I

When we arrived in Venice, the station seemed just like any other I've ever been in, all toilets, tears and timetables - waiting passengers anxiously trying to match up the list of destinations on the departures board with rows of empty, unmarked carriages.

As I followed the rest of the passengers through the station's dreary normalness, it seemed impossible that the magical city depicted in all those famous paintings could possibly be just a few feet away. But suddenly, as I stepped outside the station, there it was, just like in the movies, all bridges, domes and the Grand Canal.

Right outside Venice station was a wide flight of steps that led down to a jetty where a big white bridge stretched over to the other side of the canal. Laid out on the station steps were row upon row of genuine 'Lacoste' T-shirts and 'Rolex' watches, together with an assortment of cassettes, handbags, sunglasses and plastic lighters. These 'bargains' were tended over by a gaggle of smiling Africans, who were trying their best to distract passing tourists from their maps and ice creams (without much success).

I politely barged my way through the milling throng and climbed the white bridge. At the top I stopped beside a dark-eyed boy selling rings and brooches from a little table, and watched boats pass beneath me. All kinds of different boats came down the canal. Among them were letter boats, ice cream boats, barges laden with fruit and rubbish and bricks and, all of a sudden, a police speedboat, all blue flashing lights and foam. The speedboat bounced along sending a cascade of waves crashing through the calmness and bashing into the smooth green walls of buildings that rose tall and defiant from the canal's glassy depths.

I watched a couple of gondolas pitch violently in the speedboat's wake, and wondered how the houses managed to survive the constant attack of churning water. Then, as the waves subsided, I continued across the bridge and down into the maze of narrow streets and smaller bridges that slowly run alongside and hop over the Grand Canal's myriad branching tributaries (as the guide book puts it).

As I got further from the station it felt like there was something strange about the place and it wasn't just the water. Venice seemed quite different somehow from all the other towns and cities I'd ever been in. I couldn't work out what it was at first. And then suddenly I realised - there was no traffic. No screech of brakes nor hoot of horns. No grumble of rusted silencer nor slipping fan-belt's whine. No impatient driver coasting through a red light, senses cocooned in some reckless mechanical dragon, with oil to spill and rubber to burn, belching lungfulls of mustard-grey smoke, as you step into the road. No, not in Venice...not in Venice where - with it's steps of warm stone and lazy canals - even the smell of slow water seems sweet.

Between the Station and St Mark's Square (which opens out onto the sea and the offshore islands with their glassworks and graveyards) the narrow streets were swarming with tourists. Most of them were European (mainly French and English). But there was also a noisy minority of Americans, their voices barging through the babble in the body-jammed alleyways.

On one of the smaller bridges I literally bumped into a couple in gold lame bomber jackets and dayglo green cycling shorts. Mr American was a big bloke. Mrs American was flaming humungous. She was bent over the bridge videoing a gondola as it floated down the canal. The cheeks of her huge arse looked like a couple of lime jellies. The funny thing was that she and her partner were with this really trim, elegant Italian man. He could see that Mrs American was blocking the bridge with her bum so he tactfully murmured:

"Now we go for a cappuccino, si?"

He helped Mrs American lift herself up like she was a stranded whale. And she turned to him all red in the face from walking up and down and said: "I'd sure appreciate a sit down, but honey I don't drink nothing but Diet Pepsi."

That cracked me up. Diet Pepsi? Diet Pepsi and ten doughnuts more like, you fat bitch. Now, I'm not being nasty. I've got nothing against fat people, not if they have some kind of dodgy metabolism or something weird like that. But most really fat people are just lazy and greedy, like that woman. You could tell there wasn't anything wrong with her. She obviously just ate too much. Now, I feel guilty when I see all those kids starving in Africa and I'm not that fat (except for my beer belly and anyway I'm trying to get rid of that). But that whale woman - Jesus, you could slaughter her and feed a whole a tribe for a year. I'm not kidding. She was a very, very large lady.

As I got further from the station the streets started to widen out leading into frequent piazzas with statues and fountains, restaurants and cafes - the air filled with that aroma of strong black coffee and freshly baked pizza. Between the piazzas were hundreds of little shops, hundreds of them.

If (for some reason) you ever want to buy a mask, Venice is definitely the place to come. The place was full of masks - just like the ones I'd seen them wear the previous evening at the parade in Govia (the parade with those majorettes and the sad dwarf in the boot of that Fiat estate). Everywhere you looked those empty faces peered back at you - tiny china masks, gold masks studded with jewels, paper mache masks, plain and painted, happy and sad, angry, mad, you name it. The shops were stacked with them.

