I’ve been shopping at divergent Italian fruit stores in the Milan suburbs: one has sweet Calabrese navel oranges for a euro a kilo, another has Colombian bananas for the same price. We rarely pay any more than a euro a kilo for all fruit and vegetables. Sicilian red oranges are currently 79 cents a kilo, but I sometimes find them for 50 cents.

This week the weather is forecast sunny with highs of 18 ^oC. It’s good news for sportsmen and women like my wife Angela and myself. Heaven knows the good news is needed. The government threatens a national lockdown while the states oppose. The future is anyone’s guess. Exiting northern Italy is our priority, even if we must buy wetsuits and swim across the Po River at night. Rather than staying in home quarantine watching action films on the TV, I’ll make my life into an action film. I discuss this prospect with Angela.

I wouldn’t know how to use a wetsuit, Angela says.

Then I’ll don the wet suit and push you across in a dwarfish rubber boat. It will be just like the beach.

Yeah, like the beach in the invasion of Normandy.

Now you got the idea. We swap watching TV for reality.

Our life becomes an action movie.

And later, there’s a romance.

Let’s make haste to order the raft and wetsuit.

That facilitates practice in rivers on this side of the border before we take the big plunge.

We never watched much TV anyway.

Not since I threw it out the window.

O questa minesta o salti la finesta (either eat the soup or jump out the window)

Instead, I threw out the TV.

I don’t miss it.

It’s an appliance that’s better in pieces.

Yes, in pieces to have a little peace.

I should end this dialog before a vaudeville character wraps the crook of his cane around my neck and yanks me off the stage.

He’ll yank us both off the stage.

Usually, he only catches one with the cane. All the others run off on their own.

You know a lot about the world as a stage, don’t you?

I will live in thy heart, die in thy lap, and be buried in thine eyes.

Here comes the man with the cane.

What’s for dinner tonight.

Eggplant parmesan.

The eggplant came before the chicken plant.

I already heard that from the Easter Bunny, who gets his eggs from eggplants.

Chocolate bunnies can’t hop.

The bunny wasn’t chocolate or hopping either. But we met while eating breakfast at the IHOP.

Watch out! Here comes the man with the cane.

(We dance about the stage, trying to avoid the cane man while he chases us around. The curtain drops)