PICTURES OF VENICE Feb 05 Our first morning. We are in the breakfast room of the tourist hotel ‘La Forcola’ in Cannaregio. At the next table to ours a man is reading from the Venice guidebook to a sullen teenage boy, who is obviously his son. The boy shows no interest whatsoever in his father’s reading, but stares into his yoghurt as if this little pot might save him from the uninvited punishment. The father drones on; “Charlemagne” drone, drone, “Constantinople” drone, drone. I realise that this man intends to read a whole chapter of the guidebook to his captive, even ignoring his own food, so absorbed is he in delivering the unwanted litany. A woman joins them, small and silent, and the boy doesn’t glance up at his mother, the reader doesn’t break even for ... read more