Nostalgia for Sicily rushes over me in waves, which is absurd, considering that we only came home a week ago. However it only took a few hours before everyday life began to crowd in on us. Above all, the animals.
Whilst I was away Sam took Bertie the Border Terrier to be treated for an injury to his eye caused by a grass seed, (he now bobs about after Dad wearing his “cone of shame“) and Vanessa the Vet sent Sam home with yet more drops, pills and potions for the cats, together with stern words on his mother’s lackadaisical approach to preventative animal medicine.
Vanessa lives for animals, an admirable, indispensable even, attitude for a vet. Bearing this in mind I adopt a fast moving breezy attitude whenever I go to see her – plonking the currently ill animal on her stainless steel table, flinching slightly as she pushes back their fur and tuts disapprovingly at the small community of beasts she finds living there, and rushing out before she can give me yet another lecture on worms that wrap themselves around dog’s hearts, the tendency of cats to suffer neurotic cystitis or the many varied parasites that can afflict them all if they even set a paw outdoors.
My son’s attitude was doubtless completely different. I can picture him standing listening politely, nodding with understanding as she listed my various flaws. Of course he wouldn’t have been surprised, after all he and his brother have suffered the same level of neglect over the years.
Which explains why I’m thinking of that long pebbly beach and those undemanding waves.

Aldo spent our holiday immersed in international crime noir. He started with Jean Claude Izzo’s MARSEILLES TRILOGY, took a short refreshing break with Iain Pears DEATH AND RESTORATION then plunged headlong into Shanghai guided by Qiu Xiaolong’s A CASE OF TWO CITIES. I explored the world of creativity with IMAGINE, HOW CREATIVITY WORKS by Jonah Lehrer. It’s filled with fascinating ideas and interesting tests most of which I tried out on Aldo. It was a while before I noticed that the blank stare turned in my direction as I posed yet another intriguing mind bender had a noirish tinge to it…
Who knows why he wasn’t more open to my frank assessment of the way his mind works? Anyway, try this one at home: Mary and Martha are sisters, born to the same parents, on the same hour of the same day in the same year. But they are not twins.
I’ll post the answer (for those of you open-minded enough to have given it some thought…) on Wednesday.
Further differences in attitude can be detected in our choice of things to bring home. Aldo collected seeds of trees which he wrapped carefully in newspaper, planning to plant them here and create a tiny corner of Sicily in our garden.
I collected pebbles.

Holidays can be a let down, but this one wasn’t. If you’ve not yet been to Sicily, then go. And, if possible, stay here.
And now I must go as I really need to sort through my large collection of pebbles (thank goodness Easyjet don’t weigh cabin luggage) and pretend for five minutes that I’m still there, to ease the transition back to real life.