On tour as a doctor's wife

The scene: entrance to a mediaeval fortress in Florence, where a medical conference is being held (sadly not a mediaeval medical conference: no leeches here). I am an 'accompanying person' and am to be conducted on a walking tour of the city along with other 'accompanying people', while my girlfriend attends the conference (it's the first day of her first conference; by the second day she has learned that the trick of attending conferences is not to attend them at all).

The assembled doctors' wives, for this is what they are, await their guide. I feel uncomfortable. I feel like a fraud. I sheepishly join the fringe of the desultory group of around 20 and inquisitive glances are cast in my direction. It is true that I do not look like the other doctors' wives (I am six foot one, I have sideburns). I might belong in a doctors' wives freak show with other inordinately tall, facially hirsute medical spouses. Not here. There is no one here within 15 years of either side of my age. There is no other male, apart from a ten-year-old boy here with his mother.

Our guide, Marco, arrives and leads the party away. We approach a zebra crossing, which in fact closely resembles the pattern splashed across the cotton trousers sported by the doctorwife immediately in front of me (I am at the back, keeping to the shadows, shunned by the other doctorwives). The normally dependable zebra crossing has a quite different effect on the Italian motorist: like that, say, of a red rag on a bull, or, I don't know, a green traffic light. Marco boldly raises a hand to signal our crossing to oncoming vehicles. "It's ok," he seems to say, "they're doctors' wives!" The drivers magnanimously spare our lives by bringing their vehicles to a halt. The doctorwives blithely cross the road.

As the tour progresses, a motorcyclist whose way is blocked by the group in a narrow street honks loudly. I move aside. I am not in the business of incurring the wrath of strange men on motorcycles. The other doctorwives proceed on their way unperturbed, as complacent as the pigeons that strut around the Duomo. "Fucking doctors' wives, blocking the streets!" hollers motorbike man. At least that's what I infer from his vigorous body language.

San Lorenzo, the Medici family church, is our first stop. A site of huge historic significance, it is almost entirely invisible behind a shroud of plastic sheeting and scaffolding. Marco's phone rings. He begins speaking Italian to a colleague. Some of the doctorwives find this amusing. Funny little Italian man. They titter as he speaks, apparently because he is speaking in his native tongue. At this juncture, Mrs Zebrapants leaves the group to join another guide's party. She has already directed one alarmingly truculent question at Marco and was evidently unimpressed by his response. Doesn't he know she's a doctor's wife?

I am being regarded with increasing suspicion by the other doctorwives by now. Partly perhaps because I am taking notes and writing things about them. Perhaps I have grown taller and more hirsute in the last 20 minutes. In a way, I encourage this suspicion by not wearing my accompanying person name tag. It feels foolish.

A doctorwife who is not staring at me( sorry, the doctorwife who is not staring at me) engages Marco in animated conversation about the cathedral. Subsequently, she questions him between stops, nodding furiously as he answers. She responds to Marco's comments to the group as if they are part of a particularly engaging private conversation. She nods. She raises her eyebrows. Sometimes, in a virtuoso display of interest, she does the two simultaneously whilst giving a little clap of delight. She is the most energetically affirmative person I have ever seen in my life.

"Hmm," she murmurs at the foot of a sculpture.
"Ah," she nods in the shadow of a city hall.
"Yes, yes," she affirms under Brunelleschi's gigantic dome in the cathedral.

I christen her Noddy. Meanwhile, Marco, when he's not talking to Noddy, is a veritable oracle of interesting information about Florence. The fresco on the ceiling of the Duomo (the largest fresco in the world) was counter-reformation propaganda. Michelangelo was celibate. Achilles won a wrestling match by grabbing his opponent's crotch a la Vinnie Jones on Paul Gascoigne (not strictly about Florence, granted). This Achilles story comes up as the group stops at a sculpture of Achilles engaged in the act itself. Marco's eyes twinkle as he waits for the image presented by the sculpture to register with the doctorwives.

"Notice anything about the statue?" he asks. Oh, Marco! You devil! It's a nudey man grabbing another nudey man's privates! The doctorwives cannot contain their glee. Imagine!

This is the undoubted high point of Marco's engagement of the doctorwives. However, something that's not on the tour engages them much more. Marco announces that a street we pass leads to the main designer clothes shopping district. This revelation elicits purrs of interest from the doctorwives, tickling their fancy infinitely more than Brunelleschi's dome or even Achilles' opponent's member. Not counting Noddy, who, of course, is passionately interested in everything.