Many of the shops sold carnival costumes as well, plus the latest catwalk offerings from Rome and Milan. You wouldn't believe some of those clothes. It was sometimes hard to tell what was meant to be high fashion and what was fancy dress. Maybe for the kind of people who could afford those clothes it didn't really matter. Maybe life for them was just one long carnival. It would be for me if I had that kind of cash, I can tell you!

Among the impractical designs and improbable price tags of the haute couture, were smaller windows filled with books and pencils covered in marbled paper (like we'd once attempted to make in art at school with oil paints floated on water in aluminium baking trays), and little creatures made by glass blowers out on the islands.

I stood for ages peering into one quiet window where scarlet dogs chased aquamarine cats. Below them, a complete glass orchestra played for pink ballerinas no taller than a thumbnail. The dancers were all so spindly and fragile, they looked like they would shatter if you so much as sneezed. Next to them were families of chunky glass elephants, who trundled trunk to tail between lifelike glass grass hoppers, beetles, scorpions and wasps. Behind the insects naked glass girls posed provocatively before crude glass men of improbable proportions. The larger of the men wore irrelevant water-skis and snow-shoes (to stop them from toppling over, I guess, and snapping off their pride and joy).

I'd been standing outside the glass shop for a few minutes when the street was invaded by an annoyingly noisy group of tourists. You know the type - all cameras, maps and silly hats. I decided I would get off the beaten track then. So, instead of following the signs to St Mark's Square I thought I'd just wander here and there at random and see where I happened to get to.

Soon, I found a much quieter square bordered by a church and a row of small shops. I bought a cheese roll and a can of Diet Lilt and sat on a bench by a rather gothic drinking fountain, slowly soaking up the serenity of my surroundings. The church, opposite where I sat, was being renovated and was completely covered in scaffolding and hoardings, except for one small opening in which a stone Madonna stood. The Madonna held fresh flowers in one hand, wilted flowers in the other and had a clumsy goal drawn around her in white paint.

After I'd been sat there for a few minutes, two Italian kids appeared and started playing football with Mother Mary in goal. And as they kicked their battered leather ball against the hoardings (the thumps echoing around the empty square like rubbery cannon fire), it occurred to me that it was a rather sacrilegious thing to do, what with the Italians being so very Catholic and everything. Mind you, those kids never actually hit the Madonna, not even once. So, maybe that were showing their respect. Or, perhaps, they just liked to keep on scoring.

When the continual pounding of ball against hoardings finally became unbearable, I walked away from the square. And having turned randomly left and right a few times, I got hopelessly lost in a maze of narrow streets and bridges that seemed to end in dead ends or lead back to where I'd started from. Most of the streets were deserted, but at the end of one alleyway I did see a couple of girls who I followed for a while. Partly this was in the hope that they might be going somewhere near the station. And partly because one of the girls had the longest brown legs, the tightest denim shorts and the cutest bum you've ever seen (like a couple of just ripe nectarines).

After I'd trailed them over a couple of bridges, the girls (much to my disappointment) disappeared giggling through a doorway in a street of heavily draped washing lines which were suspended on pulleys above the canal and shimmered upside down in the darkness of the water below. From a balcony of geraniums an old lady with bosoms like straw-stuffed pillows waved and shouted down to me. I guess she must have thought me Italian with my dark hair and the beginnings of a tan. Of course, I couldn't understand a word she said. But, all the same, I waved dumbly back at her and she nodded and smiled, all wrinkles and stubby, tombstone teeth.

I was trying to find my way out of all those little streets when I came across this art museum. It was called the Peggy Guggenheim Museum and outside was a poster, covered by clouded plastic, of a picture by Picasso. The picture was of two ridiculously fat grey bathers (fatter even than those two Americans with their lime jelly buttocks). I'd never seen a real picture by Picasso or anyone really famous like that, so I thought I might as well go in and take a look.

It was really weird seeing all those paintings hanging there in that museum, four or five to a room. You could go right up close to them and study every brush stroke. When you were only looking at a tiny bit of those pictures, it was hard to see what was so special about them. I mean, close up, they didn't seem much different from something I might have painted. But when you stepped back and looked at the whole thing it was amazing. The brush strokes miraculously came alive, like magic - like doves flying out from an empty hat.

The museum was full of paintings by all kinds of famous artists; Salvador Dali, Henri Matisse and even my favourite artist - Marc Chagall. His painting was of a farm and right in the corner behind a barn, he'd painted a little man taking a piss. That made me like Chagall more than I even did already.

He always painted things like that - ordinary things like chickens and horses and houses and weddings. But somehow he made everything ordinary seem special and magic. He painted with a brightness of colour you only ever see if you close your eyes and look up at the sun, or sometimes when you are dreaming.

