Wild boar, fat pigeons, comic books and car stress

The car practically ran out of gas half-way to Viterbo as we'd been stuck for 1 1/2 hours on the ring road outside of Rome. We'd missed lunch-time, F was so stressed I could literally hear the individual grey hairs sprouting furiously from his fuming skull... Things were bad... We were bumbling along a dirt-track backwards and forwards trying to guess which way was north, me in a desperate silent bid to prevent F's stress levels reaching Def Con 5, hunger munching our stomachs away when we finally communally passed out (including the car) in front of a battered sign on the side of the road that read Taverna Di Campagna. In the distance a plume of smoke rising from beyond the olive groves gave us hope that a hot meal was not lost, even as the clock approach 4...
We bumped down the windy lane through leafy groves and our path opened onto a delightful courtyard of a small farmhouse and barn slap in the middle of vines and cherry trees. Pigeons as fat as geese flapped in their coops above our heads and two large hens cockadoodledooed joyfully in the background. When the bumptious and no-nonsense Bruna emerged from a steamy kitchen behind the barn wafting scents of thick stews and meaty wonders across the yard it became clear that whatever we were about to eat would have been raised, fed, slaughtered, stuffed, grown, hunted, stewed and brewed right there in the fields by mein host and that it would be damn f-ing delicious.
By god it was...

Arrivederci Prato...

Oh how I weep over the corpse of dear industrial wasteland prato... Blubber, blubber...
Indeed the day of my fleeing approacheth, and about bloody time too!
After 7 hours of sweating my way through the Rome metro, three hairy offices, endless sun-shines-out-of-your-corporate-bottom grins of approval and worship and 10 litres of eagerly proffered coca-cola, Cobra Group, Appco Direct, McDonalds/Microsoft/Big Corpogloba-world-wide/money-grubbing industry hobnobbins GAVE ME A JOB!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WOOOOHOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm getting out of this flea-ridden cesspit strewn with the corpses of nameless immigrant spawn chained to walls in filthy hovels stirring vats full of beetle-blood dyed cheap fabrics with which to cloth the backs of penniless Ukrainians the world over.

Poor pratato. Little does anyone know that it is also the hallowed resting-place of the Virgin's most-chaste chastity girdle and more of the ubiquitous Tuscan renaissance graffitti.

Rome, Culture, Money, a decent flat, my most delicious Frisco and the joys of hash and bongo drum Centri Sociali, here I come!!!!

stay tunes for more...