I

Needless to say, on my way back to the station, I got lost again. I was just plucking up the courage to go into a cafe and ask directions for about the third time, when I saw this girl with a ruck-sack frowning sweetly at a map. The girl looked a bit like a plump antelope with a strawberry blonde bob and very large, crescent-shaped earrings enamelled in ocean colours. She wore a blue leotard-style top and baggy indigo jeans rolled up to reveal strong bare ankles thrust into a pair of dusty black canvas shoes with torn eyelets and lagoon-blue laces.

What the heck, I thought, I'll go and ask her if she knows the way. But before I could make my move, she'd spotted me and, smiling, started to walk towards me. The closer she got the more gorgeous she looked. And by the time she'd reached me my guts felt like I'd just dropped about a hundred floors in a lift really fast.

"Ciao," she said.

I tried to say hello, but my mouth wouldn't work. My jaw went all stiff like I'd just been to the dentist for a couple of fillings and the injection hadn't quite worn off.

"Do you speak English?" she asked.

I nodded.

"I am looking for the station," she said slowly, and held up the map. "Can you show me?"

"Actually," I said, "I think I've got the same problem. I've been trying to find the station for ages, but I keep on ending up where I started. All these streets look the bloody same to me."

"Oh, sorry," she said. She laughed and raised her hand to her mouth, sweetly exaggerating her embarrassment. "You're English."

I laughed with her. She apologised again, reaching out to touch my arm. And my laugh turned into a clumsy cough.

"Are you all right?" she asked. "You look ever so red."

"It's OK," I said. "It's probably just the sun."

"You want to be careful," she said. She began to slip her ruck-sack from her sturdy shoulders. "I've got some lotion in here somewhere."

"Really it's OK," I said. "I'm all right, honest." I grinned foolishly for a moment. Then kind of peered forward to look at her map.

"Do you know what the name of this square is?" she asked.

"I'm not sure," I said. "San something-or-other, I think."

I moved beside her to get a better look. She was sweating in the sun. Little beads of perspiration trickling down her brow. I felt like reaching up and just gently smoothing the trickles away, like they were the tears of a child. I peered down at the map, her breasts bobbing, firm and freckled, into my field of vision as the Grand Canal crumpled against her cleavage. Her hair brushed against the side of my jaw, ticklish as straw, and I shivered. She looked up.

"Oh you've really caught the sun," she said, all womanly and concerned. "You're ever so red still. Maybe you should have something to drink."

"Yea, good idea," I said. "Do you fancy one? A drink, I mean. That cafe there looks quite nice."

"OK," she said.

We went and sat down at one of three small tables at the front of the cafe. I had a coke which cost about two quid. She had a mineral water and told me that her name was Michelle, but everyone called her Turtle for some reason too complicated to explain.

"So," I asked. "Are you on holiday then?"

"Inter-railing," she said. "How about you?"

"I've come over to do some drawing," I said.

"Oh right," she said, suddenly interested. "Are you an artist?"

"Yea, sort of," I said. "A painter really."

"Really?" she said. "What do you paint?"

"Buildings, houses and factories, stuff like that."

"Oh right, industrial landscapes," she said, "like Lowry."

"Sort of," I lied.

"I'm doing my foundation course at the moment at Chelsea," she said. "Where did you go?"

I wasn't quite sure what she meant and took a long sip of my coke, inadvertently swallowing an ice cube as I hurriedly smiled to hide my confusion.

"You didn't go to the Slade or anywhere like that did you?" she asked hopefully, misinterpreting my silence as a sign of modesty.

I realised she was talking art colleges and carefully returned my glass to the table.

"No, I didn't go anywhere." I turned the glass between my fingers, grinding a blood-coloured circle of dampness into the coral-pink tablecloth. "I was going to go once, but it didn't really work out. I just paint for fun really."

She nodded sympathetically.

"That's really good," she said. "That's what I'd like to do. I was really looking forward to going to college, but I don't know if I can stick another three years of it."

"Too much work?"

