The best laid plans of mice and women......

It was the great German General Moltke who advised that if the enemy only had four courses open to him that he would always take the fifth. He was of course referring to the perversity of life. Over the years this has been expressed in a number of ways, but basically the best laid plans of mice and men, or even women invariably come to nought in the most unexpected manner. That famous Irishman Murphy enshrined it in his famous law of buggeration namely: ‘Anything that can go wrong will go wrong’. Even Forrrest Gump knew ‘Shit happens!’ All these epigrams are of course little other than the poor woman’s way of explaining the Second Law of Thermodynamics which predicts an increase in entropy or chaos. While this is the simple existential observation that life is full of imperfections- Así es la vida’ for some obscure reason I had totally forgotten about such matters as I sat in the Sicilian pavement café of the Piazza Scarlatti in that hot afternoon.

Feeling irritated I swilled the remains of my coffee around in the bottom of my cup. Clockwise, anti-clockwise, pondering which was the one most affected by terrestrial spin, which way did water go down the bath plughole in the Northern hemisphere? Frankly I couldn’t remember and I felt too tired to address the problem. In the background the persistent buzz of mopeds and scooters was beginning to build before it would hit a peak about one in the morning, as it does in all regions of the Olive Oil Belt of Europe. The Sicilian waiter looked at me as though sensing my irritation. He flashed his nicotine stained teeth by way of inducement. Well one thing was for certain, he didn’t have American relatives. Funny how you can always spot an American abroad I mused – nobody not even albinos have such blinding white teeth. The waiter spat neatly on the pavement narrowly missing his foot and raised his eyebrow. What is it about guys that always makes them think they have the universal cure to every woman’s problems? The thought of him enveloping me in a fog of garlic and aftershave made me shudder.

My meeting had gone on for longer than I had expected. Not that I had any reason to be disappointed. I was being paid by the day and very handsomely too. It was just that I’d never been to Sicily before and I had set myself the target of visiting that most famous or do I mean infamous of towns - Coreleone. That grubby, unbearably hot little hillside enclave whose main claim to fame has been to bestow the joys of organised crime on the world. As well as fictional characters, such as The Godfather's Vito Corleone, it has also spawned some very real ones, such as Jack Dragna, Giuseppe Morello, Michele Navarra, Luciano Leggio, Leoluca Bagarella, Salvatore Riina and Bernardo Provenzano. Added to which one mustn’t forget nearby Castello Soprano which gave its name to another fictional American crime character. Not that crime, let alone unmitigated violence, which is what the Sicilians had appended as their trademark was my thing, but Cosa Nostra rather like Freemasonry always seems to be surrounded by a delicious allure of intrigue and conspiracy.

My waiter, come part-time gigolo had now moved to bestow his favours on two eastern European women sat several feet away. One seemed to be my age the other slightly younger. I assumed they were Russian - they were certainly speaking Russian. It seemed less than prudent to wonder what Russians were doing in Sicily. I’m no expert on haute-couture let alone the offerings of Versace, Gucci etc., apart from a pair of sneakers I splashed out on when I was a student, but it was clear to me that the ‘casual’ clothes the two women were wearing would take me a year’s salary to pay for. What was it about Russians that allowed them to dress in thousand dollar frocks with all the other paraphernalia and bling and yet still manage to look like trailer trash? I could only assume they learnt their dress sense from someone with more money than sense.

I shrugged deciding I was becoming a priggish snob in my old age. The waiter clearly thinking he had hit the jackpot was moving in for the kill. Behind his tray he paused to adjust his dress as my grandfather would have said, or translated into the vernacular – scratch his nuts…………anyway it was none of my business and my mind drifted again.

The little Sicilian piazza had a somnolent sleepy kind of feel, which was hardly surprising as this was Southern Europe and everyone, including the gainfully employed would be getting some Egyptian gymnastics in somewhere as they came to terms with post-lunch stupor. Across the way somebody had parked a donkey, over its back two panniers full of carrots. It had clearly been there for some time witnessed by a pile of droppings which looked set to rival the Eiffel Tower.

