Sunday afternoon Autumn and I got back to Luton after our fortnight in Sardinia and Corsica. It was an interesting holiday and the first couple of hours set its unpredictable tone.

Cagliari, pronounced ‘cally – ah – ree’,  is the capital city of Sardinia; we soon nicknamed it ‘Caggers’. The airport seemed modern enough, but there’s a problem with its cash machines. The first one spat back out both Autumn’s and my cards. Luckily we found another one, Autumn put her card in… and that was the last we saw of it. None of the other two or three machines would give money to my card. Eventually we had to borrow €3 for the bus to get us into the town centre from the kind people at the Tourist Information desk.

The bus had been driving for about 20 minutes when we came to a halt, stopped by a large crowd of people and stationary vehicles. The driver told us to get out, not too far from the town centre we all hoped.

The pavement was abuzz with excitement. Families jostled, people darted and laughed excitedly. Four priests in long black tunics with fuchsia belts and scull caps strode down the other side of the road. Police stood about.

A crowd filled a square further up the road. A small, white car roof poked out of the top of the crowd. “Hmm, looks like a Popemobile” I thought, “I wonder who else uses a Popemobile?” Just then the crowd parted, and it was the pope! The brown-skinned young woman behind me started crying. I scrambled for the camera in my bag. The damn thing was out of power. The Popemobile slid past, smiling and waving as he went. He looked surprisingly brown and cheery, not the gloomy hollowed-eyed figurehead seen in the newspapers. In a moment he was gone and we went off to continue our hunt for money.

Later, when we were on our trek in the hills of Corsica, Autumn had a dream about the pope:

The pope came round to our house for tea. In the dream he was a really nice and chatty chap, hip almost. He just engaged in pleasant chit chat about boyfriends, films etc rather than heavy theological debates.

Autumn asked him what we should call him and he said “Call me Pope Vatican.” [which is really where he lives, rather than his name]. She thought this was too long, so introduced him to people at the party as PV [yes, it was now a party…in dream logic] Before he left he invited us to visit him the next time we were in the Vatican City. His invitation was sincere; he really wanted to be sure that we would turn up if we were around.

Later Autumn remarked to a woman about how we’d met the pope and he was actually a really pleasant chap and had invited us to drop in on him. She said we shouldn’t go to visit him, and you’ve got to watch out as the clergy will use him as a spy. They just want to know more about what young people think, so he can tailor his message better to them and then the church can brainwash them. If you hang around with him more, he’ll come on stronger and try and convert you.

We defended PV against the accusations, saying that he wouldn’t do that and that he’s actually really nice etc.

After trying two more cash machines to no avail, I phoned my bank and they managed to sort the problem out. Apparently one of the machines in the airport had messed things up. Finally it was sorted, but for the rest of the trip I had to pay for everything.