‘What do you think?’
Some noises came out of my mouth, but frankly there was so much to take in I wasn’t making sense. I sounded like I’d poured a whole tube of Barratt’s Sherbet Fountain contents into my mouth and was now attempting to corral my thoughts into words through a mosh of fizzy froth and powder.
My host was more together: ‘I leave you now, your highness,’ he said.
At this, I kind of woke up: ‘Sorry! Did you say “your highness”?’
‘This is the King’s bed. When he came here last time, before the bad days, the room look just the same. My family change nothing. Because one day he will come back. And we are ready.’
Bloody hell. A royalist Italian!
He rolled up his sleeves to reveal the full extent of his tattoos. These were loyalty markers for a man simply biding his time until the return of the Italian Royal Family in exile. I’m not into tattoos, but these were amazingly well rendered. Like fine paintings.
Pointing out their significance, he went on: ‘This is the King, and this is God. They are like the same! That is how it is.’ With that, he backed out of the room, gracefully grabbing both doors and bowing as he closed them symmetrically. I felt like I’d witnessed a dress rehearsal.
I was lying down dead centre of the bed in a crucifix position, contemplating the cherubim and seraphim gazing down at me, when the room phone rang.
I could tell by his tone that Dan was grinning as he enquired: ‘’ello mate, how’s your single room?’
‘Fine. How’s yours?’
‘Brilliant, actually. Nice view over the square, lovely big bed and bath. Couldn’t be happier! Heh, heh, heh. You got a minibar?’
‘Yes I have, but honestly I don’t think I can be bothered to walk all the way over to it.’
‘What?’
‘Dan, get your arse down here.’
We stood there together in silence, looking up at the ceiling.
Eventually, Dan broke off in full attack mode. ‘Right, let’s go get a beer!’
Dan had been beaten in the room stakes for the first time in a long while. He hates losing at anything. It’s an athlete-predator thing. So he duly declared beer o’clock to help him forget my shattering victory on this momentous Good Bed Day.
20
Party Time!
Stelvio, Giro 2012.
‘Porca Madonna! The light! It says we have no fuel. Shit!’
And so it was that Gianni Farina, a lovely guy but also the worst driver on Planet Earth, announced we were out of fuel in our attempt to go over the Stelvio, one of Europe’s highest mountains and not exactly awash with fuel stations. ‘Porca Madonna’, Farina repeated.
If you ever hear this expression from an Italian, you know that he’s more upset than he can possibly tell you. It is blasphemy of the highest order. The only non-Italian I ever heard say it was Chris Froome during a race in Italy. I was stunned, because he also knows the weight of it. It was directed towards someone barging him in the pack during a nervous start. My situation was more serious.
‘You, my friend, are a prize pillock.’
‘What is a pillock?’
‘You are! I told you to fill up earlier and you told me to “chill out”. How the hell are we going to get over this bleedin’ mountain, you complete idiot?’
So there we were, halfway up a giant peak at an altitude that meant the temperature was around 16°C (60°F). There was a light mist falling and the night was now well installed. It was 9.30 p.m. I was fuming.
‘It’s OK, we turn around and we switch off the engine. We go down in neutral. Gravity you see, all is good!’
‘No, all is not good at all, my friend. Without the engine running, you have no power steering and no servo brakes. At the first serious corner you will lose it and . . . we . . . will . . . die! Do you understand?’
‘I still think we can do it!’
‘Well, I do not! We keep going on f--king vapours and you will drop me off at the first place we find with a bloody light on. You can collect me in the morning. If, that is, you survive your downhill bobsleigh ride.’
Now, this all probably sounds a bit prima donna-ish. But honestly I was just about at the end of my thinly stretched tether. Dan Lloyd had gone off earlier with a far more capable film unit to do some background reporting on the top of the peak. So here I was, alone with my producer buddy from Rai Uno’s commercial department who, it has to be said, had a rather relaxed attitude to all things logistical. Like fuel.
Earlier I had been forced to grab the steering wheel on two occasions as Farina had been distracted and the car began to drift dangerously. How this man had ever passed his driving test was beyond comprehension. He must have paid somebody to do the test for him, I speculated. Then again, how could he possibly find someone who even closely resembled him? He is spectacularly hard to describe due to the cloud of smoke that hung permanently in his midst. I’m certain that, while awake, he had never taken an adult breath free of tobacco smoke. His hobbit-like frame was shrouded in a charity shop sports jacket, clearly donated by a much bigger man many years earlier. It fitted him like a glove . . . an oven glove.
Farina was so small that there was a lot of room around him in the driver’s seat. He used this space as a sort of exercise yard and constantly fidgeted in his seat. He even once sat cross-legged after setting the cruise control to 165km/h (102mph), only to go into ninja mode when a traffic jam suddenly appeared. His legs were still knotted under him until the last moment when our screaming