Suddenly one of the Russian women released what sounded like the verbal equivalent of a T24 tank out of control. The waiter didn’t wait for a translation but scurried off into the dark bowels of the café his tail between his legs. As I sniggered one of the Russian Dolls must have spotted me.

Turning rather too imperiously for my liking the younger of the two women pushed her Ray-Bans onto the top of her head.

‘Привет.’

‘привет товарищ’ I replied grinning hoping the fact that I’d called her comrade didn’t cause too much offence.

‘Swedish?’ She enquired in remarkably good English.

‘Yorkshire.’ I replied.

Her brow furrowed then her friend nudged her. ‘Aнглийская – English!’ They laughed.

‘Kool’ the older one added. She resorted to a smile fleetingly losing that perpetual frown that most Slavs mistake for a sunny demeanour. Uninvited they both simultaneously got up and dumped down at my table. The older one introduced herself. ‘I am Anna Arkadyevna and this is Maria Ivanova,’ she added tapping her silver cigarette lighter on the table ‘you can call her Masha.’

I am Saffron Mikhailovna. I replied

They both laughed simultaneously. ‘I see you understand отчество,’ Maria added smiling.

‘Are you on holiday?’ Anna enquired

‘I’m here on business,’ I replied.

Anna produced a Russian packet of Philip Morris and lit up engulfing me in a fog of smoke. I wondered if it was prudent to mention St. Petersburg's Izhora cigarette plant were now allegedly processing the tobacco leaf stalks as a means of making them more addictive.

‘Boyfriend?’ Maria enquired waving for the waiter who meekly emerged from the shadows. ‘Dry white wine and three glasses,’ she added without looking at him. ‘I’m sure he will be the next Silvio Berlusconi,’ she mused more to herself than me.’ She decided to answer the question herself. ‘So no boyfriend?’

I shrugged.

‘Она - лесбиянка?’ Anna murmured half under her breath.

Being astute is one thing, but in Yorkshire some things are considered personal including possession of a left-hand thread – lesbian indeed! I decided to laugh, after all this pair probably had Kalashnikovs with folding butts in their gaudy ,voluminous Nepalese goat herder’s handbags.

Silvio plonked the wine bottle and glasses down on the table with less than good grace. Anna picked up one of the glasses and examined it against the light. It bore the faint imprint of lipstick. Briefly she looked at Silvio as though he had spent too many holidays in Chernobyl, then imperceptibly she let the glass drop onto the pavement where it smashed. Silvio let loose with a torrent of Sicilian which I can only assume made no reference to him serving a dirty glass.

Anna stood up looking very angry and returned the invective with a torrent of abuse of her own. Linguistically I was now totally out of my depth. For a split second I sensed this altercation may come to blows and I pushed back slightly from the table.

‘Is he bothering you hen?’ A basso-profundo voice boomed from behind us. Both Anna and Silvio stopped mind torrent. Silvio’s jaw perceptibly dropped. Whatever he had seen I sensed was about to induce one of those occasions when he wished he’d worn brown trousers.

I turned to find a mountain of a woman, wearing jeans and a bulging purple singlet who even the most confirmed dyke would have called ‘butch’ She had short black hair, more piercings than a colander and shoulders that would have even dissuaded certain famous boxers from wife beating. She let loose with her own advice on how Silvio should keep his hands and his dick to himself. You didn’t have to come from the Gorbals to know where her accent came from.

As Silvio scuttled off, Fiona the Bruce also dumped down at my table uninvited.

‘I’m Catherine call me Katie,’ she added as she gave me the full-cream benefit of her shoulder tatoo. For a moment even the Ivanovas looked perplexed, I assumed the Glaswegian accent was beyond them. Either that or they thought she was Catherine the Great, she was certainly big enough.

‘Four clean glasses!’ Katie bellowed in the general direction of the murky hole into which Silvio had vanished.

Suddenly Anna and Marie laughed simultaneously. In my case the penny continued to levitate stubbornly for another thirty seconds, then I too laughed. Just what are the chances of four buses coming along at once?

(To be continued)