Trying to keep up with the Papal process is a mix of hunch and happenstance. "Watching the chimney" involved hanging out in the packed piazza at St.Peter's, and catching the image of said chimney "live" on TVs found in most cafes and bars...

the atmosphere these past days of the Conclave has been of almost celebratory expectation. Sophie, a journalist for the UK's Guardian newspaper, who lives in the flat above me, told me one of the most interesting things was the sheer number of different nationalities gathered in the square, a phenomenon producing a babel of languages.

Anyway, I left watching the chimney in a bar at 5.50pm to go to across to a reception at the Museum of Rome. Even as I was crossing the road, it transpired, the white smoke was coursing up the chimney to emerge within seconds as the ultimate symbol of Papal selection...Just after six, the bells rang out, joined with the chime of the "old phone" from deep within my handbag. My landlady was calling: "Do you know we have a new Pope?" She had heard it when crossing the piazza in Trastevere and everyone was talking...I then took the word to the Catholic Bostonian priest I was with, and his cellphone sent news on-location back to America, the sound of bells still ringing out. On the street, people were running to St.Peter's in a tide, filling buses to cramming, nuns and tourists and teenagers on scooters approaching the same speed as they headed over the Tiber.

I had to get to Ciampino airport to fly to the UK for a long-arranged seminar; but on a small television in a trattoria, I was shoehorned in between waiters, chefs, and proprietors to see Jospeh Ratzinger pronounced with the title of Benedict XVI, and watched a young boy gaze intently at the screen, as the new Pope appeared to the crowds, and spoke.

Against all odds, a lone empty taxi hove into view: the driver told me he was "off duty, but I do it for the Pope". That's Rome for you.