In Partenza

Do you ever suffer this syndrome: on the last day of your hols, it starts to rain, you lose your hotel room key, somebody barges into you in the street and doesn't say sorry, your breakfast disagrees with you? It's Nature's way of saying Back to Work You Skiving Lounger. Although a holiday in Venice is also work of a sort - the endless trudging round churches, the treadmill of lasagnes, the craning of the neck to admire palazzi...
Anyway my last day dawned grey and greasy, not like the bright blue breezy ones which had preceded it. I had planned to visit the Frari on my last morning, to see a painting that was so wonderful it made Henry James come over queer, and another one which Ruskin had said was the best painting ever since the last one he'd quite liked.
However, when I got to the Frari I discovered my museum pass wasn't valid, and I hadn't got enough change for the ten euros (!) admission, and I couldn't find a bank, and I began to think my breakfast had disagreed with me, and when I went back to the monastery to get my case, I discovered my boat bus pass had expired too. Oh soddit! The painting that had made Henry James come over queer would have to wait.
Then, on the bus to the airport, it clouded over and began to rain, and by the time we got there, it was sluicing down, and the flight was delayed for two hours (thank God! One's appetite for taking off in pitch black thunderstorms is limited). And then we were delayed for another hour as they worked their way through the delayed schedule, but at last we were on board, only 3 hours late, and thinking, oh well, we'll be in  Bristol in a minute. But then, in mid-air, the captain made an announcement which began with the word UNFORTUNATELY. This word should be forbidden, especially at the beginning of a sentence, when in mid-air.
Apparently the crew had been working for too long and we had to divert to Brussels to pick up another crew. On arrival at Brussels (well, Charleroi, actually. Hadn't used that word since O level geography) we had to wait an hour for the fresh crew to arrive. There was a bit of whinging. One woman reproached the tired crew saying she often worked a 14 hour day. But I secretly supported Ryanair in all their decisions so far- although one cannot, of course, say one supports Ryanair out loud in polite society. One does not want a tired pilot. Or indeed a tired steward, flinging scalding tea about in a listless fit.
Eventually we arrived at Bristol five hours late, and despite having gone to the loo at Bristol airport, I still had to stop on the drive home for a pee, and it was at one of those petrol stations which is also a supermarket, and I bought loads and loads of grub and still the woman wouldn't let me use their toilet, and I had to look ever so old and desperate and kind of terminal before she relented.
And so ended my journey to the most exquisite, scintillating city on earth: humiliated in a toilet in a filling station.
It was bloody marvellous though.