We’re en-route to Alba in Italy, allegedly Piedmont’s foody capital and – whaddyaknow – there’s a place called Bra just before we get there. So we (for which please read “I”) just have to pay a visit. Which we do. And it’s a singularly average Italian town, semi-industrial, population circa 30,000 and pleasant enough to drive through in the uncharacteristic sunshine we’re experiencing today. 

But no sign of anything remotely Benny Hill which might generate enough puerile humour suggested by its name and somehow essential for this blog. I had thought (nay, hoped) that the town would be graced with two unfeasibly large hills, or we might have got lost, or crashed the Knumptywagen, or run over a policeman – whence the title of this piece could then have justifiably been “Pair Of Tits Cause Havoc In Bra”. Sadly it was not to be. 

So I am reduced, dear reader, to simply drawing your attention to the sign which greeted us as we entered Bra, which displayed a list of twinned (geddit?) towns around the globe, the last of which – as you can witness above – was listed as Corral De Bustos. Fnaar fnaar.

Enough. We have other experiences to report – the most critical of which has been an unplanned visit to an Italian dentist. Due to an unfortunate entanglement with a particularly crusty chunk of bread, the High Priestess of Navigation, Devices & Small Cigars fractured a molar, which she firstly seemed stoically capable of enduring but then decided that a serrated tongue might not be conducive to full enjoyment of our allegedly gastronomic tour in Stanley’s footsteps.

Hence we phone our insurers, who – it transpires – use Google just like the rest of us to find exactly the same Dentist as we had, not five minutes before placing our ‘emergency’ call. A strangely unclinical address in a condominium block not five minutes from our illicit overnight location in snow-tipped Bardonecchia results in an appointment being made just two hours hence. Amused by having to ring a doorbell to gain access to a flat which appeared to contain a dentist’s surgery, the HP endures a 45-minute procedure at the hands of a dashing Italian dentist, keen to practise his English-speaking capabilities upon her, while her own means of verbal response and encouragement was clankingly full of surgical metal.

We emerge, having paid a bill which is – of course – just five euros less than the excess on our insurance policy, so there’s another eighteen-digit claim reference number which Aviva will consign to their no-doubt heavily overloaded ‘Pending’ files.

And then we went to Alba (via Bra, of course) to find it a highly agreeable place to park up illegally in a car-park for the night and wander its streets in search of softly-palatable food and drink.