My Coat Is Brown, My Camera Is Silver

Please, if anyone has any leftover fleece blankets, would you please donate them to the nearest Chanel store, where they will make them into really silly purses.



















This was taken through the window of the Chanel store at Piazza della Signoria. It looks like a cat carrier and likely costs more than a mortgage payment. Silly.

Anyway, as I was saying, my coat is brown. Except I didn't bring a coat. Here's what happened.

I was going to the post office this morning to mail some trinkets to the Glamorous Brat Sisters in Vancouver. It's one block up and a few blocks over, so I headed down my street, which I hadn't explored before, and kept my eyes open for a side street to cut up to the post office. I didn't find one.

But I found one of those beautiful Italian leather stores, full of coats and smelling wonderful, with a door at the other side of the store that should let me out exactly where I wanted to be. (I think this part is called Foreshadowing.)

So I went into the store and immediately started sniffing and moaning. I was working my way to the other end of the store, trying not to look like I was just using them as a short cut, fondling the clothes secure in the knowledge that they couldn't sell me a coat because they don't make cows that big.

The owner chatted me up, and talked about leather as I inched my way across the floor. You should try this on, he said. You don't make my size, I sadly buy smugly replied. He pulled a brown leather coat off the rack and insisted I try it on.

It fit.

It was gorgeous.

After all the foreplay, it was nearly 1000 euros.

I do not have more money than brains. I have about the same amount of each, actually, and that isn't saying much. I very nicely told him that it was a wonderful coat, and a very fair reduction, but out of the question. He knew I meant it, and we chatted sadly about people who don't have wonderful coats. As he was showing me to the door, he turned around and dug into the rack and pulled out another coat, nearly the same as the first. Try it, he said, it's a sample and I think it will fit. Now, I'm pretty sure they make samples in tiny little sizes but I tried it on.

I loved it.

It was priced less than the first coat, then he knocked over 70% off.

From that moment, I was doomed.

I told him that I wanted to think about it, and took his card. I wandered off to the post office, then headed off to the markets.

The markets are wonderful. Full of crap and treasure, I killed about 3 hours there, and wiped out a little bit at the Central Market, finishing my souvenir shopping. I had a nice, cheap lunch there, then headed back to the hotel, walking around the Duomo, and got back after 4 pm.

And noticed that my camera was missing from the pocket on the back of my backpack where I keep it. My pretty, tiny red camera, which I loved. Along with my camera case and the cool little gizmo that Tommy sacrificed so that I can load pictures onto this computer and do the blog.

You were wondering why there was so much blather and so few pictures, weren't you?

I guess some bastard at the Market thought it was a wallet and lifted it. Fortunately all the pictures from the memory card, except the handful that I took today, are backed up onto this computer.

So, my coat is brown and (now) my camera is silver. The battery is charging. I wasn't about to go into Venice without a camera. And if I have to turn 50 this month, I'm going to do it in a butter-soft Italian leather coat. Who needs groceries?