the killing. One soldier has grabbed hold of the baby's leg, a leg painted so thick it looks like the baby has elephantiasis. The soldier has both hands around the enormous leg pulling with all his might but the mother will not let go. The other soldiers look on, grim and strong. We are only following orders, they mutter.

In a candled corner a flaky Jesus is baptised by John, waist deep in water, whilst God peeks down from a spiky cloud exploding from the heavens. On the far side of the cloud a freshly restored Jesus throws the merchants out of the temple as disciples and merchants and a child with a white dove look on. A bearded merchant cowers as Jesus stands before him, grim faced with trashed stalls all around, his fist raised as if about to punch the man on the nose. The merchant has half turned away, his features scrunched up, anticipating pain, his open palms raised to gesture, 'OK, OK, I've got the message, I'm going, I'm going.' And at the merchant's feet a huge ram has reared up on its hind legs in a hurry to avoid the impending violence.

Further up the wall is the Easter story with Jesus riding through Palm Sunday on his donkey (a subdued grin curling up its long grey nose). The disciples follow in a golden haze of halos as a boy kneels to lay palms in the path of the procession towards the distant town (which, due to a total lack of consideration for perspective on the part of the medieval artist, doesn't look quite as distant as it should do - its tall white towers coming halfway up the shoulder of bystanders in the background who are painted the same size as those in the foreground, as if the bystanders are gradually growing into giants or shrinking as Jesus passes).

In the background two men have climbed trees to get a better view. One clings onto a pair of lofty branches with his arms spread so that the large leaves resemble the wings of a botanic angel. The other tree climber is fumbling to reach a higher branch. He has his back turned as Jesus rides past on the donkey with the silly grin. That's me I thought - always got my back turned when something exciting happens.

I was joined in the chapel by a young couple with T-shirts and shorts. I could tell straight away they were from the States. He had sand-coloured curls, a Florida tan and a can of caffeine-free cherry coke. She had a chubby face, a redder shade of brown, a peach coloured T-shirt with a cartoon racoon playing baseball on it and a blonde and bearlike American beauty.

"Isn't it just gorgeous," drawled the girl.

The boy nodded, sleeves rolled up, hands on hips, arms the colour of vanilla toffee. "Sure is," he said.

I smiled at the boy.

"Nice and cool in here," I said.

"Aha," said the boy.

"It's funny," I said, "all this. It doesn't look much from the outside but inside it's, you know...you don't expect it to be like this."

The boy gave me a withering look, but the girl smiled and nodded.

"It's just beautiful."

"The donkey's my favourite," I said. "It's like he's smiling."

"Oh yea," said the girl. "He looks kinda happy."

"Yea," I said. "You over here on holiday?"

"We're doing Europe," said the girl.

She started to tell me about all the frescoes she'd seen in Rome and Assisi, a deluge of dates and names of artists that left me swamped in shame at my own stupidity. The girl saw I was staring blankly at her.

"Sorry," she said. "I guess you've been to all those places right?"

"I've been to Portugal," I said.

"Oh right," she said. "All that Mediterranean architecture."

"Right," I said. "Been to England yet?"

"Oh yea, we had a couple of weeks there. We were in London and Bath and Stratford, you know where Shakespeare lived, and Newport, that's in Wales right."

"Newport?" I laughed and pulled what you might call an I've-just-swigged-neat-vinegar face. "Newport? I bet you didn't stay there long."

The girl stared at me with narrowed eyes.

"Well it's a bit of a dump isn't it," I said.

"I've got relations there actually," she snapped. "They live in a very nice apartment"

"Oh," I said, avoiding her glare. "I didn't mean that, I mean, well it's not exactly, well..." I raised my hand in a feeble wave and made a diplomatic move toward the door. "Nice chatting to you. Hope you enjoy the rest of your holiday."

"Sure," said the girl.

"Bye," I said.

"Goodbye," she drawled, sullen and slow, like some big, bored, bothered grizzly bear.

By this time, I was dying for a cappuccino and something to eat, so went in search of a cafe down the maze of little streets behind the church. Eventually, I managed to find one which was just emerging from its siesta.

The owner of the cafe had teeth which were three times too big for his mouth, splayed out, brown cracked and ground down like the teeth of an old horse, teeth that seemed to be struggling to bite a huge chunk from the air as he yawned and stretched, then polished white mugs with a clean, but deeply stained, tea towel and straightened red-check table cloths draped over four or five small tables. He gestured for me to sit down with (as you can imagine) the toothiest of smiles.