"Oh no, I love the work. I can paint for hours. No, its the whole art school thing, everyone trying to be trendier than everyone else."

"Yea, there're loads of weirdoes at art college," I said.

"Well they try to be weird," she said.

"Yea, I know what you mean," I said.

I swigged the dregs of my coke, crunching what remained of the ice cubes.

"You over here with your mates from college then?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"No," she said. "I'm just travelling around."

"All by yourself?" I said, slightly shocked.

"Yea, well, I needed to get away for a bit. And I couldn't stand going home."

She pulled a face suggesting that she and her parents didn't exactly see eye to eye.

"Do your mum and dad know you're over here by yourself?" I asked.

She grinned guiltily.

"I told them I was going with Aidan."

"Your boyfriend?"

"No, no. He's just a friend from college."

"Oh, right," I nodded vaguely (just managing to mask a rather too obvious smile by biting my bottom lip).

"How about you?" asked Turtle.

"Same as you, I guess. I got a bit fed up the other day and fancied a bit of a break. There's not much work around at the moment, so I thought I'd come over here, you know, and do some proper painting. It gets a bit lonely sometimes, but like you say it's nice to get away."

She nodded.

"It must be quite hard," she said, "being a painter. How did you get started?"

"Well I did a bit for some friends," I said. "And it kind of went from there."

"You must be very good," she said. "To make a living from it."

I shrugged.

"I get by," I said. "So, do you live in London?"

Turtle grimaced.

"Near Paddington," she said.

We talked a bit about home then. She told me she was from Dorset, a little village near Axminster, you know, where the carpets come from. She said she liked London because there was more to do, but where she lived men were always kerb crawling. Foreign businessmen in black Mercedes mostly.

"It's the blonde hair," I said. "You know what those men are like. They see a pretty girl with blonde hair and a nice figure and they go mad."

Turtle kind of sniffed when I said that, but I think she was secretly flattered.

"Where are you staying at the moment?" I asked. "In Venice?"

She shook her head.

"I couldn't find anywhere," she said. "It's all booked up."

"Oh dear" I said, feeling all protective. "What are you going to do then?"

"I'll see if I can find somewhere to stay nearby and if not I was going to catch the late train to Florence and sleep on the way."

"Why don't you try Govia?" I said. "That's where I'm staying. There're loads of hotels there and it's only about half an hour away."

"Oh, well, maybe I'll try that then," she said.

"You may as well. It's on the way to Florence."

The waiter had started to hover near the table.

"Do you want another mineral water?" I asked.

"I'm all right thanks," said Turtle. "I better get going." She got out a purse of frayed Paisley-patterned fabric.

"That's OK, I've got it," I said, giving the waiter three, mille lire notes.

"Gracie," said the waiter smiling slimily at Turtle and handing me a handful of change.

I bent down to pick up Turtles bag for her.

"It's all right, I can manage thank you," she said, handing me a thousand lire note.

"Oh, right, thanks," I said. I gave her the change. "I guess this is yours."

We walked a short way from the cafe together and stopped to study her map again. "Do you know where I can get something to eat round here?" I asked. "The stuff in the cafe looked a bit pricey for what it was."

"There's a market just near the station," she said. "If you turn left when you get to that big white bridge instead of going over it."

"Thanks," I said. "I'll try that then."

Turtle folded her map and reached back to slot it into the side pocket of her rucksack.

"Actually, do you mind if I walk with you," I said. "It's just that I'm useless at finding my way around, and if I don't get something to eat soon I'm going to starve to death."

Turtle prodded my beer belly with her thumb. "You're hardly wasting away are you," she said.

"Oh, thanks very much," I said.

Turtle laughed and slung her rucksack onto her back, as if it were filled with feathers.

"Come on then. I'll show you the market," she said, and tugged at the sleeve of my T-shirt like she was dragging a heavy weight behind her.

At the edge of the market square we saw boxes of oranges so bloody they smelled of blackcurrants, kiwis the size of duck eggs and tomatoes like bell peppers, as well as miniature, lemon trees, furry flowering cacti and a transvestite with stubble, pink lipstick and platform shoes, who was perusing platesize mushrooms.

