Reillys on Tour

It was now evening in Sicily and the sun was beginning to set. Lisette and I found ourselves in a cafe 5 miles from where we were lodging. The cafe was filled with about 40 elderly men; all drinking coffee and talking loudly. I tried addressing the man behind the counter: "Scusi Signore" I ventured (my Italian is not fantastic), "uhmmm, taxi... Scopello... Per favore?" The barman frowned. "Non. No taxis in Castellammare." And there he left it. It had, all told, been a very long day indeed. Lisette and I had arrived the previous night in Scopello a town that sits roughly halfway between Palermo and Trapani on the West side of Sicily. We first visited Scopello the year before and liked what we saw. It was a magical, though undeniably tiny, place packed with restaurants and cafes and situated next to the Zingaro - a massive nature reserve. We only stayed there for a day on that occasion, and we loved it. Lisette and I have rules when it comes ...

We found out Lisette was pregnant at about 2 weeks. A combination of common sense and tradition meant we decided to keep the news pretty much to ourselves to start with. And it's undeniable that we were shocked enough with the news as is without having to deal with other peoples reactions as well. However, keeping the news of Lisette's pregnancy quiet up until this point has proved somewhat challenging. Lisette stopped drinking when she found out and to her surprise a friend, let's call him Chris for now, clearly noticed straightaway (what this says about Lisette I couldn't possibly comment). For Chris truly hates not to know a secret. Subsequently any time we met up with him we would be entertained by the ways in which he sought to know for sure. Various approaches were taken. There were the random questions: - "Are you okay Lisette?" - "Yes I am Chris." - "You're well?" - "Oh yes!" - "So... you're goo...

Ladies and gentlemen we have some news for you. The die is now cast. The deed is indeed done. The rubicon has been crossed. Lisette, my lovely wife, is very much in the family way. Yes, On June 13th 2012 we're due to welcome one Farquhar Scopello Reilly into the outside world.... Those of you that know us well will be aware that children (or "screaming brats" as hitherto we have characterised them) are not really our bag at all. So we're a little... hesitant about our news. We're kind of pleased. And we're kind of terrified. When we rationalise we realise that we've been very blessed in life so far - we've done a lot. Maybe this is a good idea? And then occasionally we just hold each other and ask "Have we made a terrible mistake???" It's the fear I wasn't expecting. I'm not sure what reaction I expected to feel to the news that I'm a father but I'm pretty certain that being petrified wasn't on the list....

"... I won't let you down ... FREEDOM!!! I will not give you up... FREEDOM!!! Gotta have some faith in my sound... FREEDOM!!! " One thing I find fascinating about travelling around is the contrasts that you observe between different cultures. I’m not a believer that national stereotypes are the whole truth about a society but there generally seems to be some reality in amongst the myth. Take “FREEDOM!!!”. We were in the process of inquiring about a trip to Stromboli (an active volcanic island) from a man who looked uncannily like George Michael in his first post-Wham days (mirror sunglasses; the whole shebang). He was, by any stretch of the imagination, an ebullient and noisy character. I liked him instantly. During his description of how the trip might pan out he wanted to illustrate to us that during the day we would have “free time” and indeed “freedom to wander” on Stromboli. Isn’t it obvious that the best way to communicate this to us would be via a cape...

It was the early hours of Wednesday morning on Ortigia, the island that is connected to the South East tip of Syracusa by a number of bridges. On Via Della Maestranza, one of the main thoroughfares of the island, all was quiet. Then a Fiat Panda detonated. It had been packed with explosive and parked directly in front of the main window of a shop that sold decorative metalwork. The window was blown in by the explosion and the stock redistributed around the interior of the store with some force. Lisette and I did not witness this. We arrived mid morning to see the remains of the incident. What presented itself was a blackened burned out husk of a car which looked like Mr Creosote post "wafer-thin mint". The street was coated with soot and the store was completely devastated. I tried to take a photo - Lisette pushed me on before I could. It made us re-evaluate though. Since we'd arrived we hadn't really given any thought to the organised crime that Sicily i...

'Twas a fine morning in Taormina. The sun was shining, the world was happy; we were going up a volcano. Mount Etna was our planned destination having signed up with a tour the day before. We strolled down the main street looking for our tour and found a big jeep of jolly looking folk just waiting for the final people to join them before the ascent began. We liked the look of them, they liked the look of us; surely this was the start of several beautiful friendships. Alas tragedy struck, this was not our tour. And as we panned left we saw our future. An oversized double decker coach was before us, already full to bursting with people and still taking on more passengers; none of which looked particularly friendly. In fact they all seemed to be carrying expensive camera equipment and/or children and gave us the kind of looks that suggested that we had developed intricate plans to be away with both. We got on, feeling a touch wary and took our seats (just above the toilets). ...

"That's right isn't it?" said Lisette pointing at the Wikileaks frontmans picture. "Wasn't he poisoned by the Russians?" It's possible that Lisette is confusing Mr Assange with Alexander Litvinenko... However, I do wonder if something might come out of this. I think that maybe Lisette has the beginnings of another "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier ... " inside her. Am planning to record her random thoughts and publish a spy novel of the collected works under a nom de plume. Perhaps Jeanette le Carre. A certain amount of filtering a reshaping may be necessary to turn this into a proper pot boiler. For instance I'm not entirely sure where the following utterance would fit in a book about spies and derring do: "maybe Italian woman have some kind of deal with the goddess of beauty - they front load their attractiveness in life so they look amazing up to the age of 40 and then it all goes to pot..." We don't normally travel...