The cafe was like something out of a museum, full of old-fashioned boxes and bottles and a couple of elderly Italians (who with their faded clothes, limp hands and unblinking eyes looked as if they might themselves be exhibits). The old man with the horse teeth was friendly enough. He brought me a cappuccino and a fritella (a kind of custard filled doughnut) and laughed like a madman, when - with a nod of my head, a polite giggle and a vague si, si - I pretended I had understand some hilarious anecdote he was trying to tell me.

The cafe man resumed his cup polishing and table-cloth smoothing, wiping tears of mirth from his cheeks with the corner of his stained tea towel. I grinned obligingly, slowly nodding and looked up at the cafe's walls, which were lined with glass-fronted cabinets. Inside the cabinets were dozens of dusty chocolate boxes which, from the style of the packaging, looked as if they must have been there since the sixties at least, and old, old bottles of whisky and champagne, turned to ornaments in waiting for some celebration that had never come.

I nibbled my fritella and imagined myself to be the first tourist ever to find the cafe, an explorer discovering the hidden innards of small-town Italy. The bell rang as the door opened. It was the two Americans. They entered with open guidebook.

"This looks like the place," said the boy. They sat and shared a glass of warm milk. I smiled politely, then left and headed back to the piazza between the hotel and the church.

Although the streets leading to the piazza were still deserted, outside the Basilica di Sante Violiene a small group of people lingered, enjoying the quiet warmth of the sunbathed flagstones. I stopped a short distance from them and stood like a stray cat, pretending to mind my own business but occasionally glancing in their direction with nonchalant curiosity. When they'd gone into the church I slowly crossed the deserted flagstones to the church entrance ( a stone archway, tall and broad enough to be the entrance to any fairy tale giant's castle) paused briefly then slipped inside.

After the brightness of the day outside, it took me several seconds to adjust to the gloom of the church, illuminated only by candles and intermittent streams of light which filtered through stained-glass windows and fell on the walls in rainbow-coloured pools like out of focus slides from heaven. But when my eyes did finally adjust to the darkness, I have to say I was pretty impressed by what I saw. The huge dome above my head made St Paul's Cathedral look like an upturned tea cup. And I'd never seen so much gold, so many candles, so many paintings and sculptures all in one place before.

There was only a handful of people in the congregation, sitting on pews toward the front of the nave. They were listening to a priest in scarlet and white robes recite Latin from a gigantic book on a massive lectern (reinforcing the feeling that the church had been built for giants). And the priest's voice sounding just how I imagined, when I was a kid, the voice of God would sound, echoing all around in a language I couldn't really understand.

I felt slightly guilty that I may have been intruding upon some private ceremony. But it wasn't as if everyone were tearfully dressed in black, so I sneaked onto the pew nearest the door, two dozen empty rows between me and a lady who sat slightly detached from the other worshippers at the back of the congregation.

Then a priest appeared. He was youngish and wore the obligatory cassock as well as silver rimmed spectacles (the same shape as seventies Polaroid sunglasses, but without the green-grey cloudiness). The priest gave my denim jacket and 501s a cursory once over and then whispered something.

I nodded dumbly (as usual, not having understood a single word he'd said). Unable to explain that I didn't want to join the service, I had little choice but to let myself be led by the sleeve to a seat beside the lady who sat alone at the back of the congregation.

I slid into place, thanking the priest with another little nod. The lady turned to me and smiled. I smiled back at her and pretended to cross myself, very rapidly with minimal movements (which basically amounted to tapping myself randomly in the centre of my chest four times), to pretend that I was an authentic late arrival rather than some ungodly gatecrasher.

As the congregation started to pray (knotted thumbs pressed into foreheads, lips moving in silent synchrony) the lady on the pew beside me looked across and smiled again. But that smile was different from the first one. The first smile had been friendly and focused, a polite smile of greeting. This smile was the definitive look of rapture, the smile of a satisfied lover gazing up from a rumpled pillow, a smile that suggested total fulfilment, not aimed at me, but at everyone and everything. I turned away, closed my eyes and pretended to pray.