Turtle nudged me in the ribs.

"Look at his hands," she said.

We walked slowly past the meat stalls. Among the slabs and slices of mutton and beef were trays of pig brains, the skinned half-carcass of a piglet, whole chicks to be devoured in a couple of mouthfuls and a cured boars leg still covered in hair. On one stall veal trotters lay congealing on a white plastic tray next to a pile of skinned lambs heads with bright staring eyes and tongues that hung limply between rows of lipless teeth.

"Urgghh," I said. "That's disgusting!"

Beyond the meat parade was a stall selling seafood. Stretching along the front of the stall was a tank of murky water in which a tangle of long, dark eels writhed. We stopped to watch a man buy a pound of small green crabs. The crabs twitched and blew frothy bubbles, showing off their freshness with an occasional contraction of a pincer, as they lolled numbly in a shallow ice-filled tray. Beside the crabs was a selection of gutted and glassy eyed fish and a couple of large live lobsters with claws that could cut car tyres, clasped shut by wide yellow bands.

The woman serving on the stall was sullen and wore rubber gloves. She slipped her hands into the tray of crabs creating a sudden frenzied wriggling of little green legs (and some sympathetic feeler-waving by the lobsters). The woman scooped up a handful of crabs and dropped them onto a sheet of wax paper on her scales. One crab crawled off the side of the scales and disappeared behind the tank of eels.

The woman checked the scale and I could see the red tip of the pointer had just passed the half kilo mark. The woman picked up one of the larger crabs and ripped it in half and tossed the remnants back into the ice tray, causing more frantic leg waving. Then she wrapped up the pound of crabs in paper like they were a book or a yard of cloth and handed them to the man. The parcel was all soggy and I could see it twitching as the man slipped it into his trolley bag.

"Do you want to go halves on some ham?" asked Turtle, as we strolled on.

"No," I said. "Actually, I don't eat meat."

"You mean you're a vegetarian?"

"Yea," I said.

"Really?" she said.

"Yea," I said. "I have been for years."

She stopped and stared at me in surprise.

"What?" I said.

"It's funny" she said. "You don't look like a vegetarian."

"How do you mean?" I asked.

"I'm not sure," she said. "You just don't seem the type."

II

I'm not sure what Turtle expected a vegetarian to look like - skinny, I suppose, with long hair, walking boots and some kind of ethnic knitwear knotted round the waist. Maybe she thought I had a large thermos flask of lentil soup and a tape of whale music hidden in my rucksack. I don't know.

Actually, people do have a tendency to say really stupid things when you tell them you're a vegetarian: "Don't worry I've got some cold chicken in the fridge. Will that be OK?"

Or completely irrelevant things like: "It's all right for you CND types to get on your high horse now that the wall's come down. But I can tell you, if we hadn't had nuclear weapons ten years ago we'd all be talking bloody Russian by now."

People may be presumptuous: "A vegetarian? How splendid. You must know of a good health shop round here where they sell those marvellous dried seaweed tablets...You've never heard of them? But I thought you said you were a vegetarian?"

Or patronising: "How do you cope with all that painting. Lifting those heavy tins around. You must be exhausted. I expect you sleep a lot don't you?" And another thing - everyone who eats meat knows someone who works on a farm or in a slaughter house who is a main contender for the title of 'nicest person in the world': "My brother's friend raises pigs and you couldn't hope to meet a kinder man. He trained for weeks for the London Marathon so that he could raise money for a little girl to go to America for an operation to save her sight. Now, how can you sit there and tell me that he's cruel?"

Another favourite comment (particularly popular with the kind of people who call hunting a sport) is: "Yes, well, I prefer a real red blooded man. Give me a big beefy meat eater any day (nudge nudge, wink wink)."

They even have these adverts for meat now which suggest the same thing (albeit in a slightly subtler way). Pork chops - the recipe for love. In other words - eat meat and it'll put lead in your pencil. Right? Wrong!

