Billa (Honor)

The seven a.m. bells are sounding around the city. The nearest to me has ceased, but others, further away, are still energetically announcing daybreak. Today, I witness this, already fed, washed and dressed, from my big windowsill opposite the fig tree and above the canal. I woke before dawn without need of the alarm. The tour begins today!

After drawing the Casino yesterday, I wandered home, unhurried, reconciled to my truncated Sunday. I bought a cute Italian watch to start me off on the right foot today, and picked up some shopping at Billa.

Billa is a wonderful and frightening affair. One has to know the ropes, and there is really no way to learn them (if one hasn't a friend in the know) other than to get them wrong and be told off. I remembered shopping here 7 years ago, and being barked at by an attendant for handling the zucchini without the plastic gloves provided. This time I was a step ahead, and smugly loaded up my basket with fruit and vegies, disdaining the plastic fruit bags on offer, and shopping the way I do at home, fruit and vegetables loose and virtuous in a canvas bag. I stocked up on essentials such as cheese, bottled water, soy milk and coffee. I picked up some yoghurt, shampoo and other sundry items. Every product is different from its equivalent at home, and exciting for its unexplored possibility.

I queued with the other shoppers, rehearsing my Italian for, 'no thank you, I don't need a bag' until it was almost my turn. I looked at the shopping of the customer in front of me, each vegetable bundled obsessively in little plastic bags. Then a thunderbolt struck. I almost forgot this one! I quickly gathered up my groceries from the conveyor belt, mumbling 'scusi, ho dimenticato - scusate...' and scuttled back to the fresh produce section. I donned the plastic gloves again, and tore out a long string of bags. Squatting dumbly on the floor, I went about digging through my selections for anything fresh, and putting them in separate bags. I felt clumsy and in the way of the efficient shoppers around me, who seemed so relaxed and knowledgeable. A bronzed, middle-aged woman inspected a lettuce while her husband, idle behind her, reached his arm around and lazily kneaded her large, soft breast. You don't get that at home.

With everything bagged up enough to make my Melbourne leftie conscience weep, I began weighing each item, scanning the colourful picture-chart of produce, pressing the well-worn buttons and applying price stickers.

Back at the check-out, there was no embarrassing hold-up. I was part of the fast-ticking mechanism. I refused a carry bag, and my plastic-wrapped items spun dizzyingly down the chute as I urgently packed my canvas bag, and tried to make small talk with the cashier. And then I was out the big sliding doors, breathless, and onto the cobbled pavement and very different pace of Strada Nova, along which I strolled home.

I must get to work! Venice is awake, someone is hammering, doors opening and shutting, an elegant man in a grey suit has set off to work, a student crosses the square with a backpack, and voices call out in Italian.