Even though I'm not really into God and stuff, I think I knew how that lady felt, and I guess, for a moment, I felt the same way - dwarfed by the enormity of that church like some insignificant temporary cog tick-tocking away deep in the golden guts of some invisible space-spanning machine, a machine like an infinite wrist watch, except, it doesn't just tell the time, it creates time. Or maybe it doesn't create time, but actually consumes it, gobbles it up. And maybe the machine isn't like an old fashioned clock with cogs and hands. Maybe it's more like a digital watch, a disposable, space-black Casio that never needs winding, but instead has a battery that lasts for a certain time and then one day (just when you least expect it) simply stops, fading like a TV screen in a power cut (just when you get to the good bit of whatever programme you happen to be watching).

I don't know, perhaps it's because we have all these nuclear weapons now and telescopes that can see millions of miles into space, but it seems that everyone wants to predict how the world will end, like those mad professors you sometimes see on late night TV, after the football highlights have finished, with their tramps hair and equation littered blackboards, chalky fingers tap, tap, tapping away at their solar powered calculators, desperate to prove that the space time continuum is shaped like an inside-out conch shell and will one day disappear up its own spout like some nebulous crustacean.

Texas Instruments probably does that now - an Apocalypse 501, the calculator for the professional (and enthusiastic amateur) astrophysicist. Over half-a thousand ways to work out how and when the world will end, in the comfort of your own home. £11.99 from W H Smiths, cushioned by a sleeve of bubble wrap, in a personalised grey plastic wallet, a thick silver sticker on the back, 'Made in Malaysia' (disposable with sealed battery) churned out a million a minute by some mad, robotic machine.

I could save them all some bother, you know. Forget your sub-atomic particles and expanding universes. Forget your heavens and your hells, your astral charts and twelfth century prophecies. I know when the world will end.

It's two minutes into injury time in the European Cup final, and West Ham United are three nil up against Ajax of Amsterdam. The referee glances across at each of the linesmen, looks at his watch for the last time and raises the whistle to his lips and....some meteorite about twenty seven times the size of Jupiter cannons the Earth into the heart of the sun.

The galaxy implodes like a dropped light bulb and time is shattered into eternal darkness, swallowed up in a ball of sunshine, the teams, the referee, the linesmen, the crowd experiencing for a split second that journey into the hereafter exactly as the poets and painters have for centuries pictured it - the blinding white light of heaven the searing heat of hell. Bang - life, the universe and everything frazzled up into burnt black nothingness, the colourless infinities of outer space.

West Ham are like that, so full of promise, but in the end, never quite achieving what they're capable of. They've always played a beautiful passing game. At the end of the season, with relegation or promotion looming over them, any other team would take their chances with kick and rush, or play seven at the back to get that important away point, but not West Ham, always pass, pass, pass. In an ideal world (like the one Paul told me about, with perfectly round balls and perfectly flat pitches) it would work out for them. I mean, if beauty and justice counted for anything, it would all work out fine. But, unfortunately, West Ham's world is far from perfect. They always give away too many silly goals, squander too many easy chances.

Seventeen passes I counted in one game last season, seventeen! The ball passed out of defence, swept from feet to feet, pearls and diamonds, diamonds and pearls, switched from left to right, a couple of one-touch layoffs, the perfect through ball down the line to a winger in acres of space who steadies himself, looks up, floats in the perfect cross beyond the reach of the keeper, who flounders like a walrus out of water as the ball is deftly flicked back to a lone forward in front of a gaping goal (a chance my gran could have put away with her eyes closed and her legs tied together). Seventeen passes, one tiny little ball, one enormous unguarded goal, one unmarked centre forward. It's not too much to ask is it?

I remember that scene so vividly still. The winger is already running back towards the half way line, arms raised in triumph. The goalkeeper lies face down in a part-dried puddle, pounding the mud with green-gloved fists. The manager leaps from his seat. And the centre forward? Well, forget Sir Isaac Newton. Forget Einstein. At that precise moment the centre forward (realising perhaps that his days as a professional footballer were numbered) decides to embark on a new career in theoretical physics by breaking every law of gravity and matter that have ever been written. Somehow (and don't ask me how) somehow (even though he appeared to kick toward the empty goal) the ball instead of travelling forward, travels upwards like a rocket from a milk bottle and cannons off the bar.

