‘That’s the trouble. All that beauty: in-sodding-sufferable. Ewan Rice calls Venice the Capital of Divorce – and set one of his best books there. About divorce. Venice is humanity at its ripped-off, ripping-off worst … I made this smart-arse remark about a rip-off umbrella Carmen bought – really, the sort of thing I say twenty times a day – but instead of batting it away, she had this look … like, “Remind me, why am I spending the last of my youth on this whingeing old man?” She walked off across St Mark’s Square. Alone, of course.’
