You will be relieved to hear that my sunglasses turned up today, so I hadnÂ’t lost them at all. They were in my inside coat pocket. Which is where I thought IÂ’d put them. And where I had in fact already looked for them. They hadnÂ’t been there when I looked, but now they were. Come on Science, with all your laws of physics, explain that! You canÂ’t can you. There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy. And one of those things is my sunglasses. Now IÂ’ve mentioned them you will probably have a dream about them. But the point is you wouldnÂ’t have had that dream if I hadnÂ’t told you. And there are still loads of other things that your philosophy hasnÂ’t dreamt of. Like a badger with a ravenÂ’s legs and an elephantÂ’s spleenÂ… which can breathe ice. DonÂ’t pretend youÂ’d dreamt of it. You hadnÂ’t. Ha! Take that Sciiii-ence.
Florence is an amazing and beautiful town. I have been here before. I came here with Geoff Quigley eighteen years ago, but I canÂ’t remember much about that. In fact all I really remember is the fact that we somehow managed to sneak in the back way into the Uffizi gallery without paying and were able to look round one whole room before some men came up to us and asked to see our tickets. We didnÂ’t have any tickets, of course, so we were then thrown out.
Walking round Florence again today it seemed inconceivable that I have no other memory of it. It is an extraordinary city. For example I donÂ’t remember the main Cathedral, the Duomo at all. And yet it is one of the most exceptional and intricate and massive buildings I have ever seen. Yet I have no memory of seeing it before. Which either means that I have seen it before and it has somehow slipped my mind, which seems impossible. Or it means that when we came to Florence before we didnÂ’t bother to visit it. This seems equally impossible. The church totally dominates the city and we would have had to have been blind and insane to have missed it. Possibly we were, or possibly to an 18 year old me, this enormous and individual building was of no interest to me and did nothing for me. Maybe. Though I do remember being impressed by St PeterÂ’s in Rome. I thought I had a good memory, but so much of that trip, half a lifetime ago has faded from my mind.
This time I paid for the Uffizi gallery and made no attempt to sneak in at all. I was disappointed that they didnÂ’t have some kind of warning notice behind the desk, warning them that if I returned I would try the same thing again. It was doubly disappointing because they did have such a poster of Geoff Quigley. As if heÂ’d been the ring leader of our previous crime. We had been equal partners. Like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Except we didnÂ’t get away with any money. And were caught within approximately four minutes of our crime. It is doubtful that anyone will ever make a film about our crimes. But you never know. And if they do, we were equal and Geoff Quigley was not the leader. Whatever the Uffizi galley may claim.
I can only presume that security has been stepped up a bit in the last 18 years (probably as a direct result of our daring breach) as I canÂ’t see any way that someone could sneak in now. There have X ray machines and metal scanners like in an airport. I wouldnÂ’t like to be a penniless 18 year old in modern day Florence.
The galley itself houses an unbelievable collection of medieval art. In some ways it is overbearing. If any one of those pictures was on my living room wall at home I would expect any visitors to comment on how amazing and beautiful it was. But all together, crammed into a couple of dozen of rooms the sheer number of masterpieces seems to slightly detract from their individual brilliance. “Oh look, there’s a brilliant picture of Jesus… oh and another one there… And another one. Oh apparently anyone in 16th century Florence could knock those out. Yes, there’s another one. Did no-one think of drawing a picture of a monkey on a toilet? You know, just to break things up a bit.”
I wondered if I put this argument to Mr Uffizi whether he might just let me take one of the paintings so that it could be properly appreciated. Not one of the famous one like the Venus one, or the twattish one of those cherubs looking vacantly off into space which everyone in the world seems to have a poster of (I think it was by Raffaelo. He was always my least favourite turtle. I am funny). Just one of the portraits of austere medieval gentlemen. Or maybe the one of the fella with the big codpiece that I recognised from the front cover of “A Mind of its Own” by David Friedman. Surely Mr Uffizi would agree that the important thing wasn’t the monetary value of the paintings, but the fact that the art was appreciated. And it really would be if it was at my house. By all of my friends. They’d probably say “What a really nice picture,” or at the very least, “That’s a really brilliant and ornate frame” (I was constantly reminded of the great Gary Larson cartoon of a bloke looking at a picture in an art gallery and an old woman saying to him, “My boy made the frame”.)
Maybe they could even have a special day when every visitor to the gallery was allowed to take one picture home. They could pre-advertise this, say it will happen one mystery day in November. They could probably charge a thousand pounds a ticket every day that month. TheyÂ’d make a fortune (as long as they cleverly waited til the 30th to give the paintings away).
Of course Mr Uffizi is unlikely to agree to my plan. Partly because he doesn’t exist. Uffizi is Italian for “Offices” and is so called because the building used to be used for that purpose (and I am not the kind of person to get humour out of mistaking the meaning of an Italian word, that would be cheap) and secondly because the last surviving member of the Medici family, Anna Maria bequeathed all Medici property to the Grand Duchy in perpetuity upon her death in 1743 with the sole condition that they never leave Florence.
But still, I think my free painting idea is a god idea. If the human kind is ever wiped out in some kind of biological accident and I am the only surviving person, I am going to come back here and take my pick of the paintings. I might have five or six of them. And I donÂ’t care what Anna Maria Medici has to say about it. IÂ’m not going to introduce a biological disease into the water supply that only I have the antidote to in order to carry out my plan though. And anyone who says I am is lying.
