Naples revealed a side of Italy hitherto cloaked from my gaze; some of the people were actually shady, dodgy, suspect. Indeed I'm surprised your credit cards' autonomous foray through metropolitan Europe never happened upon that harbout city.Since the '50s the city's burgeoning population of unemployed youth have sought to emulate the Camorra (as the Neoploitan mafia is named), and it's amazing what a recent inovation organised crime turns out to be, as newspaper anthropology would have it an ancient genetically inhrent charcateristic of everyone raised in the Mezzogiorno. Lads would throw shit at us as we were going about our own business quietly! And I thought that Dublin was unique in this. Another fella, initially conversed with in good faith made serial attempts to part me from my cash, first by sub-standard cunning and thereafter by outright menaces! Diplomatic skills were leaned upon until the arrival of his frineds, who disiplined his poor behaviour and sat us down to smoke high quality hash and drink until 5.00 am. They were most excited by our knowledge of Masianello, a 17th century Neopolitan fisherman and leader of what is widely regarded as the first modern urban insurrection, where the city was seized for ten days, before dusk fell over utopia and said Masianello was decapitated on the Piazza del Mercato. Exhausted we were deposited a the hotel and numbers were swapped with the promise of further meetings.

The streets are narrow like the carrugine of Genoa, and peppered with the most extravagant shrines to the Madonna. Tranny prostitutes carry out their trade around one of the most splendid, fluorescent-blue-haloed Mary presiding, with a pond of water which reflected the water beautifully underneath. But beyond all this rough and tumble the people were really caliente and kind, without that weariness which typifies the Romans, their curiousity and enthusiasm remians intact. If euphoric resignation describes Italy, then Naples must be the home of cheerful desperation.