Think about it. Rhinoceroses, giraffes and elephants have some of the biggest cocks in the animal kingdom. I mean we're talking feet here baby. But, when was the last time you saw an elephant in your local supermarket anxiously filling it's shopping trolley with frozen beef steaks? When was the last time you saw a giraffe or a rhino proudly prodding a charred chunk of wildebeest round a barbeque. Never! Because all these animals' prodigious penises are produced solely on a vegan diet of leaves and grass (give or take a few stray grubs and insects). Now compare that to meat eating animals like cheetahs and leopards. They may be able to run like fuck, but in the prick department they've been severely short changed. See what I mean?

I rest my case.

To be fair, Turtle wasn't as stupid as most people are. But she did ask me the question I always get asked:

"Why don't you eat meat? Is it a kind of health thing or just because you don't like the thought of animals getting killed?"

"Well, yea, it's a bit of both I suppose," I said, launching into all the normal bullshit. "It's not so much animals being killed I don't like. I mean, if I lived wild in the forest or something I'd happily make myself a bow and arrow and go around shooting them, but factory farming, that's something else. The animals are all kept in cages in big sheds and never see the light of day until they get packed into one of those horrible trucks and driven to the slaughter house. I mean, that's not too nice even if you are just an animal and have never known anything else. But, really, I guess, I never liked eating meat anyway."

"Hmm," murmured Turtle, nodding. "I don't think I could give it up. I tried once in the sixth form for a week, and then I was in McDonalds and they had a special offer on cheeseburgers and I just couldn't resist it. I like the taste too much. Beef I could probably live without, but not bacon. I love the smell of fried bacon. Jackie who I share a house with, she's a vegetarian except she has turkey for Christmas. What do you eat for Christmas or Sunday lunch?"

"Whatever - stir fry, pizza, stuff like that."

"It seems really weird that. We always have Yorkshire pud and roast potatoes at home. We always have that on a Sunday."

"Fair enough," I said. "I'm not a crusader. I mean, I don't have anything against people that eat meat. It just doesn't feel right for me."

It's true. I don't really care what other people do or don't eat. That's up to them. But I can get pretty annoyed by people who have a go at you, because of what you believe in and start arguing about it. People like that really piss me off.

I stopped to give this bloke a lift in my van once, by one of the M4 junctions (Swindon West and Marlborough I think it was, although it could quite easily have been Hungerford). Anyway, we started chatting and the bloke, who sounded as if he were from up north somewhere, started going on about how his van had broken down and how he'd been stood there for ages waiting for someone to give him a lift.

"Buggers kept driving past," he said. "Still I can't blame folk for not stopping. It ain't safe anymore. Not with all these weirdoes about - bloody hippies or travellers or whatever they call themselves these days. They're just a bunch of fucking scroungers. They should round the bloody lot of them up, all these bloody lesbians and drug addicts and fucking vegetarians ..."

He snorted with contempt.

"Actually mate," I said. "I'm a vegetarian."

That really got him going.

"You're joking mate," he said. "You ain't one of them animal liberation nutters are ya?"

Then he started coming out with all that northern 'I like what I say and I say what I bloody well like' shit. Really rude he was and after I'd been kind enough to stop and give him a lift. He told me that animals didn't feel pain the way that we did, and that some scientist in Kentucky had done this test on chickens and discovered that they were less sensitive than carrots, and a whole load of other crap like that. I sat there saying nothing. I mean, I 'd heard it all before. But he had this kind of whining voice and he was winding me up no end, I can tell you.

He hadn't put his seat belt on and I had this urge to slam my foot on the brakes. I pictured him catapult out of his seat and hurtle through the windscreen at seventy miles an hour, jagged shards of shattered windscreen severing his jugular like the screaming blade of a poultry slaughterhouse rips the head off a dangling chicken....

Actually, the chickens aren't always decapitated according to my mad uncle Eric who worked for many years in East Anglian poultry farms. Eric started his career as a shit shoveller and after a few months graduated to the privileged position of turkey tosser. It's true. Because the male turkeys were so unnaturally bloated they were unable to mount the female turkeys. Therefore, men like Uncle Eric were actually employed to wank them off.

