A Day in Pompeii
We took the youngest to Naples because our inner history geeks had always wanted to visit nearby Pompeii. The eldest was delighted to stay back home with her grandparents because they’d promised her takeaway fish and chips one day, a pub tea for another and a walk with her cousin’s dog. It’s a tricky balance because the eldest has learning disability and the youngest doesn’t. You want to be a good parent to both, and sometimes you just have to make decisions and trust that you’ve made the right call. The eldest usually demands most of the attention – she can’t help that, but that doesn’t mean that the youngest should always miss out. Anyway, you don’t need to know the inner turmoils of my head.
Suffice to say that the minute we arrived in Naples I knew I’d made the right call. The culture shock of processions of people with banners banging drums and blowing trumpets, combined with scooters everywhere, motorbike engines, pedestrians walking into the road, emergency vehicles trying to push their way through the throng and people shouting – I knew within 5 minutes the eldest would have hated it. I looked at the youngest and he was beaming. So was his dad. They loved it.
On the Tuesday we caught the train to Pompeii and met our guide, Lucia, at the station. Her knowledge about the site was honed with 39 years of research and learning. She was utterly incredible, and I cannot recommend her highly enough. She showed us streets with cat's eyes and passing places, beautiful houses with running water and frescoes and gardens that had been regrown because archaeologists had worked out which plants grew where because of the trace of seeds left behind in the earth. The most incredible thing was the sheer scale of the place. It’s a proper town, and so far they have only unearthed 100 acres. There are 60 left to still be discovered!
I asked the youngest, “Love, you see that over there? It’s Mount Vesuvius. If it explodes now and sends a pyroclastic surge down across the Bay of Naples, what pose are you going to do so that when they pour plaster of Paris into the void that was once your body the people in 2,000 years' time can remember you?” He flicked the Vs, stuck out his tongue and went cross eyed (as is entirely correct for any 14-year-old to do), but I also noticed that behind all of that he was still grinning from ear to ear. It’s been a really special few days.
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