I can't really understand what Mark Chagall's pictures are about. But they are always amazing to look at. It's like he has turned his mind inside out - simply spilling out all those thoughts and images I could never begin to get down on paper.

Another thing I liked was outside at the back of the museum in a small garden that led down to the edge of the Grand Canal. It was a sculpture of a man sitting on a horse, and the man had an erection like the handle of a saucepan. That wasn't particularly funny in itself, but the horse had a really daft expression on its face. It was a bit like the smile on Jesus's donkey in that painting in that little chapel in Govia. It was hilarious - the funniest thing I'd seen for ages.

I was going to buy a postcard of the horse statue to show people back home. Only I knew what they'd think. They'd think I'd bought the postcard because the man riding the horse had that huge pan handle. I guessed that it would kind of get in the way of me trying to explain about the grin on the horse's face and everything. So, in the end, I settled for a postcard of Picasso's fat bathers instead (I hate to be misunderstood).

After I'd left the Peggy Guggenheim place I found my way back to one of the main piazzas and rejoined the trail of tourists flocking towards St Mark's Square.

St Mark's Square is the place you always see at the beginning of films that are set in Venice. Empty gondolas bob gently beside wonky wooden posts at the water's edge. Startled pigeons rise up from a deserted expanse of flagstones and fly above red tiled rooftops as the camera pans back to show a tranquil skyline of domes and spires.

I don't know when exactly they film such scenes. But the day I visited, the square was so packed full of people, I didn't even realise I'd arrived there, until a pigeon crapped on my shoulder. At which point, I looked up and saw (through a haze of I Love Venice straw boaters) St Mark's Cathedral, covered in old mosaics, gold and scaffolding.

It took me about half an hour to get across the square to the water's edge, where gondolas bobbed and people queued to have charcoal caricatures drawn by pony-tailed cartoonists. Towering above the edge of the square was a huge column with a lion on top - as if one of the lions in Trafalgar Square had suddenly turned savage and shinned up Nelson's column and eaten him. Next to the lion was another column with nothing on top. According to the people standing next to me, there used to be a statue on it. But it cracked when Pink Floyd played a bit too loudly at Venice Carnival one year, so it had to be taken down and was still being repaired.

Just around the corner from St Mark's Square I stumbled upon the Bridge of Sighs (another favourite of the movie cameramen). It's a surprisingly short bridge, totally enclosed in white stone with a small window half way along, which used to give condemned prisoners their last glimpse of sea and sky as they were led across the canal from the prison to the magistrate's palace to be executed.

You can't actually reach the Bridge of Sighs (unless for some reason you happen to have access to the prison or the palace). However you can get a good look at it from another, much bigger bridge which crosses the canal just a few feet away. In days gone by, I guess, the lovers of condemned men must have stood on the second bridge to wave farewell or blow one last kiss, perhaps, as the prisoners passed briefly by that small white window (although, these days they would have to fight hard for a place on the steps among the hordes of camera-toting Americans and umbrella-wielding tour guides).

No doubt the Bridge of Sighs is haunted and, no doubt, legend has it that if you stand there long enough you will see some ghostly face wailing at the window. It quite probably said something about it in my guide book. Unfortunately, just as I was searching for the relevant page, this stupid woman who was waving her arms around to attract the attention of some friend or relative, knocked my elbow and the book fell into the canal, where it disappeared beneath the bow of a gondola full of Japanese men (standing up to take photographs of a young couple snogging in the gondola that followed them).

I suppose if I weren't so stingy I would have bought myself another guide book and found out more about the bridge. But, instead I bought an ice cream and went and sat against a wall in the sun a little way away from a cafe where a small orchestra was playing.

II

As I sat there basking in the sun and listening to the music coming from the cafe nearby, I started to nod off a bit. Now, I don't know if it was the heat or the pictures I'd seen in the museum or the excitement of being in Venice or what, but I suddenly started to imagine this weird kind of cartoon.

All the images in the cartoon were like the paintings of Marc Chagall - blue people floating across really vivid scenery of yellow skies, red hills and green houses. At first I was in command of the images, like a slide projectionist deliberately casting new scenes onto the back of my eyelids. But, slowly, slowly I lost control and the images seemed to come alive and swim about of their own accord, and I guess I must have started dreaming quite deeply.

Most dreams you can't remember when you wake up (however vivid they might be and however much you might want to remember them, you just can't do it). But that dream was different. I can replay every image over and over again as if it had been recorded by some video system inside of my head.