The rebound is hooked away by their donkey of a defender, for their teenage boy wonder to chase, penetrating our defence (still busy congratulating each other on the goal that never came). Like a whippet among cart horses, boy wonder runs and runs and side foots the ball, soft as anything, towards the goal. I can see it now. Our goal keeper slips backwards in slow motion. The ball trickles towards the goal line. The terraces are silenced by despair and disbelief as a couple of cart horses amble hopefully back from way outside the area. But it's too late. The ball crosses the line. One cart horse, acting as if he posseses the power to turn back time, lunges desperately into the back of the goal, where he grips the net and hangs for several seconds as if a huge hell-bound pit has opened up in the mud beneath him. Honestly, talk about chaos theory - you've never seen anything fucking like it!

Boy was I pissed off. Us - seventeen passes of living poetry and nothing. Them - one hoof up the field, a sprint, a side-foot, a slip and another three points dribble down the drain. And yet again we slide dangerously close to the edge of the relegation zone. It's crazy. How a team that can play so beautifully always manages to lose so abysmally I will never know. But one thing's for certain, if there is a God, he, she or it is not a West Ham supporter!

You sometimes see people at Upton Park praying, eyes closed to the goal mouth drama in front of them, deaf to the roar of the crowd, demanding some greater power to protect a last minute two-one lead. But not me. I've never prayed - not even knelt cross legged on the hall floor during those first infant school assemblies, when everyone prayed. I swear, I never did. Mainly it's because I can never think of anything sensible to ask for. I'm the same with Christmas presents (you should see my bathroom cabinet at home - filled with a ten year supply of Rudolph's Red Nose aftershave and snowman-bottled shower gel!).

As I sat in that huge Italian church surrounded by all those worshippers, l did actually wonder what they were all praying for: Clockwork salvation from a digital doomsday? Or that AC Milan will be beaten by Udinese and a miracle in the Coppa Italia? That the supermarket will not have run out of that special cheese they like? Or that the long legged lady sitting two pews in front, who danced too close to their husband one Christmas, will be run over by a fruit van? I don't know.

But whatever it was that those people were praying for, I guess it must have been quite a long list of things, because they were knelt there for ages, with their heads bowed and hands clasped. After a while, I felt a bit awkward just sitting there and looked up into that huge dome above where the face of God peered down and plaster angels flew all around. And, even though I'm not religious, I have to admit, I did kind of shiver as if a ghost had just passed through me.

When I say I felt like a ghost had gone through me, I don't mean it was the Holy Ghost or the Spirit of God or anything (nor was it simply because the church was so damn cold). No, I think what made me shiver were the worn-fingered ghosts of all those architects and masons, plasterers and goldsmiths, who, brick by brick, brush stroke by brush stroke, had together through nine centuries created that incredible place.

Nine centuries! These days most builders would be reluctant to consider a project that would take nine months to complete, let alone nine hundred years. No, these days everything has to be instant. It's unbelievable how quickly they put buildings up. For example, take the way they built the church on the new housing estate near us. It started off as a skeleton of flimsy girders on a piece of waste land. Then a couple of prefab concrete slabs were hoisted into position by a rented crane, and the gaps fleshed out with crudely plastered breeze blocks. Then (almost as an afterthought) they added a cosmetic brick skin and a bit of tarmac for people to park on and, hey presto, within a few days it was ready for the Bishop's blessing!

If they still crucified people these days the cross would probably come in a self-assembly kit. And, by the time each condemned man had figured out the instructions, he would probably end up being crucified in the early hours of Saturday morning rather than on the Friday (and there'd still probably be a few nails left over that no one knew what to do with!)

It's a real shame. I mean, if someone were to say to me - 'hey we're planning to build this enormous building, it's going to take a thousand years, but if you've got fifty years free and fancy working on this wall, we'll provide a spare trowel and all the bricks you could ever want for,' - if someone said that to me, I'd do it. I'd leap at the chance, just for once, to build something that was likely to last longer than I was. So, that a thousand years later, someone might sit there and, with a shiver, feel my ghost pass through them.

II

It was strange, I thought as I looked around the cvhurch, strange that a place of such beauty and peace should be dedicated to a victim of such ugliness and violence - St Violiene, a sixteenth century peasant girl who rather than surrender her chastity to the bestial desires of a mediaeval rapist instead gave herself to a gory but virtuous death carved limb from limb by his sword and his fury (at least, that's what it said in the guide book).

St Viliene's story is told in tasteful frescoes along the church wall. Her actual dress, all rips and blood stains, is kept in the crypt in a glass case along with her ear, which was sliced off by the rapist's sword (so the story goes), and has been pickled in a jar for seven centuries. The pickled ear draws thousands of pilgrims to the church each year, thousands of them.

