Venice life 2

Googling how to lift the curse of a broken mirror. Not that I’ve broken one yet, you understand, but the cherubs are headed to Venice, and I like to be prepared.

I don’t think of myself as particularly superstitious. Spilled salt, ladders, the number 13? Bring it on. But mirrors and magpies do it for me. Magpies because they’re such extraordinary birds you feel they must mean something; mirrors because the seven years bad luck ties in to the idea of life going in seven year cycles – something in which I do believe. Information about the origin of the superstition was interesting: the mirror as a reflection of the soul. Information about ways to lift the curse, even more so.

Casting the shards in to a south-flowing stream could prove a challenge. I don’t think casting them in a canal would be a responsible thing to do. But taking a piece to a cemetery and tapping it on a gravestone? Well, there’s a whole cemetery island a single vaporetto stop away.

I now want to do a book on the history of mirrors, needless to say.

That was Tuesday – Wednesday, the removal men came to the London flat to pack and wrap, doing it in such a hurry I woke in the night afterwards wondering if I’d accidentally sent off a pile of Plays and Players magazines from the 1960s. I hadn’t - but I also hadn’t sent the chairs they were piled on, unfortunately. We’ll arrive in Venice equipped to prepare and serve a meal for any number of guests, but with nothing for them to sit on while they eat it. Still, the furniture and pictures we did manage to take looked rather splendid, piled up. Choosing what would work for Venice, the motto’s been that, if it’s gilt, it goes.

My furniture picture from Highgat

Thursday was always going to be a big day, setting off for Venice: the furniture by van and boat, then Paul and I by plane. I was just dealing with the decorators preparing the London flat for sale when suddenly …

A call from NBC, saying could I comment on the arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor? I didn’t even know he had been arrested but pulled my wits together with difficulty. Except, of course that the calls kept coming: I wound up talking to a Canadian paper from Gordon Ramsey at Heathrow, though I had to say no to tv.

You couldn’t make it up.

On the plane at last, above the clouds I started trying to catch up with other, older news stories I’d missed in the last frantic days. And that’s when I saw the obituary. ‘Frederick Wiseman, the American documentary-maker, has died at the age of 96’. ( ‘Why Frederick Wiseman Was the Greatest Documentary Filmmaker Ever’, the New Yorker appreciation read.) Yes, but he wasn’t only a filmmaker to me. In youth, in Boston, I stayed at his house and borrowed his car, canoed on Cape Cod with his wife Zipporah, ‘Chippie’. But in later years Derek and I saw him most often in … Venice, where the film festival feted his documentaries. The place is full of his memories.

Exhausted by the time we finally got in, but thank heavens Paradiso Perduto was as cheering as ever - saltata of seafood, and tagliatelle with carciofi.

Friday was a bit of a lull before the storm. Our storm, that is, of the furniture’s Saturday arrival: not the one concerning the future of the British monarchy. Still, the fact there’s as yet no broadband in the flat gives an excuse to say no to several requests for comments. Agreed to do Sky News next morning, but it’s a worry. Yes, Paul has fixed up some kind of wifi hotspot, but that’s only half the story. How do I look professional, on a Zoom call without furniture? Kneel upright on the floor with the laptop perched on an upended suitcase in front of me?

Trying to sort the wifi, light fittings, decorating stuff for Monday. Paul went out with some friends visiting Venice, to Ca Rezzonico and the Peggy Guggenheim, but for me right at the moment that Venice, the one I haunted so long and so eagerly as a tourist, feels very distant. Why go to a museum when you’re living in one, anyway?

What I did do was nip to the local supermarket - and if that sounds dull, it wasn’t. This Spar is set inside an old theatre, with frescoes on the ceiling and wrought iron balconies; never mind the sheer theatricality of the displays of food inside. And for me the trip itself was a kind of fantasy - going out on an everyday errand, tugging my wheeled basket behind me.

A shopping basket on wheels isn’t just a practical essential here, it’s the ultimate status symbol. It might not be the most chic accessory anywhere else, but here it’s a badge of membership, as in ‘Out of my way you pesky tourists, you - can’t you see I’m a local, with serious business to do?’ The only thing that might outrank it would be one of those small porter’s-trolley gadgets, for moving serious weight around the city.

Saturday. The day. Up early – anxious, even though it’s been Paul arranging all the move – and channelling my inner Downton Abbey. Not Lady Mary – the lowliest housemaid, down on my hands and knees, washing the floors before the furniture comes in. (No, of course I can’t work the mop I lugged back from the Spar yesterday.) I actually rather enjoyed it – made me appreciate the sheer beauty of the mosaic tessera flooring. An artwork we’ll be treading over every day.

Sky News cancelled, and just as well. We were otherwise occupied here, in a rather major way, with last-minute panics about the furniture delivery. The timing was always going to be precise, with the firm who drove it out from London handing over to Venetian boatmen at precisely midday. (Parking space at Tronchetto could clearly give even Heathrow’s drop-off zone a run for its money.) But here was the Italian firm saying they wouldn’t deliver because our payment from the fattura had not yet gone through. A fattura arrives with a Goggle-translated note saying ‘this is not an invoice’, but the translation clearly should read: ‘this is not an invoice but please pay it anyway’. Fine, we’ll pay … except that on calling the bank, voice recognition doesn’t work, because the empty apartment is too echo-y. It’s the tessera floors - be damned to beauty!

It got sorted in the end - they agreed to accept huge wads of cash - and suddenly there it was, THE moment I’d been imagining for months. A boatfull of furniture floating down the canal towards me. For the next three hours solid, Giovanni and Natalia (yes, a male muscled Natalia) made no bones about carrying oak, china and walnut up two flights of stairs. The mirror didn’t break – though it’s not up on the wall yet – and everything looks wonderful in the clear Venetian light ( if dustier than I’d realised in the London grey).

The minute the delivery men had gone, Paul and I rushed downstairs to the wine bar below for a very late lunch. A bottle of Lambrusco, cicchetti with pesto and fresh anchovy, baccala, smoked cheese on pumpkin puree, giant prawns a la veneziana. The staff all introduced themselves: our delivery must have been providing their customers with a free cabaret. Not that they needed one – the scene down on the street was one huge, no-invite-needed social scene. Even the dogs were carefully dressed, except for an enormous, massively male, rottweiler who was the only clearly one not enjoying the party. Dog slightly pacified when Paul allowed it to take his hand between its jaws. I returned to the apartment with bitter chocolate ice cream from the gelateria next door: Paul returned with all his fingers, which is just as well considering he’d bought several lamps to set up. Supper of bruschette – sausages with purple-green cuore tomatoes on crusty bread spread with artichoke puree – eaten as we watched, yes, Downton Abbey.

We’re home..