Gitta Gillan

This is Dr. Gitta Gillan from Guildford, Surrey, she teaches the Science of Colours and Hues at the University of Surrey (formerly the "Battersea Polytechnic Institute"). I met Gitta on a bench, in Piazza Santa Croce, one Sunday afternoon when " ... the sun pours down like honey on our Lady of the Harbour ... "  she was frantically looking for something. Extremely bright and one of the foremost experts in her field (briefly an assistant to Dr. Khandekar, at Harvard) Gitta is well-advanced in her current project to prove that canaries (Serinus Canaria) when fed a mixture of enough seeds of Passiflora Edulis, beer, and eggshells, will eventually turn mauve! Once her work is published, the colour-world will be turned upside-down. Her biggest problem in life is that she constantly loses stuff (her phone four times last year, wallet, keys, you name it Gitta forgot where she put it). The one thing she clearly remembers losing was her virginity (at fourteen, in the back of her father's vintage 1966 Studebaker).

Paul Chelon

This is Paul X. Chelon from Funchal, Madeira of Portugal as I met him at the Loggia dei Lanzi, the other day. Paul is the sweetest, nicest guy you ever want to meet: clever and witty. He runs a very successful orthotics business (the only one on the island) and is related to the late Herberto Hélder (his mother was Herberto's first cousin) ... so of course, we talked about modern poetry and such. The conversation was extremely pleasant but I couldn't help noticing a tension of some kind and Paul frequently shifting his weight from one side to the other. Turns out he suffers from hemorrhoids and, that day, went through a particularly bad flare-up. When I mentioned the large number of Pharmacies in Florence, he smiled weakly and said that he travels with is own  (mostly useless) collection of potions, unguents, and tinctures. I wished him good luck and went down towards the river.

Vera Wang

This is Vera Kimwang-Olaussen from Balestand, Sognefjorden in Norway who teaches Geography, Geology, and Geometry at the "Sygna Vgs" high school where everybody adores her. She is totally fluent in Norwegian, it is the heavy Korean/Portuguese accent is what makes her adorable. All was cool along the fjords, she told me when I met her at the church of Santa Croce in Florence, until that fateful evening of August 2oth four years ago when Vera, while jogging, happened upon four hugely muscular and very drunk boys from Oslo harassing a girl from her school. She told them to stop and go away ... you can imagine what effect that had! What followed is, to this day, spoken off only in whispers and called "Den Tingen": in less than two minutes all four boys lay wriggling and howling on the ground with an aggregate of nine bone fractures, three complex sprains, and two severe concussions: unbeknownst to all, Vera was a Hapkido master who lived and trained with Kim-Yun Sik, in Brasil (they had to call in supplies from the neighboring hospital in Fresvik for the treatment). The "Vera Adoration Factor" in Balestrand went through the roof, she got three marriage proposals and everybody wanted Korean Martial Arts on the high school curriculum. Vera is still single and lives with her two cats (Kim and Chi) in a small cottage on the Sognefjord.

Fiela Lomba-Linhares do Fosco

This is Fiela (Fielita) Lomba-Linhares do Fosco from Coroado, Manaus, Brazil. She lives on R. Treze de Maio, just a two-minute walk to her church. I met her in Fiesole on the way to the enchanted fourteenth century "Convento di San Francesco" where Fielita wanted to see a sculpture made by Margot Einstein (Albert Einstein's daughter).  It broke my heart to tell her (she would have cursed me if her Seventh Day Adventist fate wouldn't forbid cursing) that Margot was an adopted daughter. Wait, it gets worse: (I just cannot keep my stupid mouth shut) told her that Albert married Elsa (Margot's mother) who was his first cousin (their mothers were sisters) on top of which Albert's and Elsa's fathers were first cousins themselves, a genealogical nightmare for second marriage each. It was an icy cold "Obrigada" I got on that very hot day as Fielita marched down the hill mumbling to herself.

Circe (Margot) Petrić

This is Circe Petrić, she prefers Margot because she is tired of explaining to people who Circe was. Her last name comes from a cousin of her late father's who adopted her when she was seventeen and a half. Margot is sad ... deeply, permanently and constantly. There is no reason for her to be sad: good job, a nice boyfriend, and her father-uncle-cousin who gives her frequently money and valuable gifts ... doctors said that Margot likely has the SAD-gene and there is no real cure but she should two eat potatoes at four-twenty in the afternoon and burn Sage in her bedroom before going to sleep (this made her sad). Margot's most valuable possession is a button that once was on Leonard Cohen's Famous Blue Raincoat. 

Holger Helgoland

This is Holger Helgoland and his wife Kwee - his name was Hwan Hee until he changed it when he became a US citizen in 1989. He is a very talented and hardworking structural engineer who made Partner in his company until that fateful day of  April 12th, three years ago, when his assistant, her name was Billie-Joe Mcallister, came to work in a shorter than usual skirt and a tighter than usual top - Holger became so distracted that he used the wrong formula in calculations for the Tallahassee-Tallahatchie bridge. Bref: the bridge collapsed three days after opening, the insurance company paid out millions and Holger lost his job. Kwee knows the edited version: they made him the scapegoat because he was the only Chinese on the team, she now spends her inheritance taking them on a trip around the world. Holger still, sometimes, dreams of Billie-Joe and her thighs.

Kiki and Fifi

I wrote another short play taken from the daily life of our prisoners.

Dramatis personæ:

Kiki .................. A Fair Foreign Traveling Maiden,
Fifi ..................  A Young Florentine Merchant
Scene - Via Calzaiuolo one summer early evening

Fifi (smiling): "Aren't you Elsie's sister who lives on the hill and has a cat called Bill?"
Kiki (also smiling): "You made a mistake, it is a dog called Pogue"
Fifi (with his silkiest, smoothest baritone): "I make many mistakes"
Kiki (giggling, playing with her locks): "You think?"
Fifi (laughing, looking like the Jack of Hearts): "Wanna get some ice cream?"
Kiki (giggling, batting eyelids with high frequency): "Ice cream's good!"

Exeunt towards Via dei Tavolini