After the service had finished, I queued up for ages to see St Violiene's ear. It was in the bottom of a jar full of murky fluid (like one of the jars they used ot have in the biology lab at school full of dead toads, snakes and rabbit guts). The ear looked a bit like a dried apricot to me. Still, it impressed the hell out of everyone else. They touched the case that held the dress and the jar and crossed themselves all frantic and murmuring as they emerged with free-from-sin smiles up stone steps and out through an iron-bound door to daylight, on the far side of the crypt.

Beacuse it was near Easter there were quite a few tourists and pilgrims visiting the church. A coach load of them suddenly clattered in just before the end of the service, camera flashes exlpoding through the hushed darkness (like a city being bombed at night). With the clatter and the cameras came a whispering of voices - French, German and Japanese - followed by a familiare English chattering.

"Ohh, they're burning soemthing funny in here. Can't you smell it?"

"Blimey it's cold. Their heating must have packed in."

"See I told you I shouldn't have left my cardigan in the car."

And then a loud American drawl.

"Honey! This is one hell of a place!"

Although I would not have chosen those words precisely myself, I shared the sentiment behind them. That church was staggering. Each of its many altars were decorated in gold and hung with priceless mastetpieces.

The main dome was painted by Michelangelo, (on a weekend away from the Sistine Chapel I guess). A sculpture of an angel by Donatello stood like a celestial doorman at the entrance to the crypt where St Vi's dress and ear were displayed. And everywhere you looked the place was packed with loads of other paintings and carving and statues and things.

My favourite painting was a crucifixion scene (one of several in the church), in which a violent orange cloud surrounded the lowered head of Christ as he hung, sinewy arms spread-eagled, congealing blood slowly dripping down his pale, crushed chest. They can keep all their Donatellos and everything - that painting was the one piece of art in that church that really got to me. It was by some Sicilian painter I'd never heard of.

According to the plaque beneath the picture, he'd been born in nineteen fifty something. So I guess he was still alive, which probably explains why I didn't have a clue who he was. You never really hear about living artists, only the dead ones.

There was this big black skeleton with wings I liked as well. It was like something out of a Friaht Niaht movie - bony toes stamping on a carved skull and fingers struggling out of a tomb inscribed with words I couldn't decipher (some Latin motto about death I guess). There were a lot of things to do with death in that church.

Behind the central altar I discovered a curious thing. It was quite disturbing actually. There, beside candles (already dedicated to God in five different languages) were small gilt and silver framed photos and mementoes to the memory of lost loved ones: a Polaroid of a premature baby connected to a life support machine; a misty-eyed mother stood beside the wreckage of her deceased son's Alfa Romeo; tiny golden lungs (for a heavy smoker I guessed); silver kidneys (for a heavy drinker); and a silver heart with a golden arrow (for plain old age or, maybe, the suicide of a jilted lover, or perhaps even some bizarre archery accident).

All the mementoes had hand written messages pushed into their frames.

Even though I couldn't really read those messages, I could somehow kind of understand what they said. God look after our son. Receive and protect a dear husband and father. Take care of our little airl.

It was strange, I thought as I looked around the church, strange that a place of such beauty and peace should be dedicated to a victim of such ugliness and violence - St Violiene, a sixteenth century peasant airl who rather than surrender her chastity to the bestial desires of a mediaeval rapist instead eave herself to a aory but vinuous death carved limb from limb by his sword and his Jury (at least, that's what it said in the guidebook).

St Violiene's story is told in tasteful frescoes along the church wall. Her actual dress, all rips and blood stains, is kept in the crypt in a glass case along with her ear, which was sliced off by the rapist's sword (so the story goes), and has been pickled in a jar for seven centuries. The pickled ear draws thousands of pilgrims to the church each year, thousands of them.

After the service had finished, I queued up for ages to see St Violiene's ear. It was in the bottom of a jar full of murky fluid (like one of the jars they used to have in the biology lab at school full of dead toads, snakes and rabbit guts). The ear looked a bit like a dried apricot to me. Still, it impressed the hell out of everyone else. They touched the case that held the dress and the jar and crossed themselves all frantic and murmuring as they emerged with free-from-sin smiles up stone steps and out through an iron-bound door to daylight, on the far side of the crypt.

