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"I'm always honest with you, Daughter. Honest enough to make me sick. Yet I like to be honest with you, and I said it. But let's not fight again. You just said it's sunny." He raised the glass of gin and tonic: "To your health, Black Horse!" 

I raised the glass of grapefruit: "To yours, partner!"

"You were going to tell me what happened to you before you left." 

Ah yes. So I was crossing Piazza San Marco and the sailors emerge from the Procuratie. I was quite annoyed because a pigeon had just popped on my shoulder and I was thinking where and how to get rid of the stain, you know that pigeon poop burns fabrics, I remember once I had to..."

"Daughter. Sorry if I interrupt you, but every now and then you start with one story and continue with another. And this is interesting, often. But maybe I would rather you tell me the story of the sailors, rather than that of the pigeon poop, not that I despise pigeons. Unless you have a third story in store, even more compelling of the two, which must have the sailors plus the poop of pigeons as a preface."

"You're right, Papa. Sometimes my thoughts go so fast that I can't follow them and I throw myself into a labyrinth without finding Ariadne's thread. Let's go back: where was I?" 

"Young sailors came out of the Procuratie..."

"Ah, yes... From the Procuratie some sailors emerged. They pass me by, one of them detaches from the group, stops in front of me, legs apart and hands on hips, he looks straight in my eyes and says: 'Blessed your mother when he made you - he was thinking of Leonard da Vinci,' and immediately ran off to join the others. Nice, isn't it? The nicest compliment I've ever received."