Keep calm...

25th February 2024

With Stephen in Milan for most of the week, things at LCDDB were more or less in stasis. Just as well, then, that I was able to live vicariously through his exploits, though given their nature he might have wished he could have done the same.

Take last Sunday evening, for example. I had no bedtime call from him but unlike the previous day, it wasn’t due to him falling asleep after a hectic shopping spree but to a dinner date (if that is not too grand a term to give to going for a pizza) with a antipodean customer of his and be treated to an in-depth report on and analysis of the current state of the New Zealand shoe trade. Some people have all the luck.

Monday perked up a bit when, after a morning and afternoon at MICAM, he met up early evening with bff Manuel, there to promote his leather at Linea Pelle, for a tour round the shops, though as Stephen had already purchased and Manuel was proving hard to please, they went bagless to dinner afterwards.

The highlight of his trip (and, by extension, mine too) was on Wednesday afternoon when he took a wander to the nail bar across the road from his apartment. Unknown to him, it had only been open a week and the nice young lady who tended to his fingers was very happy to see him and encouraged him to tell all his friends. While a jaunt to Milan might be a bit far for the average MSP inhabitant to have their nails done, Stephen was most pleased with his manicure, and even more pleased with the black nail polish she applied afterwards.

With his new look, he cut quite a dash heading to Bologna the next day for a two-night stopover, and whilst I cannot be absolutely certain, I’m pretty sure that he took any suitable opportunity to flash his new look. This included a lot of finger action when he tucked into a substantial and very partisan dinner at a familiar old friend of a restaurant. He started, naturally enough, with tortellini in brodo, the city’s speciality, followed by cotolleta (Bolognese, of course) and tiramisù for dessert.

If that all seems a trifle excessive, remember that he was carbohydrate packing for the next day, when thanks to still being full from the night before, and a decent breakfast, there was little reason to interrupt the serious business of touring the shops for such unnecessary fripperies as eating. I, on the other hand, was feeling unreasonably proud as I had, a couple of nights previously, for the first time downloaded a film on Amazon Prime with a view to making Friday night movie night in the company of Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart in The Philadelphia Story. Unfortunately, whether from a busy week holding the fort single-handedly or being replete with pizza or too relaxed from a glass of red wine, I managed to fall asleep before the midway point. Ah well, there’s always next week. The film’s been around for over eighty years so it’s not like it’s going anywhere.

While he might have altered his outward journey, Stephen’s return trip was as per usual which is why yesterday evening, shortly before 9, I was to be seen hanging around a fairly deserted Civitanova station. The train was only slightly delayed so I didn’t have too long to wait till I saw him staggering onto the platform bearing the case he left with but also a new, large black grip bag bought to accommodate the overflow from his recent purchases. I was assured it was ok as most of the stuff was for work, and the bag was a reduced-price bargain. The reason became clear, he said, when he had tried to hoist it onto his shoulders when he set out for Bologna station to make it easier to manoeuvre the case: it had no shoulder strap.

Today has been taken up with the usual post trip business of unpacking his bags and keeping the washing machine whirling. I have to say that contrary to his assertions, not everything that emerged from his suitcase was work related, but at least I scored. Apart from a very fine pair of Gallo socks (another sales win), he also presented me with a trove of goodies from the cannabis shop in Bologna. This has now become something of a tradition as, he says, the cannabis is good for my psoriasis, good for my bones and good for keeping me calm. But not too calm, I hope, and I need to make sure I carefully ration the gummy bears and hard sweets, not to mention the chocolate biscuits and CBD oil, or I’ll never get to the end of The Philadelphia Story.