Writing Exercise: One Night in Rome

It had been one of those mid-summer days when the clothes stick to your back and the air barely moves. I’d come to Rome looking for blue skies, but wandering around without a cloud in the sky had sent me running from shade to shade in hopes of avoiding a headache.

In the end, I’d bought an overpriced hat from a man who kept quoting that Noel Coward song at me as if it were the only English he knew.

Maybe it was…

From there, it was overpriced water and the most expensive ice-cream I’d ever eaten. It was good, something called ‘gelato’ which didn’t really taste like the stuff you get in England, but not ‘twenty euros’ good.

I spent the afternoon wondering what I was doing in a country where I didn’t even speak the language and where the weather seemed determined to murder me, but I was not planning to leave just because my clothes were wet enough to make me look like I had gone swimming fully-dressed.

The worst part was that I had come here expecting to try the local coffee, taste what a real espresso should be, but could not face anything that was not half-ice. I almost asked one of the cafes about iced coffee, but like I said, I don’t speak a word of Italian. 

Also, I kind of felt like they might have laughed at me, even if I could make myself understood.

I was in one of the great cities of the ancient world, a place I had often told myself I had to visit once before I died (let me tell you: dying was certainly an option I was keeping open) and I was miserable.

Not just a little disappointed, but full-on miserable in a ‘shoot me now’ kind of way. It’s not a criticism of Rome, just that four hours of trying not to puke up my mediterranean lunch can kind of ruin my day no matter how breathtaking the scenery.

In the end though, the sky darkened. As the scenes moved from daylight to streetlights, the city changed. I started to breath, my shirt started to dry off and I actually felt alive. I probably looked like Hell, but at least I could face the night with a certain enthusiasm I had been missing all day.

Actually, scratch that. I was stranded in a city that was in love with what they called the bella figura (I think that’s how they spell it) wearing my suit-jacket just to hide the worst of the sweat-stains under both armpits and down my back, stinking like… I really don’t want to think about the smell; I was sure people were moving out of my way when I got too close.

It was almost nine when I finally slunk back to the hotel, hoping my room-mate (to whom I had handed the only key to our shared suite with assurances that I could amuse myself until he got back) would be there. Client meetings usually overran, or else I would have been there half an hour earlier, but the light was on and visible under the door.

"My god, man. You look awful…" he said, looking me up and down.

"Yeah, well, you know what they say; mad dogs and Englishmen…"

Author's Note

And that was what happens when I have to depict ‘heat and sun’ without using either word. Combined with an exercise to use the title (One Night in Rome) as a starting point.