Cleanliness and Godliness, Tramp Style

As you know, the tramp has always insisted on the importance of keeping the WLW tidy and clean and at the same time as always insisted on an austere approach to the use of water (since in the WLW it is truly a scarce resource). Your trampess has always been a little more generous with the H2O: she likes her vegetables clean and her dishes sparkling, but she is reasonable, she doesn’t expect clean sheets every time she tucks herself into bed. Apparently Jackie Kennedy insisted on fresh, ironed sheets every time she lay down in the White House bedroom – and that included afternoon naps! Well, apart from the obvious comment that she clearly wasn’t doing her own washing and ironing, it would be hard to defend such ecologically incorrect behaviour today. So it is fair to assume that your trampess’s standards are, well, standard, and not, I think, excessive. The tramp, on the other hand, feels that washing dishes which could just as easily be wiped (!!!! I ask you!!!!!) are perfectly acceptable (well, in the family – he does realise that imposing wiped dishes on others might be testing the limits). He has suggested that the trampess simply not look when he is doing the “washing up”. The logic for his position rests on his belief that one day (perhaps sooner rather than later if the weather does not show signs of improving), the tramps might be travelling in a hostile environment (i.e. very hot) where water is not readily available and where our lives will depend (literally) on using water only for drinking and for critical hygiene matters. Your trampess is, of course, ready for such extreme conditions and appreciates that where life depends on having a supply of drinking water, it would be quite wrong to insist on sparkling wine glasses. But, dear Reader, is the via Aurelia such a place?? I think not. But imagine, imagine, the argument invoked by the tramp after attending mass twice (it must be said that the tramp is observant, and creative, in bringing the Holy Catholic Church to his aid in this argument – especially when his otherwise dominant Germanic, protestant ethic works so clearly in the trampess’s favour!). “Ah ha!” he remarked on seeing the priest wipe the chalice clean with a pristine white linen cloth after he had drunk from it. “Ah ha! You see HE doesn’t use water – do you really think that the HCC would allow an unclean chalice to be used??? Does this not prove that wiping is not only good practice but morally and socially acceptable??”

Some times there are no perfect answers, and one must rely on the only thing that works. Dear Reader, I have an exceptional gag reflex. Used tactically, and sparingly, it does achieve results. The dishes sparkle, and until the WLW is crossing a desert, I feel they will continue to do so.

One does not expect the HCC to provide subversive example or excess excitement (though, as we took our French friends through the baroque churches of Rome in search of Caravaggio’s and Bernini’s, it became quite apparent that at the time of the Counter-Reformation, that is precisely what was ordered: high drama in the form of martyrdoms, conversions, and ecstasies all the better to woo back the wavering from austere Protestantism). So to find both in the space of a couple of weeks was more than the trampess could quite comprehend. The excitement was provided on Christmas Eve at the end of the papal mass. Apart from nearly being trampled (one felt one was in the midst of the charging bulls in Spain) when the doors to St Peter’s were opened at 10:30pm (papal masses are neither for the faint-hearted nor the feeble-bodied, and lest anyone think that the clergy themselves are well behaved, let me relate the advice of a nun as I was leaving, many years ago, for one of John Paul II’s first audiences in the Square: “ Get there early, take a position on the barrier and do not, under any circumstances, let nuns push you away -- and they will try believe me!”), the first 4 hours of the evening went peacefully. At 2:30am as Benedict led the procession of cardinals down the main aisle, just opposite us (we were, owing to our sprinting ability, strategically placed on the central aisle), a person, of indeterminate sex, wearing a red hoodie, leapt – with athletic agility it must be said - over the barrier (designed to keep up in our seats and provide the pope with a clear, unfettered path) just in front of his Holiness. The speed with which the secret service (unmistakeable: big, burly, dark suit and with one of those little curly things hanging from his ear) had this person on the floor, out of the way and immobile would have impressed M! The pope, only a couple of feet away, noticed something out of the corner of his eye but carried on, undisturbed and unperturbed. He smiled at me (well, at all of us really of course) as he sidestepped the two bodies on the floor and then turned to do the same to those on the other side of the aisle.

The live transmission of the mass showed the event (French husband having returned to the hotel before the end of mass, owing to exhaustion and perhaps protestant fatigue, saw the whole thing on television – including beloved wife standing on chair and photographing the event – with my camera) but, interestingly, the incident did not appear on subsequent broadcasts. Nor was there any mention in the papers the next day. Whether an innocent only wishing to touch the hem of his garment, a religious fanatic or a terrorist, only the Vatican knows for sure, but your trampess has the photographic evidence that the incident did occur.

We must confess (no choice really, under the circumstances) that we, French friend and your trampess, actually used the same method as the red hoodie (he/she made it look so easy) to depart after the pope had visited the crib. It was such an impossible maze of chairs to the doors that French friend looked at me, perched on the barrier, swung her legs over and offered to hold my bag while I did the same. Having been impressed at the speed with which the secret service took out our role model, I was somewhat reluctant, but it was clear I could not leave my friend in the aisle alone, especially since I intended to drive her back to her hotel, so I followed suit as discreetly as possible (you may well ask). Happily I did not find myself on the floor (neither because of the SS nor from my only clumsiness – perhaps the greater danger), so we giggled as we strode down the aisle behind the ambassadors who no barriers in their way. This being Rome, no one commented on our somewhat outré behaviour. We made it to the car, I drove her back, and was tucked into my own bed before 3am – record time on the via Aurelia – the Romans are sometimes sensible and all the traffic lights were blinking amber so your trampess had a clear run home and the promise of a decent night’s sleep: sightseeing was not to begin until noon the next day and while the tramp was not expecting the trampess so late (not, you understand, that he knew when she returned, being well into deep sleep), he did not wake he for his breakfast at the usual time, but rather waited until she woke, at the delightfully late hour of 9.