So lets go back to yesterday and add some detail.

A coffee and pastry at the bar next door with Regazzo and Il Banditore. The coffee is good, so bloody good. The place is packed with school girls and the odd boy buying mostly cigarettes but some buy pastries and some buy coffee to go with the smokes. Its humid inside, its raining outside, the atmosphere is good, the proprietor gets our coffee as a priority over the kids, seems like after a week that we’re looked on sort of like locals. The locals drop in for cigarettes, espresso, a quick chat with the proprietor, never sitting, hands flapping, talking like its an argument, but it doesn’t actually seem to be one.

A one minute walk back at the villa, a bit of solid food for breakfast then upstairs to the first floor living area, where I spend some time getting my phone set up to watch the NRL semi final between Parramatta. The tv apps for Australia dont allow you to watch Australian TV shows so you have to trick it into thinking you are in Australia. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) does that, I think, so with fingers crossed I kick Nord VPN into gear and presto we’re watching The Eels v The Raiders. The Eeels are very impressive and win easily. Regazzo (the accountant) joins us, reading us the scores off  the NRL live stream score site before we see it on the phone. F….g annoying, we tell him so, and he stops doing it for a while. Then he commandeers my tablet and watches separately on that, same thing again so he’s threatened again and complies. I’m glad I tried this, I worked out a bit about technology having a crack at it.

Regazzo has some redeeming features, he arrives back after the football with a pizza and generously shares some with John and I. Its a very tasty pizza, fresh, tasty, melt in your mouth pizza. I hear his wife Della (aka Jane) ask him where the pizza was, he responds I ate it. John and I are a little embarrassed that we ate pizza that should have been Janes, but as the Newcastle song says, never let a chance go by, my guilt moves on quickly.

I go for  nice long walk up the hill away from the water, to local shops along the main road and back down the hill to the villa, Its a nice walk, quiet, leafy streets, locals talking, drinking coffee.

The shoppers return from Sorrento, sore feet and smiles on their faces, with a plan to return to buy more bags and clothes later on before dinner at a restaurant reccomended by the other travellers when they came down from Naples to Sorrento. The rest of us chill in the garden  and have a few drinks, some of us have a few more than others before the walk to the dinner venue. The night is balmy, the mosquitos are small and bite hard, rain feels close.

At 4:30 the Williams clan leave for a night in Naples, a car and driver take then all the way in to their hotel.

The walk to the restaurant is brisk, but Helen & The Architect lag behind, Helen has been working on rehydration all afternoon and doesn’t feel the need to rush, her brother comments that she’s never been early in her life, harsh maybe, dunno, could be true.

The afternoon handbag shoppers have a table organised before we get there, the centre of the room, beers and wine ordered, then food, the waitress is the boss’s daughter, she seems in control and has a lovely smile. I order an entree of deep fried calamari, The Navigator orders hers, my neighbours order a convivio something or other and the mood is festive and we’re all hungry, some hungrier than others as will become apparent.

Entree’s begin appearing, the waiter delivering the food has a sweat on his forehead, he drops food and runs and a brown paper bag with deep fried sea food is given to my erstwhile neighbours (Helen & Rob). They dive in and start shovelling the delicious looking food into their mouths assuming that it was what they ordered, Helen is adamant that it actuallt is what they ordered but her memory is slightly dulled by the vino from the session in the garden at the villa where we inhaled mossie coil and swatted the dirty biting little black blood suckers earlier, all combined with alcohol. After a while, when a poor orphan looking entree dish, which I advised is clearly not mine is recognised by Helen as being what she had actually ordered. Her face turns red as she comes to the realisation that her and Rob had hoed into my food without hesitation or consultation. Of course she blames the waiter, she blames the guests, she blames God for not telling her she was about to make a huge mistake but the responsibility clearly rests with her. The next mistake is then trying to placate me while I gazed dismayed at my half nibbled half gobbled entre. I swear she looked that hungry I was surprised that she didn’t eat the brown paper bag or at least suck the grease out of the paper in the bag. Food is offered to me as a reconcilatory gesture, other things yet to be clarified what they are are offered, but my integrity says to me that I won’t enquire further what that might look like.

I’m feeling OK about having half of my ordered entree eaten by a thief, however Helen is still struggling with her guilt and decides that alcohol and dance therapy will help her through rehabilitation for commiting this gastronomic crime.

The restaurant starts some music going, we start singing and Helen decides to reenact Olivia Newton-Johns leather suit dance (You;re the One That I Want) with John Travolta when Grease comes on. Helen is accompanied by Ciclista Dismountus, mainly because he’s afraid that her extreme hip swininging and arms flaying may endanger a customer or worse still one of us. The locals and travellers dining at the restaurant get their phones out, I think they are concerned about evidence should their ear drums rupture from the loud and poor singing or from Helens flailing arms. As the DJ adds some old Italian classics and other songs on, our group take over the restaurant and start a conga line, knotted hankies on heads, dancers from America and Italy join the pulsing dance floor. Not me, I don’t dance and I don’t cook, and besides its fun watching the action on the floor.

Dinner is a success, great fun on our last night in Sorrento.

The walk home from Sorrento to Sant Agnello is slow, Helen seems to have sorted her guilt issues out but it won’t be forgotten, who said revenge is a dessert best served cold? The great entree crime, a felony of fish, will not go unavenged. The rain starts to fall as we turn into Via Coccumella, our street. Patience Pauolo, the day will come.

A quick tidy up before bed and an early start tomorrow morning.

Ciao from Sorrento – Paulo