Young priests admire a Riviera view while showing off the new Vatican Mark II Scandal-free Robot Cardinal

I am in Italy. For security reasons, I could not possibly reveal my location. Suffice too say that getting there involved driving through France and having my car dismantled – and then badly rebuilt – by a gaggle of Douanier cops. Or maybe the collective noun is a bungle, I’m not sure: it’s just that sixty kilometres further on, the near-side rear wheel arch panel began waving at me noisily….and required some make do and mend before I could arrive at my first destination.

The website I consulted about this trip had suggested I allow 9 hours for it. In the event, it took just over fourteen. I shall not be using them again.

Going from one country to another in Europe is odd. Everything changes, for example one goes from French (a language at which I am dead good) to Italian (in which Silvio Berlusconi is about as much as I can manage). And whereas the French punctuate their autoroutes with peages, the Italians add variety to their autostradas with the copious use of tunnels. I have never encountered so many tunnels over a distance of just under 120 kilometres in my life; it was like driving through an intensely figurative Freudian dream.

Also, whereas French autoroute exit arrows point with an air of casual information at a turn-off in 5oo metres, Italian arrows do a perfect 90-degree angle and give you 50 metres to decide whether it’s the one for you or not.

Approaching another hole in the mountains while heading north east, I saw a sign showing a wind-sock, and boasting ‘a fine tunnel’. You may well think it so (I thought) but let me be the judge of that, sunshine. However, it did strike me as rum that the sign was in English. It wasn’t, of course: ‘a fine’ in Italian means ‘at the end of’. It was warning of wind – a remarkably accurate prediction given the state of my stomach since eating a little too much risotto for supper.

It’s been a long day. More anon. I shall sleep soundly in the knowledge that I ddn’t by any gold yet, and it’s now at $1360.