An Aussie called Mike Shackleton sent me this picture yesterday. It’s his Vespa after he drove into an on-coming dump truck near Montefiascone in Italy. He’d forgotten where he was and set off on the left-hand side of the road.
Mike left London on a black PX 150 for Italy a couple of months ago. He’d been inspired by reading Vroom with a View and had been sending the odd email about his progress. Only last week he wrote to say that he’d Vespa’d the Amalfi Coast and Rome and was heading to Livorno to catch up with Marco and Filippo. Then he got up-close and personal with a municipal rubbish vehicle and now he’s back in London.
Thankfully Mike escaped with a broken wrist, a nice cheque from his insurance company and a story he’ll be able to dine out on for years. It got me thinking though. I get heaps of emails from readers asking me if I think they should travel to particular places or do particular things. I usually tell them to just go for it. In my experience you only regret the things you don’t do, not the ones you do. Nevertheless, I’m always fearful that one day I’ll be confronted by an angry and distraught mother whose son is languishing in a Somali jail because I told him to follow his dream.
I’ve got two events in London this week. One at Stoke Newington on Wednesday night and then one at TNT Live on Saturday. Mike has assured me that his mother is back in Melbourne and has no plans to attend either.
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Ah, I doubt my Mum would come chasing after you Peter… If I remember rightly the last words she said to me before I left Melbourne were, “Have a great time, and I don’t want to see you back in Melbourne for at least 12 months.”
I’m still working out whether she was encouraging me to go travel or if she was well and truly sick of the sight of me.
Anyway… It has not even been a week since the stack, and I’m already looking for a new Vespa.
Hi Mike
Glad to hear you’re raring to get back on the horse, so to speak. Filippo told me that you’d sent him the photo of your Vespa – in fact his response of ‘Peter what have you done!’ inspired the blog’s heading. I asked him if he’d ever seen a Vespa bent back like that.
‘Never,’ he said. ‘Bent like a Mexican taco!’
Glad to hear that you didn’t end up like one yourself.
I had to look at the name a few times, not sure if I was reading it wrong, or had spent too many hours alone … Montefiascone
Silly Mike … didn’t he see a ‘fiasco’ as big as a mountain (monte) in the name of the town?
Di, the wise Kiwi