I’m Inter-Railing through Europe and although I had been somewhat nervy a few weeks earlier at the start of this trip, being my first ever adventure away from home, I was starting to feel a bit more relaxed about this whole backpacking business.

I’m in Rome with my then girlfriend Karen and we’re towards the end of a fantastic day walking around this incredible city having seen all the usual sights Rome has to offer i.e. the Colosseum, the Trevi Fountain, the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, etc.

As we’re making our way back to our hostel a car pulls up next to us, the window drops down and a voice inside says in a broken English accent, “Excuse me, do you know where Plaza de Something-or-other is?”.

I tell him that we’re tourists and have no idea. He starts to explain that he works for a fashion label of some kind and that he needs to get to this plaza for an important conference, but has no idea where it is.

I tell him again that we’re sorry, but we can’t help him and that having only arrived that morning, which we had, we wouldn’t know anywhere apart from the usual big tourist hotspots around the city.

I dig out my Lonely Planet book and have a look at the Rome map to see if I can see the plaza he’s talking about, but it draws a blank and I just shake my head and say “naaaaa sorry”.

He thanks us for at least trying to help him then looks us both up and down and says, “what size are you guys?” turning around in his car to grab a few pieces of clothes wrapped in see-through cellophane lying on the back seat. I don’t know what to say as he picks out a couple of jackets with Pierre Cardin on the wrapper. He says, “here, you can have these if you want, these are from a conference I was at yesterday, take them”. I am fully aware that nothing in this life is for free, but not having ever owned any designer clothes before I didn’t want to completely throw them back in his face. So I just said, “naaaa it’s ok mate that’s fine”. He responds, “honestly it’s ok you can have them”, so I lent over and took them out of his hands with a big smile on my face.

He then tells us that he really should get a move on and try to find this plaza he was looking for, but then says, “you guys don’t have any cash on you do you? I need to buy some petrol for the car, but have spent all my expenses money”. I suddenly get a sense that what he’s actually trying to do is sell us these jackets which I am totally not interested in doing, so quickly tell him that I don’t have any cash on me at all other than about £5 worth of Italian Lira. Knowing I actually had a lot more than that with me I just rustled my hand around in my jeans pocket, leaving the bulk of the notes in there and pulling out as little as possible and showing him. He says, “well that’s not going to get me very far” then looks at Karen and says, “do you have anything?”. Trying not to make it too obvious I give Karen a hard stare and gently shake my head as if to say, “no, don’t give him anything”. Karen digs in her pocket and pulls out ALL the notes she has with her …………… the guy suddenly lunges out of the window, snatches everything she had in her hand, screeches the tyres and floors it down the street!

I’m standing there with these two designer jackets in my grasp, Karen still has her hand out which a few micro seconds earlier had ben filled with some Italian Lira and I’m just frowning trying to work out what the fuck has just happened.

I ask Karen how much she thinks she had in her pocket and guesses about £25 in Lira. I’m still confused. Why on earth did this lemon grab a relatively tiny amount of money and steam off down the road like a bank robber having given us two designer jackets?!

It was at that point I started to examine these two ‘designer jackets’ and noticed a rather glaring error that I hadn’t spotted earlier. The cellophane wrapper quite clearly says Pierre Cardn. Hmmm pretty sure a multi-million dollar design house isn’t going to spell it’s own name incorrectly ….

I open the gents jacket he had given me and quickly realise this is no haute couture I have in my hands. It’s an awful piece of cheap tat and Karen’s is even worse. It hits me we’ve been had, but I’m still confused. These two jackets are far from the real deal, but they are at least ok and even if we didn’t want them it’s not like he’s just made off into the sunset with our credit cards and passports. I guess he was just hoping that at the point of smash and grab that he was going to be scarpering with a lot more than £25 in his hand.

As I tried on my terrible fake jacket and sat down in front of the Piazza Venezia I started to feel like a real idiot, that we’d both just been ripped off as easy as that and for a short while I got a bit pissed off with myself. Karen saw this as a great photo opportunity and took this ……….

Still in a mood, we made our way back to our hostel taking the underground. Now, the one thing I was aware of at the time in Rome were the gypsy kids who hung around the central train station. I’d been warned that small gangs of them can approach you and while one distracts you trying to sell something another might grab at your money belt or rucksack. Well, I wasn’t in the mood for that shit, as a group of about 6 kids started making their way towards me. The first one, a girl, was walking towards me with an open newspaper and I thought well there’s the distraction thing while one of the others is going to try and swipe something …… so in a fit of rage I let out a loud caveman-like shout and punched the newspaper out of her hands and screamed at the lot of them to fuck off, almost foaming at the mouth, thinking I’m not being screwed twice in one day.

They looked absolutely horrified and backed off immediately. It was round about that time I digested the fact that the average age of these 6 or so kids was about 10, most of them girls, and a quick sense of the fact I may have overreacted took over me …..

Anyway ….. that showed her …..

….. that little girl ….

…. about 12 years old …..

My breathing soon returned to normal and the bad mood soon passed. Trying to see the positive from what had happened with the jackets we thought to ourselves well it could have been a lot worse and that from now on we just need to be a lot more vigilant and less trusting. And to be honest, for right or wrong, I tend to naturally distrust any stranger that has approached me ever since, but maybe at the time I needed to learn that lesson.

Over the next few weeks, travelling through Greece, Turkey, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt, every time I looked at that bloody jacket it took me back to having been ripped off in Italy, so, having found a wacky multi-coloured carpet coat in a shop in Dahab on the Sinai Peninsular, I asked the owner if he wanted to do a straight swap for my ‘designer’ Pierre Cardn jacket. He agreed. Probably didn’t notice the spelling mistake, but I think we were both happy. I didn’t have to be reminded every day of being ripped off and instead had a mad hippy coat that would travel with me for the next 8 months all the way through Africa and South East Asia.

Every cloud ………..