Apparently (and I have this on good authority) when they'd finished doing the business with the male turkey they'd blow the spunk through a long tube into a female turkey's cunt (nice work if you can get it, eh?) After a few months of spunk blowing, Uncle Eric started to suffer from throat problems and went to work in a chicken slaughter house.

Uncle Eric said that they used to hang the birds up by their feet on a conveyor system which carried them through this kind of electrocution bath before they had their throats cut. The trouble was, the chickens would keep looking up, craning their necks to see where they were going. Quite often they would miss the bath, catch a glancing blow from the saw and still be alive when they came out the other end.

At one time Uncle Eric was employed slicing the remains of the live chickens' heads off. But he didn't last very long at that job. Apparently, him and his fellow workers used to squirt the blood out of the birds' necks at each other (a bit like a water pistol fight I guess). Unfortunately Uncle Eric didn't have a particularly good aim and, during one of these impromptu fights, he splattered a great big dollop of warm blood all over his manager (who was wearing a new shirt, a birthday gift from his wife). And he was dismissed on the spot.

It sounded as if it could be true. But you can never tell with Uncle Eric. He's a complete nutter and could quite easily have been talking total bullshit (or rather total chicken shit).

Still, whether it was true or not, one thing's for sure I wouldn't have minded ripping that hitcher's head off and seeing how he liked his blood being squirted all over the place. He was really winding me up. I swear, my foot was actually hovering over the brake pedal.

He said to me, "Is your van all right mate? It seems to keep losing power. Maybe your cylinder head gasket's gone."

I thought to myself, 'yea, and if I press my foot down you'll be gone too mate, through that fucking windscreen!'

In the end, I decided that bastard wasn't worth all that broken glass. So, instead of slamming my brakes on I just pulled up on the hard shoulder and said, "Get out of my van."

He looked at me in utter disbelief.

"You're joking mate."

I picked up this huge adjustable wrench, which I used to keep on the dashboard (for emergencies of one sort or another) and said, "Just get out you ignorant git," and kind of waved the wrench in the general direction of his head.

He got out.

As I drove off, the bloke spat at the van and waved his fists in the air shouting. "I'll fucking have you. You fucking hippy git."

But, to tell you the truth, I didn't care what he said because I was on my way home and old meatball brains was stuck there on the hard shoulder.

III

I'm not exactly sure why I became a vegetarian in the first place. But, in a strange kind of way, I guess it had something to do with Tim's death and everything.

There is theory that some people, from the moment they are born, are destined to be victims, to suffer some preordained calamity. I don't know whether this was true or not in Tim's case. But, if you'd seen him the first day he came to our school, his tiny hands clutching a brand new satchel as tightly as his tie was knotted beneath his egg-shell chin. Well, you had to fear for his future in a place so jam-packed full of so many cold-blooded, brain-dead bastards.

It was always Tim who had his watch stolen from the gym changing rooms during basketball or his packed lunch grabbed from his hand in the playground. It was always Tim who had his blazer slashed or who got pushed over in the corridor for no discernible reason (other than to give some brick shithouse of a bully a random moment of pleasure). It was always Tim.

When we first went to our school there was this kind of initiation ceremony, a kind of baptism, which generally ended up with your head having a close encounter with a flushing toilet. It happened to everyone just about. It was quite frightening at the time. I mean, the toilet stank of shit and your head got wet, but once it was over with, you were safe, you were OK, you were accepted.

Before you had your head flushed down the loo they always made you say something humiliating like - 'my dad's bent and sucks cock' or 'my sister's a whore and she's got VD.' or 'I'm a wanker and my cock is the smallest one in the world.' You know the kind of thing. If you said whatever they wanted you to, they'd flush the loo on your head, pick you up, pat you on the back and say - ' now fucking clear off' - and it was all over.

