Troppo stretto

Good evening from a slightly geriatric hotel in Sorrento where I took refuge in the bar after an unusual incident in the hire car. Actually there have been a couple of car related incidents in Italy this year. Last week I was enjoying the sweeping curves of the road up the mountain to the village where Gemma's family home is to be found (in the Abruzzo region). I was starting to get the measure of the Nissan Tino (of which I had never heard until I was given one for the week; it is a deisel people carrier). A nice level of twitchy tyre screech had been achieved as I rounded a familiar bend to discover a posse of Carabinieri standing by their Punto armed with the requisite speeding detail regalia. My heart gave one of those little jumps and a split second later they waved me on with the little red baton they use to pull people over. Initially relieved, then disappointed that I didn't qualify to be stopped, I then felt sure that they were actually quite impressed with my corner.

To earlier this evening, when I took a wrong turn on the way to my real hotel and then a second one to find myself in a very narrow street indeed. We are talking only three of four inches wider than the Nissan, with high walls on either side. The four of us went a bit quiet at first before Gemma and her sister freaked out a little and we came to rest a third of the way along the three of four hundred meter road. Here there took place a measure of hysteria amongst two of the passengers before I attempted, unsuccessfully to reverse back down the street. To cut a long story short, with literally an inch or so on each side (having folded in the wing mirrors) we eventually emerged from the tension into the nicest traffic jam I can remember. Now, I know it could have been quite embarrassing (having climbed out of the tailgate of the car) to have to explain to Mr Hertz that one of his vehicles was wedged between two walls some miles south of Naples, but that was not the source of the real tension. It was the feeling of confinement of the rear seat passengers and the anxiety transmitted to the driver (me) and front seat passenger (Ralph).

I cannot remember the last time I have felt like that. Sitting in the bar here, it took several minutes for us even to be able talk about the experience sensibly. People don't like to feel trapped, they just don't notice that they are most of the time anyway.