I see a playground full of children running and skipping and laughing. When I say laughing, I don't mean they are literally laughing out loud, ha, ha, ha, like you might laugh at a joke, because there are no voices in the dream - at least, not voices that speak words. The voices are music and the music (which I guess must be the music of the small orchestra in the cafe playing as I slept) is more than just voices. It is movement and emotion, sounding from within and all around the Chagall-like children as they float about that playground, all dancing to the music, all making music as they dance, all that is except one small boy.

The boy has dark hair and deep green eyes - eyes that seem to analyse and understand all they survey, like the eyes of a hundred-year-old man, not those of a small child. The boy does not float or dance with the others. He just sits and watches with those eyes, full of wisdom, yet flickering with an occasional desire, a desire to join the dance, a childish whim which flutters briefly like a fish with the wings of a butterfly, a butterfly fish which rises from the surface of those deep green wells, then drops, waterlogged wing beats slowing as it drowns with the knowing acceptance of that old, old man.

The boy is alone, but the dream never tells me why. So, I have to freeze the image (reach in and press the pause button on that cerebral video) to consider reasons for his loneliness (a strange intrusion of consciousness that seems only possible in some recurrent dreams). Why, I wonder is he lonely?

Maybe he is just shy. Maybe he has terrible spots or some ugliness. Maybe he is foreign, with the wrong colour skin (blue instead of green in this world of Chagall-painted kids). Or perhaps, because of a bad cold, he missed out on the start of term when chance weddings occur between co-incidental desk sharers, lifelong friendships formed through alphabetic accidents - Collins and Cooper, Davis and Daniels, Stevens and Smyth.

If the boy is foreign (and he certainly seems a little foreign) then maybe he has a foreign surname full of Zs, Xs and Ws, that no-one can pronounce properly, a name that consigns him to the end of the register and a single desk with a wonky leg in the back corner of the classroom.

The dream restarts, the boy rises from the playground to join the other children as they return to their classroom. He smiles shyly at a boy and a girl, who return his smile. But the wail of his saxophone clashes clumsily with the boy's viola and the girl's timidly rattled tambourine. He sits at his desk alone, knowing the answer to every question the teacher asks, but answering none of them (not even when the teacher gets the answer wrong). He sits in silence, thoughts flowing invisibly in the depths of his eyes (a vacancy of expression the teacher puts down to some innate foreign dullness).

Outside again, some of the children grow bored of their dancing and decide to investigate the boy with the strange name who sits against the wall. They are curious the way children are, about earwigs, ants and unusual stones. When they talk to him, he imagines they are teasing, and fearfully rejects their approaches. He turns the daggers of loneliness inside out. He is sharp and fragile like a hedgehog made of glass.

They become wary and prod him with questions as one might prod a small animal with a stick. One boy snaps off a couple of glass spines, but cuts his hand, which starts to bleed. They decide to leave the glass hedgehog alone and dance away. The hedgehog scuttles off along the wall, until the dancing is only a distant noise and he unfolds back into a boy.

The school is a church school, established some centuries before (even dreams need their histories) by a priest who trusted that educating the children of the poor would at least help to attract charitable donations if not guarantee him a place among the angels.

The old church is derelict. But, at the back of the school the graveyard remains, overgrown with tangles of ivy and thorns, behind a rusty iron gate. The other children are frightened of what monsters might lurk in the shadows of broken stone and storm-struck yew. They stay well clear of the graveyard. So, it becomes a perfect retreat for the solitary boy. He sits and peers through the gate, holding the bars like a creature in a zoo.

The boy reads the unflowered gravestones - In Loving Memory of Edith Bates 1878-1934 - Always Remembered, Nicholas Johnston 1954-1962 - Here lies Geoffrey Chalmers 1794-1865.

The boy breathes new life into the names. He imagines how the people might have looked and makes up stories about them. He even starts to draw pictures of the people - Edie, Old Geoff and little Nicky, with his cap, shorts and pale (green) complexion. The imaginary friends play together in an improbable jazz trio (Edie on piano, Old Geoff on clarinet and Nicky on a huge double bass, which he can only play by standing on top of a grave). Their ragtime romps drown out the distant dancing of recorders and hurdy gurdies.

One lunch time a boy in the main playground gives a football an almighty boot. It soars over the school roof and lands near the graveyard. Another boy (the same one who'd snapped those glass hedgehog spines), to prove his bravery, goes to retrieve the ball. He sees the lonely blue-faced boy sketching by the graveyard gate.