If you didn't say what they wanted you to, they'd twist your arm behind your back or put a fag end up to your face so close you could feel the heat on your skin or prick you between the ribs with a Stanley knife. That was, normally, enough to make any frightened first year say anything. But not Tim. When it came round to his turn to have his head flushed he wouldn't say a word. I know because I was there.

I'd gone into the boys' loo by the physics labs to have a piss and Tim was in there surrounded by all these fourth years, about five of them, and about another half-dozen first and second years who were kind of spectating. I don't know what they were trying to get Tim to say - but whatever it was, he wasn't saying it. One of the lads spat in his face and another kneed him in the bollocks, but still he wouldn't say what they wanted him to.

In frustration, one of the fourth years started kicking the doors of the loos open, revealing the graffiti that covered each cubicle - Luke Evans is bent - Kick to kill - QPR piss on Man Utd - I felt up Sandra Clarke and she's got a cunt like a bucket - complete with illustration, a black marker pen cunt gaping wide on the wall beneath a couple of tits framed by blue biro spectacles. As the kid kicked open the door to the final cubicle, he suddenly shouted, 'Fuck me that's disgusting.' And he didn't mean what was scrawled on the walls either.

In the end loo someone had done a really horrible crap, a really splattery, messy pile of shit. It looked and smelt as if whoever had done it had had a peanut-butter vindaloo the night before. There was so much of it, it had blocked the U-bend and wouldn't flush away. Anyway, these fourth years told Tim that if he didn't say whatever it was they wanted him to say, they'd stick his head in the crap. But he still remained silent.

As I zipped up my fly and turned away from the open urinal - disinfectant cubes melting like blue icebergs in a steaming stream of piss (the smell of which still sends shivers through me) - I saw that the fourth years had Tim on his knees in the doorway of the cubicle. As I watched, two of them grabbed his hair and shoved his head down into the shit-filled loo - three times. He didn't struggle even though they banged his face so hard against the bowl he got a nose bleed.

When, finally they let him get up (having taught him his lesson - after all what else are schools for?) his hair and forehead were covered in crap which ran down his face and dribbled down his chin, merging with the blood from his nose. It was the most horrible thing I've ever seen. But Tim didn't cry or anything he just stood there. We all stood and looked at Tim, kind of horrified, not knowing quite what to do or say. Then suddenly someone called out - 'Oi, shithead!' - and everyone laughed, even me. I stood there and laughed at him. God, I wish I hadn't laughed. I wish I'd tried to stop them, but I didn't. I just watched it happen.

Of course, after that everyone used to call Tim, shithead. When he got a bit older they shortened Tim's nickname to 'Headsy' and most people never knew or had forgotten why he was called that in the first place (assuming it had something to do with the fact that he was something of a dreamer and that Headsy was short for 'out of his head', 'off his head' or whatever).

However, Tim, of course, knew only too well the origins of his nickname and must have relived the humiliation and pain of what those blokes had done to him every single day. But he never seemed to really react to being called Headsy. I mean, I never once saw him get angry or upset about it. He just ignored it. I guess he must have built up a hell of a thick skin.

It was only some time after the 'shithead' incident that I found out that Tim was Dominic's brother. I felt really bad then, but he didn't seem to recognise me as having spectated his ordeal and neither of us ever mentioned it.

I remember once when I was about fifteen, some kid called Tim, Shitsy, and I beat the fuck out of him. I thought Tim would be pleased, but he just said - 'you didn't have to do that, you didn't have to do that'. After that, the kid I beat in used to turn round and walk the other way every time he saw me coming, which didn't actually make me feel that great. So, I guess Tim was right. I shouldn't have done it (but, that kid shouldn't have said what he said either).

About a week after I'd been round to Dominic's house with Denise that Sunday and Dominic's mum had told me that Tim was dead, she gave me a ring. She kept on apologising for ringing and asked me if I knew why he'd done himself in. She kept on at me - 'Why did he do it? Didn't he know how much we all loved him?' - and all that kind of shit. I didn't know what to say. She started having hysterics then. 'We did everything we could for him. We tried so hard to make him happy. Why did he do it? Why did he do it?' She kept on saying it over and over again. And I just put the phone down in the end.

