Hotel Unfortunate Of The Sixties Kind, Genoa.
This morning I was driven from the breakfast room by music of the inappropriate kind.
Optimistically, I had taken current reading with me to ingest over coffee in the breakfast room (a working day precludes the pump-down-as-much-as-you-can-hold of the buffet feeding trough). Walking past the man smoking a pipe (this I have not seen for many years in a public space) to the small non-smoking section, I sat to discover the particular choice of noise pollution for this morning: a good American female jazz singer (I didn't recognize her). This would have been fine at the right time, in the right place, and were it to have been volitionally available. This particular morning no-one appeared to be listening to her, and I doubt that anyone working in the dining room actually "chose" the music: noise pollution policies are conventionally set at higher administrative levels than the people who endure the repercussions of the decision-making class. Singing, a musical action usually involving words, demands a response that instrumental music alone does not; and at breakfast one may not care to make that response.
Then the fault occurred in the sound system (the tinny in-ceiling speakers were not a fault as such, only a by-product of an earlier age): random select kicked in, changing tracks every 10 seconds. None of these randomly selected tracks belonged to the jazz singer, and each track was even less appropriate than hers. Rock drums hamper my digestion, even of cafÈ latte, at any time of day and night. But over breakfast, drums mis-align my beginning-day even more than my digestive tract. I commented to the waiter, who brought me a second small jug of cafÈ Americano, that there was a mistake in the in-house music. He seemed aware of this already, went away, and shortly afterwards the jazz singer returned. At this point I left, carrying my reading unread.
The sun is shining, the sky is blue.
Today is, according to my Crim Band Buddies, the middle day of this Eurotour. I believe it. We have a lobby call for 11.30.
12.10 Crimbus Leaving Genoa For Verona.
We left Genoa at 11.35. Bump bump bump bump.
15.56 Arriving in Verona.
"The quality of a person is revealed in their conduct in front of sex, money and the use of time."
