Travel: Tuscany to London

David Bowie and his manager Kenneth Pitt returned to London from Italy on 3 August 1969.

Bowie had travelled to Malta on 25 July to take part in the Malta International Song Festival, and on 1 and 2 August 1969 participated in the Festival Internazionale del Disco in Montecatini Terme, Tuscany.

They took a coach to Rome, from where they flew to England. Bowie and Pitt were accompanied by Bowie’s girlfriend Angela Barnett, who had met them in Italy en route to see her parents in Cyprus.

Just as we were about to board the coach for the return journey to Rome it was found that Angela was getting upset about the fate of a small kitten she had found and which was being badly treated. An animal lover myself I shared her concern but not her opinion that it should be taken to Cyprus with her. It seemed to me that the animal would suffer less discomfort if left to fend for itself, cats, even young ones, being masters of survival. But she insisted on bringing it with her, confident that she could smuggle it out of Italy and into Cyprus, and so it meowed, pee’d and stank all the way to Rome. We parted at the airport, David and I boarding the ’plane for London, Angela that for Cyprus, but the kitten got no farther than Athens where it left the ’plane and was given to someone else.