After a few minutes Dominic's mum rang back and apologised and told me she'd just needed to talk to someone. 'Let it all out,' I told her. 'Let it all out, it's a good thing to get it our of your system' (as they always say in the problem pages of the women's magazines my sister reads). Then I made up some shit about it probably being an accident him taking all those pills.

"Probably he just wasn't thinking straight," I said. "He was probably doing one of his pictures and wasn't concentrating and ate them by mistake." But I knew that was just a load of bollocks.

Anyway, that day in Venice when I was in the market with that Turtle girl I'd just met, I started thinking about Tim and all that stuff and I went all silent for a while. Turtle thought I was in a mood because of the vegetarian thing, all those lambs heads and everything.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly, squeezing my arm. "I didn't realise you took it all so seriously."

"No worries," I said, pulling away from her. "I guess I'm just tired."

IV

Dusk had just started to fall as we walked from Govia station. A few brave bats were already careering in crazy circles above the old town wall, as lizards scuttled from nearby tree stumps and stole through grass and flowers to climb the medieval brickwork. We watched the lizards cling lazily in the last of the daylight. One lizard (rather too lazy - his clawed toes evidendy sent to sleep by the sunbathed stone) fell to the ground. He writhed in the dust like an excited dog, groping the air with his mini alligator feet, then rolled over and hurriedly climbed back up the wall. His pink tentacle of a tounge flicked in and out, lapping up a few final rays of warmth to take back to his earthy bed deep in the tree stumps' root-carved hollows.

"Ahh, what a sweetie," gushed Turtle.

I nodded.

"Better be getting on, though," I said, glancing at my watch.

We soon reached the piazza with the graffitied war memorial. Below the bronze angel with his trumpet, an equally bronzed and solid looking busker played a saxophone. It was some soul song I recognised (despite the busker's florid improvisation) but could never name.

"I like this one," said Turtle. She dropped a handful of change into a straw hat upturned hopefully between the busker's feet.

The busker paused to thank her with a smile, before raising the saxophone to his lips and puffing out his cheeks like he'd just consumed a ten-pin bowling ball. Then he leaned back as if attempting to touch his heels with the back of his head and began to play a slow and moody blues number. His playing was accompanied by a lot of gratuitous hip grinding, which I thought was unnecessarily crude, but which Turtle seemed to find rather entertaining.

Thankfully, the busker's saxophonic shagging was brought to a premature conclusion by an explosion of tooting horns, blaring angrily from the cobbled cross-roads on the far side of the piazza.

"Somebody doesn't sound very happy," I said.

With one last smile at the busker - purple faced as he lit up an unfiltered fag - Turtle followed me towards the cross-roads where the horns were becoming increasingly agitated.

It turned out that the uproar was being caused by three coaches which were aU trying to enter the same narrow street at the same time. The coaches had become wedged across one another like three elephants trying to clamber aboard a crowded tube train. They were unable to move forward without demolishing at least half a dozen medieval houses on either side of the street. And the ever-lengthening queue of traffic, toot-tooting, bumper-to-bumper behind them, made it impossible to reverse.

Two of the driver's had left their stricken coaches and werc facing IIp to each other as if about to decide the undisputed heavyweight championship of Govia (if not the world). The other driver - oblivious to the fight going on outside and the flustered mutterings of his sweaty passengers - was sitting in his cab eating an absurdly large cake (a map book randomly open on his lap to catch the crumbs).

"I wonder where they've all come from," said Turtle as we stood and surveyed the stagnant buses.

"Beats me," I said. "It isn't normally like this. Maybe there's been an accident on the main road and they've had to divert the traffic through here."

Leaving the bus drivers to fight it out, we headed for St Vi's where most of the hotels were.

"You might as well try the Albergo Ferinno first," I said. "I've got to dump my stuff there anyway, and they're bound to have plenty of rooms going. It's one of the biggest hotels in Govia and it's always half empty."

