Feasting on memories of Venice

Dining in catastrophe used to be more interesting: but we must be fair. It was a smaller (and wetter) catastrophe: the Acqua Alta in Venice. That is when the sea rises and you put bin bags on your legs; and people push you off the duckboards while other people waltz in the water, sweetly and poorly; and inexperienced tourists turn to hotel managers and say, with loss in their eyes: when can we go outside without bin bags on our legs? The experienced hotel manager will reply, with mirrored grief: ‘Madam, it is the sea [and what do you want me to do about it, you imbecile]?’

After paddling in a foot of water in St Mark’s Square — Venice Syndrome makes adults paddle in water as Jerusalem Syndrome makes them paddle in myth — I walked west, turned left, and there it was: the Gritti Palace Hotel, a vast and ruddy 14th–century brick house named for the doge Andrea Gritti, who owned it once.

It is open but you cannot legally get there. I might get there if I could convince the authorities at Marco Polo airport that I am an essential worker, though it did not work at school. It is also possible that a Newlyn fishing boat could take me there. I wonder what the skipper would charge to take me to the Gritti Palace Hotel if I accosted him on the pier, and how we would get there: through the Pillars of Hercules?

Once in Venice, meanwhile — this is a detailed fantasy, but I have little to do nowadays but daydream about Christopher Plummer and plan un-written articles about how The Sound of Music is really an erotic masterpiece — I would self-isolate at the Gritti Palace for 14 days at a cost of £6,654, not including breakfast.