Giovanni
This is not a picture of Giovanni. It is in fact the late Italian fashion designer Nino Cerruti but Giovanni looked rather like him - with a full head of silver hair and a twinkle in his eye. I met Giovanni last Thursday morning outside the Arenella Resort Hotel. He was going to be our Sicilian tour guide on our coach trip to Mount Etna and Taormina. Around his neck, he wore an identity badge showing a much younger Giovanni when his hair was jet black. He had clearly been a tour guide for a long time. Aboard our bus there were a dozen British holidaymakers, a dozen French and perhaps two dozen Italians. This meant that Giovanni had to broadcast his tour guide spiel in three languages. He moved between English, French and Italian like a dragonfly flitting between lilypads so that the three languages seemed to intertwine. It soon became clear that he only had a rudimentary knowledge of both English and French but his delivery was supremely confident and jovial. Much of the time w...