Because it was near Easter there were quite a few tourists and pilgrims visiting the church. A coach load of them suddenly clattered in just before the end of the service, camera flashes exploding through the hushed darkness (like a city being bombed at night). With the clatter and the cameras came a whispering of voice: French, German and Japanese, followed by familiar English chattering:

"Ohh they're burning something funny in here. Can't you smell it?" "Blimey it's cold. Their heating must have packed in" "See, I told you I shouldn't have left my cardigan in the car." And then a loud American drawl:

I was toying with the idea of lighting a candle, and had just picked one up when a lady with a dark scarf round her head appeared. I handed the candle to her and attempted a comforting smile. To be honest, it was a pretty feeble attempt. But it didn't matter. She didn't look at me as she took the candle.

Soon the lady's family arrived - kids with just-brushed hair and little fidgety hands, dad large and serious. He attached a new message to the picture of the tiny baby on the life support machine. That made me feel kind of awkward. I made what you might call a 'tactical withdrawal' and went to sit in the courtyard behind the church where the monks all lived in new brick flats surrounding a big tree. I'm not quite sure what type of tree it was - yew most probably.

I must have spent about half an hour just sitting there in the sunshine watching the monks popping in and out of their little flats, and by the time I finally left the church the piazza outside was again busy with tourists and pilgrims and stalls selling gifts.

As I wandered across the crowded flagstones, I paused by a stall where a man with a weathered face sat in the sun reading a filthy magazine. The magazine was supposed to be hidden inside a newspaper, but the outside page of the paper had slipped from the man's gnarled fingers revealing the celluloid cover beneath. A woman wearing a rubber mask was strapped to a chair, each breast lassoed by mini-nooses tied to iron rings on the wall whilst another woman, in thigh-high boots and what appeared to be black washing-up gloves, brandished a horse whip above her.

After a few moments the man caught me staring at the cover of his magazine. Completely unabashed he recovered the loose page of newspaper and eyed me suspiciously over his sunglasses. Then he grunted and went back to his reading, pausing only to clutch at his crotch and scratch his hard on through dark, baggy trousers and stub out his cigarette in a St Violiene ashtray, one of the many delightful gifts his stall offered.

From the side of the man's stall hung candles of varying sizes, ranging from three inches to three feet long, all decorated with cartoon images of St Violiene. The centre of the stall was dominated by plastic, plug-in St Vi statuettes, covered in fairy lights. In front of them were stacks of St Vi plates, St Vi wood carvings and St Vi medallions, as well as pictures of St Vi in imitation silver frames, St Vi snowstorms in transparent domes, and even a yellow St Vi kiddie's handbag. It reminded me of the fresco I'd seen in the

tiny chapel of an angry Jesus literally kicking the merchants out of the temple (and my guess is that if Jesus had come down from heaven right then, he would have put that bloke in intensive care for weeks).

After making my way over to the side of the piazza nearest to my hotel, I sat on a wall and started to sketch the church. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a lizard's head emerge through the coarse iron mesh of a drain cover.

The lizard crept up and basked in the sunshine for a while, returning to the sanctuary of his sewer as people passed by then re-emerging when they'd gone. I watched the lizard popping in and out of his drain until a lady with a bike scattered torn bread and seed in his direction and he disappeared as hundreds of pigeons descended flapping like mad and falling over each other to get at all that food.

When the woman with the bike had gone another woman came along then with a little boy in a push chair. Every time the pigeons came down she would run at them with the pushchair so that they flew away, the air filling with flapping and cooing and the little boy's laughter. Then she would let the pigeons get settled and do the same thing again.

It seemed to me a very cruel thing to do but the people around me seemed to be smiling and laughing along with the kid in the chair as he was repeatedly pushed through the startled pigeons. They were the kind of people who'd go and look at that toucan in its tiny cage and bang on the bird shop window to watch it jump from side to side, and then laugh as it fell off its perch. The thick bastards.

When the seed had been eaten and most of the pigeons had gone, the woman with the push chair pissed off and I calmed down a bit and got on with some more sketching. Every now and them passers by would stop to look over my shoulder, so I concentrated really hard, and even if I say so myself, the picture did turn out pretty good.

After about an hour, I got bored of drawing and popped back to the albergo across the road. The bloke I'd chatted to earlier was back on duty at reception. He had changed out of his hooded black sweatshirt and into his uniform (but still looked a bit like a monk, with that daft, straight fringe of his).

