2005-06-06 - 5:31 p.m.

The hotel is lovely. If only I was staying there. I wonder if I smell of smoke. My mother�s trousers are still wet. The taxi arrives, driven by a long-haired Florentine in his twenties with almost perfect English and a day�s kite-surfing planned for the other side of the weekend. I wish him luck and head for the ticket machines.

TWENTY MINUTES EARLIER

She allows us to phone the hotel - which is hiding in a dip some five hundred metres away - from her cellulare. While we wait for the hotel minibus, she attempts to phone for a taxi for me. She fails. We thank her for her help, she tells us her name is Patrizia and she takes her shopping into her house, which it turns out we are standing outside. My father tries to make a note of the address and resolves to bring her flowers as a token of gratitude.

The minibus arrives driven by a smart-suited young man from the hotel. He assures us that a taxi will arrive within five minutes of his call. But he doesn�t have his cellulare with him. He�ll call from the hotel. The 1.25 to Pisa L�Aeroporto is now an unachievable target.

TEN MINUTES EARLIER

There is an unusual smell in the car. Suddenly my mother jerks in pain and complains that something has burnt her legs. I keep following the woman. Wisps of smoke curl from under the dashboard. My mother shifts in her seat as a curtain of hot liquid begins to drench the passenger side carpet.

The smoke is now getting thicker.

�Keep following the woman!�, my parents insist. I try to balance being even more lost but at no immediate risk of combustion with being on the right road but on fire. I decide to press on. The wipers start dragging themselves unbidden across the dry windscreen. They jerk, stutter and groan like a mechanical arcade grabber in the control of a prize-fixated child. I open the window, judging that loss of effective air-conditioning is small price to pay for retaining visibility and the ability to breathe.

The woman pulls over at a junction. She tries to indicate that we should carry on past her. I have a hard enough time just trying to indicate. I pull in behind her and she approaches. She is taken aback by our keenness to get out of the car until she sees the smoke, hears the hissing and witnesses the crazed parabola still being described by the spastic wipers, which continue, terrifyingly, even after I�ve turned off the engine and taken the keys out of the car. The dark pile of the passenger side mat is barely visible, bathed in green flourescent liquid, like the waters of a tiny acrylic coral reef.

FIFTEEN MINUTES EARLIER

All is well right up to a couple of miles from our destination, where the hotel�s directions peter out like a tantalising fragment of treasure map and I take a wrong turn. We stop at a shop. I don�t like speaking Italian to Italians because they understandably but wrongly assume my ability to understand the language is commensurate with my ability to speak it.

�Buongiorno. Parla Inglese?�
�Mm, no. Mi dispiace.�
�Allora, non parlo molto Italiano ma io provo�abbiamo bisogna di trovare�questo�
I proffer the hotel�s headed notepaper, on which the inadequate directions have been printed.
�Ah!�
The upshot of her response, I think, is that the hotel is nearby but roadworks make it difficult for her to give easy directions. She may, however, be giving me a recipe for wild boar ragu, or suggesting that her goat-hat needing cleansing of nougat wasps. It�s largely guesswork. The impasse is broken by a tanned woman in her forties entering the shop. I try to avoid inappropriate glances, but if my eyes are sailors, a white bra under a black t-shirt is the Scylla and Charybdis of fashion. There is an exchange between the two women and I think we are advised to follow the newcomer, who I think will be driving somewhere near the hotel. I think. We follow. The road, as The Hollies warned, is long, with many a winding turn. There is a section leaving the village where the road is just wide enough for one car, and is bounded on either side by high walls. I hope it�s one-way.

TWO DAYS EARLIER

My mother suggests that I drive her and my father from the villa to their hotel on the outskirts of Florence. Then I�d get a taxi to Florence station and a train to Pisa airport in time for check-in. I point out that the following could go wrong in the first half of this plan alone:

1. Getting lost en route to the hotel.
2. The hire car breaking down.
3. Difficulty in getting a taxi

FIVE DAYS EARLIER

My father counters my reluctance to drive with the daring psychological gambit of collecting the car from Hertz at Pisa airport and then driving incredibly slowly and over some kerbs, as if he were 81 and partially sighted. My father is in fact only 74 and hard of hearing, but the ploy works and I immediately commandeer the driver�s seat.

FOUR MONTHS EARLIER

�It sounds really nice�.Yes�If everyone comes I�m sure we can all stand each other for a week�Yeah�The only thing is the driving � I don�t really feel comfortable driving a strange car, and especially driving one in a foreign country�Oh, will you? Yes, I�d feel happier.�

Profilage - Previosity - Nextitude