By L. A. Hilton

           We were stranded in Brindisi for a short time before the next boat out and it was raining. It hadn’t rained at all in two weeks and now that we were out of viable options, it rained. It was the one night on this whole trip – even our whole lives maybe – that we would have to sleep outside on the street. We decided to kill some time in a bar, nursing a beer each, making it last longer than usual so that we could stay inside where it was dry. We knew from the vaguely understandable newspaper weather reports that the rain was supposed to finish in the middle of the night and it wasn’t too heavy so we finished our drinks before the bar got too busy and went outside. We sat on a circular stone bench in the street, amidst cheering Italian drinkers who were presumably celebrating the arrival of the weekend. The Italians stood in the entrances to the busy bars, just about outside, smoking and laughing their rich laughs. The bench was a smooth expensive stone and had an enormous tree in the centre which sheltered us from the majority of the downpour. We’d left our waterproof clothes in France a fortnight before as the heat and sunshine had been ubiquitous on the continent for some time – it meant that all we had was shorts and linen shirts, sandals and sun-cream. Peter would meet us in Athens with our pay from the writing we had done together a month before, back home in London, and what we’d been writing for him since getting out here. We had only to see out one night in Brindisi before boarding the ferry across to Patras; sixteen hours on the boat and we’d be on Greek soil where the rest of the job could be done. Continue reading →