On seeing me he grinned and, with a magician's flourish, plucked my room key from the rack behind him.

"Numero venti sette," he said.

"Thanks," I said, taking the key from him.

"You go to ze parade thees evening?" he asked.

"I'm not sure," I said.

"Eet ees very good. Much fun." He spotted my sketchbook beneath my arm. "Ahh you draw our Basilica di Santa VioJiene," he said. "May I look?"

"Yea, go ahead," I said, passing him the book.

"It's not very good, just a sketch"

"Bene, bene," he murmured, holding the book at arms length and scrutinising the drawing with half-narrowed eyes. "So you are artist?"

"No, not really," I said, spinning the room key between my fingers. "I just like drawing."

The trendy monk wagged his finger at me and grinned.

"Really it ees very nice, bellissimo, bellissimo. I think you are artist perhaps."

I shrugged.

"Not a proper one."

"Yes, I think so," he insisted laying the picture carefully on the counter in front of him and smiling. "Perhaps it inspire you to go to Govia. Bella citta, beautiful place, no?"

"Oh, yes, very nice," I said. "Very different from England."

"Yes, I have been to England, to London, when I was, how you say, studente. I go for one month. I go to zoo in Regents Park and Stringy-fellow. You know it?"

"Yea, the night-club," I said, nodding.

"Oh yes, a big night-club. And also the Hippy-dome." He paused for a moment smiling broadly to himself, presumably remembering dancing the night away with Sandra from 'Isleengton' or Natalie from 'Iliford.'

"Sounds like you had a good time," I said.

"Yes, I make many friends in London, " he said. "Is this where you are coming from."

"No, I live in a little town called Westing," I said. "It's about ninety miles away from London."

"Ninety mile?" He pushed out his bottom lip (obviously slightly disappointed) and nodded his head from side to side. I got the feeling that if I'd said I lived any closer to London held have asked me if I knew someone he'd met there - John from 'Hounislow', perhaps, or Adrienne from 'Dagenham' (which he would undoubtedly have pronounced like 'eggs and ham).

"Oh well," I said, picking up my sketch book. "I'm just going to pop up to my room.

He smiled.

"Do not forget parade. Much fun. Really, you enjoy."

Tnanks," I said, " I might check it out later," and waved as I headed for the stairs.

III

When I came downstairs that evening (refreshed after having finally found the shower free) the trendy monk had been replaced at reception by one of his more sombre colleagues who took my key with no more than a curt nod.

Outside it had started to get dark, the streets barely illuminated by bulbs which hung, naked and weak, on wires stretched across the street. There was a slight fog in the air, and the cobbled roads and shadowed arcades reminded me of one of those films set in Victorian London; Jack the Ripper or Sherlock Holmes. I half expected to hear Hansom cabs clatter by with cloaked drivers and suspicious passengers, or some drunken wench, all cleavage and petticoats, to stumble out of a hidden doorway and offer to make all my dreams come true for half a guinea.

Towards the town centre the illusion was broken by couples and families who sat drinking coffee and eating ice cream in islands of light. In the brightness of the piazzas, the young men of the town had gathered. In their trendiest jackets they sat, with gold rimmed shades and white filtered cigarettes, astride scooters, or propped up walls whistling at the girls who promenaded past all bubble gum and innocence with their long dark hair and neatly ironed jeans.

Ahead of me in one of the piazzas I saw a family - mum, dad and two little girls dressed as flowers. The girls wore satin bodices with frames of silk and lace - one ruffled rose, one smooth marigold. Each wore a skirt of green satin leaves stitched with veins of red thread. Assuming that they were probably going to the parade, I followed them at a distance to a part of town I had not seen before and soon joined more families with flower children, as well as two men dressed as knights with cardboard helmets from which sprouted plumes of white feathers.

As I followed them beyond the bus station, we passed through streets dominated by some pretty scummy looking tower blocks that would not have looked out of place near where I live back home - fifteen-story high rises with graffiti sprayed on the ground floor walls, rooms hidden behind grimy shutters and only two or three balconies brightened with pots of red flowers. Yet, in an avenue just a few yards further on were luxury apartment blocks, no more than three stories high, with flowers adorning every veranda.

