I was in Ottery St Mary a couple of months ago, and soon after my arrival, I went into the Heritage Museum to seek shelter from the rain. There was a couple of lovely gentlemen looking after the museum, and when I finally managed to convey the fact that I’d come all the way from Italy (my spoken English is not particularly good, but I would have thought you could hardly mispronounce ‘Italy’ - looks like I was wrong, I guess) one of them told me that he’d been to Naples ages ago. Apparently, he’d driven all the way up Mount Vesuvius (I absolutely don’t think you could do that now, but perhaps it was possible back then?), and found some kind of tiny hand made of glass (or possibly ceramic, I can’t quite remember) up there, and he’d kept it in his car - and every one of his subsequent cars - ever since.
I still think about it sometimes.