The brave ball-retriever, whose name is Evans, is curious, an inquisitive bassoon. He edges closer. The lonely boy holds the picture in front of him like a shield. But then, remembering those shattered spines, he shows Evans the picture. Evans is impressed. His friend Edwards has come to find him (his fear of the graveyard overruled by the impatience of the other boys who want the ball back so that they can continue with their game).

Evans sees Edwards peering round the side of the school kitchens (nose wrinkling at the smell of overcooked cabbage and offal). He beckons Edwards to come see the picture. Edwards is an accordion and asks the lonely boy to draw a picture for his sister. Soon the lonely boy is drawing pictures for everyone. He is constantly surrounded by smiling faces, but feels more distant than ever. His pictures are his only contact with the other children.

The boy's drawings become brighter, more detailed, more sensitive, more shocking, more packed with images, more all-knowing. They melt between the children's fingers, are absorbed by their skin and settle inside them changing the very fabric of their beings - gifts of wisdom from a boy with the eyes of a hundred year old man, a boy who is drifting away on an unanchored island in a sea of paint.

The hands of lots of different clocks spin round. The air is filled with the ringing of bells and chiming of chimes. The boy is older now. Some ten years older, perhaps. He stands on his island in that sea of paint, constructing bridges to the main land. But these are no ordinary bridges they are the most elaborate bridges you have ever seen with ornate statues and balustrades, turrets and towers.

A crowd gathers to watch, applauding each new placing of sculptured stone. As the bridge nears completion the applause of the crowd becomes noisier and noisier, until the claps and cheers are so loud, that the bridge starts to shake and with a cracking of stone collapses into the sea of paint. Disappointed, the crowd slowly dissolves.

Wearily, the artist reaches into the sea to salvage stones. His arms, face and body are covered in rainbow swirls of paint. He starts to rebuild the bridge, a small crowd regathers, and a ripple of applause once more spreads across to the island.

After the collapse of two more bridges, the artist builds a small shelter out of the stones, where he sits until the crowds have all gone, and then he swims across to the mainland.

The artist travels around for a while painting fences to pay his way. For a long time no one recognises him. One day he is travelling on a train. He is sitting opposite a girl (a steel strung guitar).

The train is delayed by a signal failure somewhere up the line and they start to talk. From the first tentative notes their voices are in harmony, as if they were playing a tune they both instantly knew (although neither of them could recall having ever heard it before). The train remains stationary. The tune strengthens.

The notes bubble from their bodies and marry in mid-air, bubbles of oil paint and water, spinning and glistening. The music intensifies, and they start to float as if there is no gravity in the carriage and the air is made of music, multicoloured music and they float like fishes with butterfly wings.

They reach a station and someone opens the carriage door. They crash out on a waterfall of music unhurt, giggling, intoxicated by the colours that have filled them, oblivious to the babble of discord on the bustling platform.

But as the artist lies there in the pool of musical paint, flapping dry his butterfly wings, someone in the crowd recognises him. Suddenly he is surrounded by pointing fingers, goggling fish eyes and clapping hands. Hands tear his wings to shreds, grab at him like he was made of free gold. And the girl is nowhere to be seen.

The artist returns by boat to his bridgeless island and builds a castle from the salvaged stone. He buys the graveyard gates from his old school (which has long since been turned into a private clinic for the socially unwell). He locks himself behind the gates.

That winter he burns the boat to stay warm and never again leaves the island. People camp out on the mainland for weeks, pouring their life savings into high-power telescopes, just to catch a glimpse of him. Incredibly beautiful girls (and one or two boys) with everything to live for throw themselves fatally into the sea when he fails to respond to their marriage proposals.

Time passes again, the same clock hands spin madly, the same bells ring and the same chimes chime. Now, the artist looks a hundred years old (although he is little more than one third of that age). He hasn't painted a picture, he hasn't spoken to anyone, he has done nothing but breathe and dream for several years.

There are no longer any crowds on the mainland (only occasional bird watchers who wonder why there are quite so many telescopes aimed at that deserted island).

One day the artist decides to return to the mainland to find the girl he once met in that railway carriage. But the gate is rusted over. After several hours he manages to climb it, and hurls his frail body into the sea. He has no energy left to swim and drowns.

He is found some months later in the nets of a boat which sails around the island fishing for dreams. He lies among stones and the crab-bitten remains of those beautiful sad and foolish girls, his husk wrapped in the fishing net like a spider-sucked fly in a web, soft innards eaten away by loneliness long before he ever drowned.

In death the artist still has admirers and those that are jealous of his success. But he will never be hated or loved. No-one ever knew him well enough for that. Not even the girl on the train. She watches his funeral on TV with her husband (a trombone) and three kids (tenor horns), but does not recognise the man painting jerkily in a moon-silver news reel.