In the daylight Naples didnÂ’t seem quite so intimidating a city. Though it was still lively and passionate with at least some people skirting somewhat around the letter of the law. As I walked down the Piazza Garilbaldi (they love biscuits in Italy. Enough to name whole squares after them. I am funny) about six or seven men offered to sell me either a phone or a camera. Though I felt fairly sure that if I bought one there was a reasonable chance they might be taking it off me again later that night. I think itÂ’s fair to say that they hadnÂ’t acquired these luxury goods through wholly legal means.
I looked out for my Dick Emery man, but I couldnÂ’t see him. I would love to tell you that heÂ’d driven past and tried exactly the same trick again. I would have greeted him like an old friend and offered to take him for a drink to find out all about how his life had treated him. I would guess not very well. Perhaps we could join forces and do some stings together. Then I could write a film about it. It would have been great.
But he didnÂ’t find me this time, or if he did he recognised me as the young chap from all those years ago who was much too smart to have the wool pulled over his eyes.
I was very pleased that I had overcome my fear of the city and had decided to spend a night here, because it is an enormously entertaining place to visit. They are making every second count and once youÂ’ve got used to the constant threat of being run over then you canÂ’t help but like the place.
I headed straight for the Museum of Archaeology to see all the finds and mosaics that had been plundered from Pompeii and which IÂ’d consequently been unable to see yesterday. The Museum is big and has statues and artefacts from many eras and it took me a while to find the stuff from Pompeii. I was very impressed by the quality and preservation of many of the items. But just as it was getting good I was disappointed to find my way blocked off. For some reason the rooms with all the murals in them were in darkness and clearly visitors were not intended to enter. This made me a bit cross. But as the galleries were only blocked off with a bench and a big sign I decided IÂ’d go and have a look anyway.
CÂ’mon as crimes go itÂ’s hardly on a par with selling stolen mobile phones on the street.
ItÂ’s strange that misbehaving in a museum makes you feel incredibly naughty. I was unable to enjoy my illegal look at some antiquities due to the constant fear that I would be discovered. And most of the rooms were too dark to see anything anyway. I felt pretty let down.
But luckily as I was going down the stairs I noticed another room that IÂ’d missed on the way up. It housed all the mosaics from Pompeii and the surrounding area and they were absolutely stunning. The skill and patience of the people who had made them can only be marvelled at and I was very glad that I had stumbled across this room when I was in the middle of stomping out of the place in a huff.
Even better though was a room at the end of this floor which housed a collection of all the rude and erotic pictures and artefacts that the museum possessed. I recognised a few of them from pictures that I include in my slideshow for Talking Cock. But best of all was the relief from Pompeii that is so central to both my show and my book of the carving of the penis surrounded by the words “Hic Habitat Felicitas” (Here Lives Happiness). I had hoped I would spot it yesterday in Pompeii and although I’d seen a mural of Priapus weighing his massive cock and another penis carving, this one had eluded my search. Because it was in Naples all along. It really meant something to me to have seen this piece in the flesh (so to speak). Especially when I had come so close to walking straight past it. It was a nice link to the past. I am carrying on the work of the man (or woman. No all right, probably a man thinking about it) who created this carving and came up with these simple three words that so perfectly sum up why cocks aren’t so bad after all.
I was hoping there might be a poster in the gift shop, but I looked through all three racks and there was nothing, which seemed a shame. But then as I was about to leave I noticed a fourth display of posters hidden away a bit and I flipped through it excitedly. And on the very back leaf of the display was a bunch of Hic Habitat Felicitas posters. I bought six of them. You never know when you might need a poster of a cock with a Latin inscription round it. I did buy some other posters as well, but I canÂ’t imagine what the man at the cash desk was thinking.
He probably thought I was a bit odd.
I thought about explaining.
But realised this would just confirm his suspicions.
