London Cynicism vs Venetian Bliss

You can call me a cynic but it occurred to me recently that I so rarely encounter romantics, particularly in London, that when I do I am dramatically taken aback. When I say ‘romantics’ I mean it in the truest sense of the word. In my case it once meant five actors, including myself, living their dreams in a shoebox flat in Venice one summer not too long ago.

Indeed Venice is the stuff that romance is made of. The five of us continually romanticised every aspect of our bohemian artistic lives there, allowing it to permeate even the most mundane of tasks. When we cooked a meal, which in London would be a simple functional task, in Venice it felt like some gloriously splendid celebration of communal living. We played songs in the square near Rialto, La Bella Luna shining on the Grande Canal. It was one step from The Von Trapp Family Album Does Venice.

Ordinarily I would look upon this silly fluff with disdain, but in this instance I was entirely complicit in the fantasy. A willing and happy participant, being swept up into our bubble of bohemian Venetian bliss. I anticipated my part in it so much so that I had fully prepared for my role; costumed in a white linen dress, hair cascading and thus cultivating an air of mysterious English rose floating gracefully past the Bridge of Sighs. In reality this translated to: marginally overweight and slightly pasty British girl squeezes into her overpriced and well over-budget Kings Road purchase and bounds sweating and sticky over the waterways of Venice.

The canals were another clearly idyllic symbol of our lives there. We started many a conversation with a wistful sigh ‘ah…it’s beautiful…isn’t it…’ – you don’t get that when you’re walking past a rusting shopping trolley in the Thames do you?

One particularly memorable evening proved the pinnacle of it for me, and I couldn’t help but be snapped back to my more natural state of cynicism. One evening me, and I quote, ‘The most beautiful man I have ever seen…the stuff that classic Greek plays are made of’ finished up our wine or ‘the joyous red liquor purchased from a blind Venetian playing an exquisite hand whittled mandolin’ and decided to wander to Ponte Dei Miracoli (Point of Miracles for the linguistically challenged).

At first I thought my handsome companion wished to re-enact some scene from an EM Forster novel but he had a much more suspect idea in mind.

Find out exactly how suspect in my second installment next week…

Image by Viditu courtesy of Flickr