The next morning the sun was out, the sky was once again that science fiction uncapturable blue, i had spotted a few places for some photo opprtunities the previous evening and made my way to them before the crowds, the crowds I refer to being the crowds I would later find out don’t actually exist.I walked to the highest point of the town where the fortress walls that were once used as a convenient spot to pour burning oil on attacking hordes have now been converted to a cute little playground for the kiddies and a series of oval paths focusing on a simple piazza complete with a statue the purpose of which i couldnt quite get my head around.

I snapped a few typical steeple sticking out of a bunch of trees, misty mountain village type shots and then moved onto the lovely looking star shaped bastion that remained in the northeast corner of the wall. Again the roof of this bastion was large enough to now hold a small park complete with benches and even a few tables… gasp… moving up a litle bit higher didn’t really add to the views of the surrounding hillside but it gave me a good look down on some of those trade mark sunflower fields and even a view of a war cemetary of some kind.

I was the only person up here, I made the most of the space and tranquility, i think i even nodded off for a while,.. in fact i know i did i just wanted to pretend that i was more actively enjoying the tranquility.

I awoke, wondering what local animals had made use of my person over the past 30 minutes or so and saw a nice little spot which would probably yield a few more postcard shots and headed that way. As i moved from what i thought was a simple journey from a brick path to a gravel path i raised my camera to my eye and considered snapping a pic of the expanse of blue just to test my camera’s capabilities.

My eyes previously uninterrupted view of blue sky now shared space with what i quickly recognised as my left foot.. this was joined not surprisingly by my roght foot, the camera decided that it was time to leave the area immediately in front of my face as my arms flung themselves into the “what the fuck is happening to me” pose, … yes kids i was falling, and i was seriously falling, i had a good second to consider what was happening to me, before i landed on what i had thought was a gravel path but was actually a beautifully formed mud pool, a good 30′40 cms deep and quite clean and consistent, it was as if some giant had been making chocolate brownies and i had fallen into the mixing bowl.

I peeled myself out of the mud, apart from a 20cm wide stripe of identifiable clothing near my shirt i was covered head to toe and in some places heavily caked in tuscan mud. I laughed, l iaughed again and took another look around me…
I had managed to somehow slide right off the path and land on a small embankment, about a metre to my right was a fairly sheer 10m drop to the rock floor of the bastion, about 10cm from where the impression of my head could be seen in the mud was a large pointed rock, most probably made of
more sturdy stuff than the back of my head.

But why worry about that now, what’s a holiday if you don’t cheat death every now and then.. and hey,.. i think the fall fixed my back.

I climbed back on the relative safety of the gravel track and took a better look at myself,.. my camera was coated in 3 inches of mud, aside from the shot of my foot against the blue sky i don’t have any permanent evidence of the occasion, but that image speaks volumes.

Every part of me i could see was covered in mud, it was a good half hour walk back to my hotel … most of which through the centre of town, i figured i would try and clean myself up to the point where i wouldn’t be mistaken for some ancient town legend.

I scraped the mud off myself, this went quite well,.. to the point where all i had on were dirty clothes, i got as much of it out of my hair as i could, i only had a small bottle of water which i didn’t even bother using to clean my hands in case it was more useful for other purposes later. I noticed that the mud was drying fairly quickly in the heat and decided to take off my shirt, pants, shoes and socks and lay them out in the sun.

I sat on arezzo’s ancient walls, in my least favourite pair of travelling jocks, staring at the distant hills, blurred now by my absent spectacles. and waited for mother nature to have some impact. 20 minutes later the oven bell rang and my clothes had been transformed into a nice khaki colour, almost fashionable i thought. I picked up my jeans and belted them against the wall,.. dust and chunks of mud floew off them for the first 3 or 4 whacks after which i was surprised at how presentable they had become,..

the same couldnt be said for my shirt. My body wasn’t quite wall smashable either and despite large amounts of scraping i still looked like i had rolled in mud.

I put my clothes back on and headed back towards the rest of society to try and find a tap or a bathroom of some kind to clean myself up further. I took a good look around the place and didnt find any water source and decided to head back down to the gardens and see if there were some facilities.

As i descended the ramps from the bastion I saw a puppy turn the corner and head in my direction, the puppy was attached to a lead which is normally followed by a human, but this lead just kept appearing from the corner ahead, they must have had a mad sale on 20 metre dog leads at the local supermercato or maybe this guy doesnt like his dog much or vice versa,.. but … eventually, he turned the corner his dog had already passed me i took a step towards him,.. umm the man him i mean,.. I’m not sure what the sex of the dog he was reeling in was. Before i got my initial mi scusa signore out he had started reeling his pooch back in, the dog seemed to understand this manouvre and was cooperating, he picked it up in his aarms and clutched it to his chest as he awaited me to speak… true to the local legend … i did.

The itialian word for ‘fall’ is one i always have trouble remembering… so i thought i best try and explain my appearance and said “ho soltato non buono” whuich loosely means… “i jumped not well” he nodded .. i went on”sto bene ma vorrei pulitare.. dove il bagno in vicina” again i took some liberties with the langauges and i think invented a verb for clean myself but he focused on the meat of my question… “where is the bathroom” and gave me a series of hand gestures and comments … it seemed that all i would have to do is walk past the odd statue oin the gardens below and i would find an outdoor bagno

I only had to walk past about 20 people, all of whom had a good laugh at my expense,.. including one of the town bums… i found the bagno,.. which was a rather strange looking cube of a building with no signs and a door in the centre of one of the walls… I opened the door,.. there was no ceiling and referring to this place as a bagno was rather odd as all it contained… was a toilet, no sink, no taps, no bidet, no towels, no servant handing out mints… none of the essentials.

In my pack I carry several things that people are surprised by, one of them is a sponge/scourer combo thing. I examined the toilet, opened the top of the cistern and found that the whole thing was quite new, very new in fact and remarkably clean… i turned off the tap feeding the water into the unit and ran through a couple of flushes until it was empty…

the water feeder had a small hose at the end of it that just reached over the top of the system so i wa able to wash my hands and scrub some of the mud off my face and hair using fresh water,.. lovely… but it was just a trickle, wasnt going to help with my clothes.

I used my scourer to give the toilet system and crapper a good cleaning, some of the more popular restaurants in arezzo are now using this toilet as a seat for the saturday evening rush it was so clean. I undid the modifications i made to the cistern and turned the water back on.

I loosely draped my shirt across my hands, held it in the bowl and hit the flusher with my head… it was an excellent flushing system, very powerful, within 3 flushes my shirt was looking dandy. The jeans i tackled similarly but one leg at a time, also quite succesful, about 10 flushes in total for them … it was only the fear of unlocking hidden childhood memories that stopped me from sticking my head in the bowl to give my hair a once over.

The rooflesness of the room now did its work, the jeans weren’t going to dry but the shirt was a drip dry travellers best friend type garb and was ready to go in minutes.

I got dressed, squelched my way out of the bagno and headed for a park bench to dry off further. After an hour or so i was feeling so nice and fresh that i even conidered going out to lunch rather than returning to my room.