How wrong can you be? When we eventually arrived at the hotel, the lobby (which for the previous three days had been as deserted as a meeting of the Saharan snorkelling society) was like the last train out of Warsaw. I'd never seen so many suitcases.

"Pelligrinagio," explained the old boy at the reception desk.

"Pelligrinagiol" "What the hell does that mean," I asked Turtle?

She leafed through a little phrase book she had taken from her rucksack, that sweet frown crossing her face again.

"I think it means pilgrimage," she said.

"Shitl" I said, thumping the reception desk. "It must be the Festival of the Ear. I never realised it started so soonl"

"The what?" asked Turtle.

"Oh it's some reUgious thing, some festival to celebrate this Saint who got her ear cut off by a...by a man with a sword centuries ago. They've got the ear in a jar over in the church there.

It looked more like a lump of plasticine to me, but people come from all over the world to see it. Apparently, if you touch the jar you Can forget all the sins you've ever done and start again or something like that."

"Oh," said Turtle.

A coach pulled up outside and a flood of nuns poured into reception.

"I guess you'll have to try another hotel," I said.

Overhearing me, the receptionist waved his hands madly in front of his chest with a stricken look on his face as if trying to fend off some huge invisible wasp.

"Non, non, tutti albergi completo," he said. "Tutti completo. Multi pelligrinnil"

"What's he on about?" I asked.

"I think he's saying aU the hotels in Govia are full," said Turtle studying her little book.

The receptionist nodded his head, all excited.

"Si, si. No room!"

"Oh," I said. "How about Padua?"

"Tutti completo," said the receptionist.

"Verona?"

"Tutti!"

"Tutti?" I asked.

"Multi pelligrini," he said, spreading his hands wide as if he were embracing half a dozen nuns.

"Gracie," I said.

"Va bene," said the man and turned his attention to a myopic mother superior with jam-jar glasses and a bulging, blue suitcase, who was attempting to confirm her booking with a large pot plant at the other end of the reception desk.

"It looks like I'll have to sleep on the train," murmured Turtle as we wandered down the street.

"Maybe not," I said. "Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not trying it on or anything. But, I could always smuggle you into my room."

"I don't think so," she said, all indignant.

"Look, I'm not trying to be funny," I said. "I just feel kind of responsible. I mean, I told you to come here and you've wasted all this time. I feel like it's my fault you're stuck here, that's all."

"Don't be silly," said Turtle. Her voice softened a little. "I wouldn't have come if I didn't want to." She gave me a littlee punch on the arm. "Stop looking so worried. I'll be all right on the night train."

"What time does that leave?" I asked.

"About half eleven, I think."

I nodded and looked concerned.

"Well, the least I can do is buy you something to eat."

"I don't really know if I've got time," she said.

"Come on, it's only about half-seven," I said. "There're loads of nice pizza places round here." I could sense she was wavering. I guess sharing a meal with anyone in a cosy, oven-warmed restaurant had to be better than sitting on a dark station platform for three hours staring into the dregs of a soured cappuccino.

"Oh, go on," I said. "I'm getting fed up of munching cheese rolls in my room. I was going to have a pizza anyway."

"I can't really afford it," said Turtle.

"Don't worry about that," I said.

"Honestly," she said. "You've been very kind but..."

"Look," I said, pulling a handful of crumpled notes from the pocket of my 501s. "I've got all this Italian dosh to get rid of. I'm going home in a couple of days and I've got nothing to buy except a couple of postcards and one of those St Vi snowstorms. I mean, I've got to do something with it"

Turtle stopped walking and turned to face me, half-grinning, half-grimacing, the weight of her rucksack pulling back her shoulders making her cleavage look more impressive than ever.

"OK then," she said. "I'll come for a pizza with you...but only if I can have pepperoni on mine, without you winging on about animals for the whole meal."

"You can have as much pepperoni as you like," I said. "And I promise, I won't say a word."

"And another thing," said Turtle.

"Yea?" I said.

"Stop gawping at my boobs all the time. They're not about to explode."