A rare experiment in telling the truth. Never previously published.

I was in Urbino because my girlfriend at the time was there attending a conference on atmospheric chemistry. I went along because I had nothing more important to do. Urbino is a small, walled hill city in central Tuscany, three bus-rides inland from Rimini. As I remember it the sun shone every day. I remember a waitress talking laughingly and at length in Italian about the ants on the tablecloth – formicari, did she say? – before realising that we spoke no Italian. I remember a rough-looking man with a heavy blue chin posing in the piazza with his tame jackdaw. I remember being drunk and having a stand-up row with my girlfriend outside the wine shop. Afterwards she went back to the hotel and I went into the wine shop. The wine seller and I talked awkwardly about…