the market for this type of piece , bubbling with Mediterranean joie de vivre , and redolent of bougainvillaea and pizza , remains pretty constant . in many countries , even the daily papers devote columns to this kind of thing , and still come back for more . the Germans in particular will take an indefinite wordage about the land where the lemon blooms . German correspondents can survey their public on St Peter &apos;s Square every Easter . they stand in pouring rain amid the puddles , dressed in thin cambric blouses and astonishingly short shorts . between their chattering teeth they emit little cries of Wunderscho&quot;n ! and Fantastisch ! as they empty the water out of their camera shutters . the journalistic dog-days from May to September are a cruel problem for the professionisti , who are expected to offer their employers something more substantial than the latest old-world customs thought up by the Italian national tourist board . not for them the fragrant piece about wine running from fountains at some village festa . but certain hardy perennials have been evolved to meet this recurring crisis , though it is regarded as bad form to use most of them before July . safest , perhaps , is the one that comes in from Pisa about 30th June each year : leaning tower tottering ! Japanese expert injects plastic into foundations . this story , in its numerous variants , is usually good for at least ten lines on an inside page . it can be followed with another ten lines the following day , about the d&amp;eacute;menti issued by the Mayor of Pisa . a little later , Venice comes in with a similarly useful item : palaces sink into grand canal : bridge of sighs subsiding . even if it should be decided to let this standby lie fallow for a season , there is always a handy substitute about a strike of gondoliers . bits about gondoliers are always printed . there has been some jealousy about these stories in recent years , and Florence has retorted strongly with the white ant peril . this has the advantage that it can be applied to almost any well-known building : termites undermine Pitti Palace is perhaps the favourite version . floods in the Po Valley and eruptions of Etna and Vesuvius are usually well received , but snowfalls in the Alps are the safest weather-stories any date after 15th May . they can be telephoned or cabled with special confidence if they involve blocking of well-known passes , particularly the St Bernard . in the latter case , mention should also be made of the hospice and its dogs . it is customary to state that all the latter are about to be destroyed , because ( a ) they have gone raving mad and attacked travellers in distress , or ( b ) are so enfeebled by inbreeding that they can hardly stand up . should snow occur anywhere within a hundred miles of Rome , it can be reported that packs of famished wolves have been driven down from the Abruzzi and have decimated flocks of sheep within sight of the Colosseum . but this item is rarely printed much before Christmas . however , an inspired variant of the bitter weather story recently almost reached the heights of the love-mad Major . it ran in several papers simultaneously . a postman named Giancarlo Peppino Dante Tagliabue had been delivering letters for thirty years in a rural district near Aquila , it seemed , and was proud of never having missed a day . heavy snowfalls had covered the rugged district with a deep , thick mantle , interspersed with occasional drifts . Giancarlo strapped on his skis nevertheless , and set off on his round . at seven-thirty in the morning he was seen by a shepherd , gamely negotiating a particularly tricky section of the mountain road to San Doloroso . at about ten o&apos;clock , linesmen working on a power cable four kilometres from Monte Callifugo thought they heard howls and a deep-throated baying . at four , when it was already growing dark , a patrol of carabinieri found Tagliabue &apos;s official cap halfway down a snow-covered hillside . on the road above , half-buried in drifts , were scattered twenty or thirty letters , five copies of the corriere dell&apos; aquila and an official receipt-book for registered mail . of Giancarlo nothing was left &amp;hellip; . several papers ran banner headlines : devoted postman eaten by wolves . a left-wing organ recalled that only the previous year Tagliabue had received a scroll from the postal workers &apos; union . two agencies circulated smudgy photographs of his unattractive wife and seven children . the voce di trastevere opened a nation-wide subscription fund . it was not until several weeks later that Tagliabue was detained by the Foggia police for simulating an offence . he had been sweating up that snow-covered hillside , he explained , reflecting that he would not be pensioned for another fifteen years . he thought of his nagging wife and appalling brats , and it was just too much for him . he threw down his letters and his hat into the snow and took the first train to Foggia . he had been living there ever since with a waitress from a local trattoria . the only wolf he had ever seen , he said , was in a travelling zoo . however , I should not like to convey the impression that no authentic news is transmitted from Italy . many Rome reports are based on the most solid facts - as witness the affair of the twenty-six Yemeni concubines . the Alban Hills south-east of Rome have been celebrated since pre-classical days for the beauty of their countryside , and the picturesque town of Frascati has been successively the headquarters of Etruscan kings , Saracen pirates , renaissance princes and German field-marshals . but it is rare for buildings there to fly large red flags emblazoned with scimitars and five-pointed stars . when a rash of these exotic banners broke out in Frascati one recent June , residents at first suspected another foreign occupation . they were quickly reassured ; the flags were in honour of sixty-five year-old Imam Ahmed , King of the Yemen and self-proclaimed Suzerain of Aden , who had arrived to undergo treatment at a local clinic . the royal Yemeni embassy had originally rented merely an entire hotel for the monarch and his suite , but at the last moment it was learnt that the Imam himself would have to remain in the clinic for medical attention . the second floor of the hospital was therefore cleared of other patients , and additional flags were hung from the windows . the arrival of the royal caravan from Ciampino Airport created a certain stir . some twenty Cadillacs disgorging nearly a hundred persons gave the impression that a successful fancy-dress party must be in progress . after the Imam himself had been helped to his apartments , a succession of wizened brown tribesmen , about five feet tall and clad in bizarre mauve and orange suitings , emerged from the vehicles . lastly thirty-seven muffled figures , swathed in veils and wrappings and attended by men with scimitars and muskets , scuttled from the hindmost cars and vanished into the hotel . the two principal members of the suite were brothers of the Imam . two young sons of the ruler and numerous nephews made up the male section of the family party . the female side was more extensive . it was headed by three of the Imam &apos;s wives , twenty-six representative concubines , and eight women slaves . in addition , there were the Imam &apos;s aides-de-camp , senior officers of his personal escort , an adequate bodyguard armed with scimitars , daggers and an assortment of firearms , a number of eunuchs and male slaves , and four European doctors who practised at the Yemeni court . three of these were described as Italians , and the fourth as Franco-Rumanian . there was marked reluctance on the part of the ruler &apos;s attendants to establish contact with the outside world , possibly because they were anxious to retain the use of their extremities . apart from syphilis , the most noteworthy form of indisposition in the Yemen is lack of hands or feet , of which it is customary to deprive those who fall under official displeasure . the complaints from which the Imam himself was suffering were difficult to establish , despite a guarded statement that he was a martyr to arthritis . apart from his own physicians and the staff of the clinic , the ruler was visited by a continual stream of eminent Rome specialists , including Professor Gozzano , Dean of the faculty of neurology and psychiatry , and Professor Bietti , a distinguished eye consultant . the Imam &apos;s section of the clinic was heavily curtained , and those who caught a glimpse of the corridor beyond could report only the presence of two sentries armed to the teeth and carrying drawn swords , a number of parcels wrapped in newspaper , and a heavy odour of mutton fat . on the night of his arrival , the Imam had slept on the floor of his room on a pile of fifty pillows at the clinic , a procession of porters removed all beds from the royal apartments , and mattresses were distributed on the floors . the wives , concubines and slaves quickly introduced a shift system to enable them to satisfy the Imam &apos;s every want . some of them , possibly the ruler &apos;s favourites , seemed to put in a good deal of overtime . at the hotel , the management was wringing its hands ; its catering system had been gravely disorganized , and the rows of white-jacketed waiters were forbidden to approach either the harem ladies or the eight female slaves . the three wives and five senior concubines took their meals in their rooms , but the other twenty-one , heavily disguised with hoods and yashmaks , ate in a corner of the restaurant , which had also been hung with curtains for the purpose . the barefoot slave-girls shuffled back and forth with the dishes . by this time , the Italian press was sitting up and taking notice . relatively little interest attached to the health of the Imam , but photographers from the illustrated weeklies were wild about the concubines . every tree in Frascati seemed to contain an active little man from Catania or Palermo , armed with an eighteen-inch telescopic lens . meanwhile , there was near-mutiny in the respective kitchens of the hotel and the clinic , where local experts had been hovering lovingly over Fettucine Tuscolo , Saltimbocca alla Romana , and Cassata alla Siciliana . true , these delicacies were duly consumed by the distinguished guests , or at any rate they were not returned to the kitchens . but there was a distinct suggestion that the ruler &apos;s court was being underfed . the little men in mauve and orange suits , tailored no doubt in the emporia of Steamer Point , flitted in and out with newspaper-packets of strange vegetables , larger parcels stained with blood and apparently containing lumps of goat , and earthenware cooking-pots . other ingredients were carried through the austere hall of the clinic in large baskets , and at the end of a corridor two negro slaves were found constructing a spit over a bonfire of dry twigs . it was , I believe , at about this stage that some of the photographers fell foul of the bodyguard , while insinuating themselves into favourable positions for a series of exclusive shots of harem life . the photographers apparently came off worst in the encounters , and retired complaining of blows with the flats of swords and damage to their cameras . they left at once for police headquarters , to bring charges of assault . meanwhile , odd rumours were coming in from the Imam &apos;s capital at Taiz . no sooner had the ailing monarch departed for Italy , it was learnt , than would-be modernizers had begun to loosen the bonds of theocratic absolutism . the name of Crown Prince Mohammed al-Badr was bandied about , though it was far from clear whether he was an active modernizer or not . the word reform in the Yemen is more or less equated with revolution . messengers were moving unobtrusively over the jet-black mountain ranges , bearing confidential tidings from sheikhdom to sheikhdom . according to exultant enemies of the ruler , he was unlikely ever to set foot in his kingdom again . they had , however , reckoned insufficiently with the therapeutic qualities of a stay in Frascati . one day , after a short but bracing trip to the seaside west of Rome , the ruler pronounced himself fighting fit . leaving behind trusted agents to contest the naturally considerable bills and fight any possible lawsuits , the Imam drove to Rome airport . embarking his wives , slaves , viziers , eunuchs , aides-de-camp and concubines in a couple of airliners , he descended like a thunderbolt on Arabia Felix . 