The blocks were set well back from the road, surrounded by large lawned gardens behind black spiked railings and heavy iron gates. As we passed one of the older buildings, which had marble pillars in front and wide steps surrounded by laurel trees, I looked up from the street at light streaming from the open window of an upstairs room. On the room's high ceiling was a fresco featuring nymphs and goddesses, all grapes and nipples. Beneath the fresco stood a man in a dark jumper who held a wine glass and laughed at loud, faceless voices, which faded slowly as we walked on down the street.

A short distance away we reached a junction where the carribineri stood like cowboys, hands on gun holsters, chewing gum and turning traffic away from a wide street lined with crowds of people - kids up on shoulders waving flags. I joined the crowd and listened to approaching music - tinny, at first then getting louder - accompanied by the chug-chug of engines and shouts and clapping, which spread up the street like fire, until round the corner appeared the parade led by a stilt walker, a fire eater and a dwarf in the open boot of a maroon Fiat Regatta estate.

Now I'm not being nasty or anything, but that dwarf did look really weird. He had a really bulbous forehead and wonky eyes - one set slightly lower than the other, the socket all saggy as if one side of his face had partly melted. The peculiarity of his looks was not helped by the fact that he was dressed as clown and had a huge red smile painted on his face. To be fair, the dwarf was trying to raise a real smile, but you could tell it was a bit of strain.

Actually, as the dwarf passed by, he looked to me as if he had a bit of a hangover, and I felt quite sorry for him. I mean, it's bad enough just trying to get up the next day when you've had a couple of pints too many, let alone having to wear a red plastic nose and a blue checked suit and wave at people from the boot of a car.

Maybe the dwarf wasn't hungover, but just pissed off at the part he had to play in the parade. The awful thing about being a dwarf, must be, not that you are small, but that for the rest of your life you are destined to ride in the boot of a car dressed as a clown.

The stilt man can takes his stilts off and return to work as an insurance clerk or whatever on Monday morning. The fire eater can spit out the petrol and sweeten his breath with peppermint. But the dwarf, even if he wears stack heels and a top hat he's still going to be a dwarf. That's the awful thing, if you are the dwarf in a parade. Everyone is laughing and pointing at you because of what you absurdly are, rather than because you are pretending to be something ridiculous that you obviously are not. No wonder he was finding it hard to smile.

After a few more clowns had juggled and squirted their way past, a series of floats came by drawn by tractors which must have taken hours to trundle into town from distant farms. Among them was a Disney float with Pluto and Donald Duck and a procession of mini Minnie and Mickey Mouses who showered the crowds with confetti. There was a World Cup float with boys wearing Italian team strips and juggling black and white footballs on their thighs. Next came an enormous paper mache sun, taller than a man, with huge orange flames sticking out of it. Around the sun spun a moon and an earth with oceans and deserts and models of international landmarks, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Taj Mahal and the Statue of Liberty.

Following the huge sun were Venetian masqueraders all peacock feathers, purple velvet and sequins. They all wore these fantastic decorated masks, which must have taken years to make. There was a Medusa with padded snakes for hair, silk diamond skins and red satin tongues. Behind the Medusa came a spiderwoman. I don't mean she was like a female version of Spiderman, with a skin tight blue and red suit or anything like that. No, I mean she wore this mask like the body of a huge gold spider with velvet legs sticking out of her head across a web of silk.

Holding the spiderwoman's arm was an old man (you could tell he was old because he had funny knees that kind of bent inwards and he hobbled along like a knackered chicken). The old man wore a huge cape and an Egyptian style head-dress with clouds of bridal veil netting billowing out behind. Most bizarre.

Following the final masquerader - a sad satin Pierrot with a black and white checked suit, a painted tear on his cheek and a single red rose held limply in a white gloved hand - were a lot of men in striped T-shirts riding crazy bicycles. There was a penny farthing with a tractor inner tube at the back, a bike that pedalled backwards and one that folded in the middle, as well as bikes with cow horn handlebars, tiny little bikes, great long bikes, and bikes with endless chains and cogs, all pedalling up and down and round between all the floats.

Finally, bringing up the rear, was a troupe of majorettes - flag-waving, high-stepping, brass-buttoned beauties with short skirts and kinky boots. I imagined the dwarf clown with the dodgy eyes would have been happier to have been there at the back of the parade with those girls, on a skateboard perhaps, scootering back and forth through a forest of slender thighs in time to the melodies of a marching band, whose polished trombones and euphoniums reflected the musicians' faces like crazy mirrors at a funfair.