Time For a Final Bit of Postcard.(15)

right city/wrong owner

Alain has a shop on a back street in Rome.

It might be a gallery.

He is an artist – he sticks stamps to refurbished motorcycle parts.

Among other things.

He is also a collector.

He collects enamelled decorative trays from the 1950’s and early 60’s.

He has over 500.

I think that this might be all there are in the whole world.

Some of them are displayed on the wall of his shopllery.

They are beautiful.

He once was a nomad.

He once rode a motorbike around the distant islands.

His back is better now because he has sold his bike and no longer has to negotiate the potholes of the city.

The city where he stopped being a nomad.

I think he met a girl and they merged their nomadicities.

They have a son.

But he feels it is time to go home.

He needs some calm.

And he wants to live the last part of his life in the country that gave him birth and which he doesn’t really know.

Alain is French

For now he goes to Elba when he needs escape.

I say – that’s Napoleon’s island.

He agrees, telling me that it’s the island Napoleon escaped to.

I replied saying that the English use a different word.

And that it's time for me to go home too.

All holidays come to an end.

Bummer.

abint/15