Yes. Quite. How wonderful for you.
Rather a flat county, Norfolk.
I went to Sicily, you know, last month.
Have you been to Sicily, Mr. Lovejoy?
No? Well it’s really
quite nice
Except
That we had this most extraordinary, well
I don’t know quite what you’d call him,
Young man, I suppose.
Yes, I expect he was;
A student;
Rather dreadful aren’t they, nowadays,
Such a lot of hair
And so, well, dirty.
I don’t know that he ever washed.
Most extraordinary young man,
I don’t know why he came;
Of course, he had to, I suppose,
Being our guide.
But we none of us liked him at all. No.
We didn’t talk to him much,
So dirty. Yes.
Well he might have been clever, I suppose,
Only - anyway he didn’t take much notice
Of us
Either.
Of course, he left before long;
A rather nice young gel came,
Always so well dressed, clean.
We rather liked her.
Yes.
The marionettes, too.
Have you seen them, Alicia?
You haven’t. No. You haven’t been
To Sicily, have you.
No.
I forget just where it was we saw them.
Aleppo? No, it can’t
have been there,
But anyway,
Too charming, just too utterly charming....
Did they? Yes, I
suppose they did start there.
Petrrucchio, no Pinocchio I mean, wasn’t it?
Yes....oh, did you, Mr. Lovejoy?
In Leeds? No, I don’t
know Leeds
At all.
In Sicily they’re quite, quite one of the....
Yes, well, we went about rather,
Two days here and two days there, you know;
So interesting.
So that we could see as much as possible.
I don’t know whether...do you speak Italian, Alicia?
So-so. You do. How nice.
No, well,
I don’t think anybody bothered too much
With Sicilian. They
all speak English
So frightfully well.
Such an amusing place for a holiday, such
Good hotels,
And the food in them so good; yes. Yes.
No, I don’t think we had any of those;
Really, is that what they eat?
How fascinating. I’m
awfully glad
They didn’t serve it to us;
Too dreadful.
Of course, they probably don’t eat much at all,
The Sicilians;
So little and dark, you know.
Brown skins.
No, I suppose not.
Was it very...? Oh,
Not too bad, really.
I bathed on two occasions,
I think it was. Yes.
But we had very little time, of course, because
We had to keep moving on, rather, to the next place.
So well arranged.
Marcia and I did so enjoy it all, so
Tremendously.
(November,
1972)
