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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=460501" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>0029 Monte Carlo</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">So this was it. I'd passed through years ago<br>as a hitch-hiker, spinning out our 25 pounds<br>max allowance, over three hot weeks of France<br>until I was sick of tough-skinned monster tomatoes<br>and baguettes without butter; as we made our sweaty way<br>to Monaco's, surprisingly, Communist youth hostel<br>beyond the gas works and the soccer ground, <br>around the path at the foot of the cliffs...no romance there.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But here I was, as a journalist, two nights in a hotel<br>of grand aspiration, where guests left empty<br>the spacious restaurant and its tasteless menu.<br>Monte Carlo out of season; shrunken to a provincial town; <br>the waves hitting hard and cold against its promenade.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Tired after a day of work, foot-hot amid white-gloved uniforms, <br>I felt I should squeeze something memorable from the single day<br>as the lights went on. Too travel-stained to enter the Casino, <br>placed where the pier would be in an English seaside town -<br>but I hovered. It was a stage set which had rashly intruded<br>into real, daily life; and waiting for a cast<br>rehearsing somewhere else. I made my way (the phrase<br>is singularly inadequate) back to the deserted hotel <br>where even the lights were sad and still.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">In the deserted square outside the Casino, <br>a woman passed me, returning home, I guessed, from the Casino, <br>but hardly dressed for gambling's evening glamour; <br>a middle-to-ageing Englishwoman, from her walk. Her room, <br>I would think, would be small, high<br>on the steep hill of the working class. She visits<br>every day; for several evening hours<br>under the shaded table lights, <br>everything in the world is possible...The doorman<br>at the Casino only acknowledges her<br>out of season, when the locals and the regulars<br>are tolerated, with their modest bets; <br>almost seen as staff. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">As she passed, <br>she placed some ticket in her purse -<br>one of those large purses (as the English call them) <br>almost hand-bag size; dark soft but rough material, it spoke<br>of 19th-century gentility in the dimly lit and empty square.<br>A large purse, waiting; filled with empty hope.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">That was my Monte Carlo moment. From that capacious<br>but not, not stuffed-with-banknotes bag, reality and romance<br>hit me together, as if my brain had been<br>bludgeoned with the truth. Here in its lonely addiction<br>was the tawdry face of the Casino, denying all the myths, <br>the glamour, the stories, the accretions of second-hand<br>imaginations, the distant history that might have fired me<br>in some bygone age, of cigars and diamonds, furs and powdered<br>faces, champagne and caviar, marcelled hair, wild laughter, eager <br>for the glittering promise of the best of life; written up<br>by some envious, cheap journalist. </div><div style="margin:10px 0">The square deserted, the smell of petrol lingered in the roses<br>in the warm, tired Mediterranean night. You, this way; I, that.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Michael+Shepherd">Michael Shepherd</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=460501" data-title="0029 Monte Carlo de Michael Shepherd" data-description="So this was it. I'd passed through years ago
as a hitch-hiker, spinning out our 25 pounds
max allowance, over three hot weeks of France
until I was sick of tough-skinned monster tomatoes
and baguettes without butter; as we made our sweaty way
to M..."></div>
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