I awoke this morning to discover the streets are full of water. I am in Venice, you may say - all the streets are full of water. No, they are not. Normally there is an occasional patch of dry land to house a Tintoretto or a bad restaurant. Except today.
So I am looking out of my second floor window at the Hotel Monaco & Grand Canal – normally seeing a street, but today a canal – watching carrier bags float past. Ah, Venice! City of Casanova, Titian and the floating carrier bag. Some of the designer shops on the alley are actually open, although they all have high metal boards at the entrances, keeping the water out. Pucci and Gucci are open. Harry's Bar is sort of open. I watch, amazed, as a woman in waders stops outside a handbag shop and demands to be shown a handbag. The shop girl shows it to her across the board. She touches it, debates with the seller, and eventually buys it. Three foot of floodwater, and still she shops. She must be Italian.
The Venetians are cheerful. I can spot them from my window because they seem so happy. Because they do this with more panache than anyone else on earth. Three foot of water! Pah! They are all wearing green waders and they are not crying. They are standing in their shops, smoking and talking on their mobile telephones. Or they are stalking down the street, with their briefcases over their heads, looking completely normal.
Next, a couple of female American tourists are wading past, their jeans thigh deep in water, with their suitcases over their heads, crying, and heading to the boat stop at the end of the street. Occasionally they stop and stare, as if stopping and staring will make the waters recede. But they are still thigh deep in water. So they go on. Then one pauses. It's too much for her. This could never happen back home, and she sobs and sobs. The water gets a little deeper with the tears.
Bored of the carrier bags and sobbing Americans, I go downstairs for breakfast. The room overlooks the Grand Canal but the white-jacketed waiter is horizontal with remorse. "No cooked breakfast today, Madam," he says. "The kitchen is full of water." At the front desk, the black-jacketed concierge is trying to explain to a gaggle of affluent tourists why he cannot persuade the Adriatic not to flood the city, even if they do have lunch reservations. But I want to go out. I approach the concierge. "No public boats today, Madam," he says. "The workers are on strike." So I go to the canal entrance and wave at a gondolier, parked outside. He might give me a lift to – I don't know – well, another patch of water.
"Are you working?" I ask him. "No," he shouts back, happily. "You must swim." So I go and sit in the lobby with the other tourists. It is like Casablanca – we are waiting and waiting. Waiting for the plane to take us to Lisbon and the New World. Waiting for the water to go away. At one point, I pop back to my room and see the flooding on the BBC news. "Venice is warned of the worst floods for 20 years," it says. So I go back to the lobby and sit with the other tourists in their bone dry wellies. It's like a horror film. All that is missing is zombies. When are we going to start eating each other?
