A major drawback was that nobody spoke English. As I was later to learn, you need only ten words of their language and the Italians will gladly help you with the rest, but at that stage I had only three words and a punctuation mark: ‘Autostrada del Sole?’. I was looking for the Highway of the Sun. When I said this phrase with an interrogative inflection while doing my gestural imitation of a six-lane highway, people crossed themselves. Some of them crossed the street.

But a few brave souls pointed the way, so that after about two hours of doing my frog-man walk through the killing midday heat I had reached the highway at a spot where it looked like I might get a lift, if one of the hurtling cars would only stop. After another two hours one did. It had an English driver: a Unilever accountant who said he could take me as far as Piacenza. While I drank two bottles of orangeade out of a six-pack and the entire contents of a flask of mineral water, he explained that it wasn't just the beard which kept me rooted to the hard shoulder, it was also that hitchhiking was forbidden.

Dimly I remembered Francoise telling me that in her last letter. Receiving advice, ignoring it, and then finding out the hard way how good it was, has been the story of my life. One of these days the Good Samaritan might fail to materialise, or might not have any orangeade with him

when he does.

Just outside the Piacenza exit my saviour set me off at a point where I might conceivably pick up another lift south, but he warned me not to bank on it. After an hour 30 and a half of watching Fiats, Lancias and Alfas go by both ways like an exchange of bullets, I got the point and started walking towards town. It was a long way and I was grateful when a three-ton lorry heading in that direction slowed down and stopped just ahead. The old hooked thumb had worked at last.

When the driver leaned out, he doubled my relief by speaking English

“You want a lift?”

“Yes, actually.”

“Yes, actually. You from England?”

“Australia.”

“Australia, I hear your accent now. I was in Australia, at the Snowy River Project. I do not feel comfortable with Australians. Here in Italy we do not like the beard. I drive into town, get some of my friends, we come back and fix you good.”

On the other side of the roadside ditch there were cabbages growing among which I hid, but after about another hour it started looking probable that he would not come back, so I began walking again, this time without the extended thumb.

Having to turn my feet sideways even to limp successfully, I had a terrific pain in the ankle, so by the time I got to Piacenza railway station I had barely enough strength to get my wallet out. Spending all my money on a ticket to Florence was rendered needlessly complicated by the fact that none of the ticket-sellers had ever heard of the place. At last their supervisor showed up and set them straight by informing them that the city they had always referred to as ‘Firenze’ was in reality called Florence, It took a long time to sort out and I missed a train while it was happening, but the next train had a name - accelerato - that sounded fast enough to make up the difference.

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