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Category Archives: Italy

c i t t a n o v a

[ 15:43 wednesday 30 august - cittanova, calabria ]

plane trees cast dappled shade over me and palms rustle in the warm breeze. i’m sitting in a park in the quiet town of cittanova. from here an olive-covered plain stretches west to the calabrian coast whilst the mighty aspromonte mountains rise sharply to the east. i’m waiting for something to happen.

for the last couple of days i’ve been in tropea, a mediaeval town perched on a rock above the sea. it’s a beautiful place but there were too many people. so this morning i got on a rattly little train to the inaccurately named town of gioia (joy). my trusty map indicated a branch line winding up to the mountains from there, but the timetables at gioia station showed no sign of it. i feared it had been closed down but when i asked an official he pointed to a separate station down the road.  here to my delight i found a 1950s single-carriage train waiting, painted in bright red and yellow.

twenty minutes later i was bouncing and squeeking through olive groves and forest across the plain. my fellow passengers were a nun, a mother and a baby.

getting off at cittanova i found the station completely deserted. exiting to the street there were a couple of children playing who stopped and stared as soon as they saw me. i smiled and asked directions to the town centre. they continued to stare and said nothing. i don’t think many tourists come to cittanova.

i picked my way through narrow crumbling streets and soon found my way to the main piazza dominated by a stark white church. a big stage was being constructed and a bunch of musicians was huddled to one side. i asked whether there was an information office but they were all freshly arrived for a performance this evening and no wiser than me. the only other sign of life was a fellow hovering at the corner of the piazza. i asked him and he told me to wait, crossed to a doorway and shouted something inside.

a moment later a sparky young lady called patrizia came out, bid me help her close the door and took me in hand. first she drove me to the one and only bed and breakfast in town, but its two rooms were already occupied. then she drove me to the mother of someone who runs a hostel up in the mountains. there was no definitive answer but i’m due to phone in an hour by which time it’ll be clear if there’s room for me. patrizia dropped me off here to wait. if there’s space in the hostel i’ll have to polish my hitch-hiking skills since there’s no bus, taxi or car hire in cittanova.

19:05 / now seated at the roadside in the centre of ton with a beer at my side. when i called the hostel they told me they didn’t have any space. i considered catching the last train of the day to polistena right at the end of the line. but there’s no guarantee i’d find somewhere to stay there. patrizia had mentioned a hotel on the outskirts of cittanova so i sought it out and took a room.

21:10 / the last few hours have been a fabulous cavalcade. as i was writing my previous entry by the road several men came over and asked if i needed any help. when i explained that i wanted to take a hike up in the mountains they started suggesting all manner of routes, though i got the impression it had been a while since any of them had actually been up themselves. each one of them warned me that i would get lost and meet my doom if i followed any route other than the one they were advocating.

eventually a younger chap called michele rolled up on a bicycle and by the way the others deferred it was clear he knew the mountains rather better than they did. he proceeded to take me to his family house to dig out some maps then to various friends’ houses who might be interested in coming up with me, but all of them were out. after this he took me to the town hall where i met cittanova’s environmental director and mayor. the latter was calmly discussing how his car was blown up by ill-wishers earlier this evening. finally michele took me to a keen rambler called gaetano who pulled out glasses of amaro and photos he’d taken on treks throughout the aspromonte. if the weather’s clear he’ll come up with me tomorrow.

i doubt this is what most people are after when they go traveling but it’s exactly the kind of thing that delights me most. i feel completely alive, swept along by currents of happenstance and unexpected friendship, richly connected to a place where i was a complete stranger just eight hours ago. i’m so happy i could cry.

t a r t a r u g a

[ 16:33 thursday 28 april - eurostar 9363 to napoli ]

here we are forty-five minutes out of rome. the landscape grows craggier, more volcanic, whilst bamboo, olive and cactus gain prominence in the flora. thus the mezzogiorno, italy’s intoxicating south, announces its dominion. the rain which has followed us from milan eases and chinks of blue appear in the sky.

i spent last night with bobo and roberta in milan, the first time i’ve seen them in two years. they’re simultaneously finding success in the worlds of graffiti and fine art, with exhibitions around europe and some commercial commissions too. their new home is fantastic, a long narrow cellar divided into a series of spaces for living and working. every inch of the walls is covered with the warped faces and gnomic slogans that characterise their work.

bobo and i worked together ten years ago in the electric company, the chaotic media venture i formed when i came down from cambridge. i’ve always loved his style and admired his stubborness in persuing his own creative path. he’s been with roberta, a mini-volcano of ideas from the shadow of etna, for most of the time i’ve known him. it was a joy to catch up with them both.

earlier in the afternoon i met fabrizio and kiriku by the little lake in parco sempione. fabrizio suggested we should hunt for turtles. i was delighted to play along, assuming it was a make-believe game for kiriku’s benefit. my error was revealed a few minutes later when kiriku lunged at a rock and turned round proudly clutching a turtle; twenty-five centimetres long with scarlet stripes along the sides of its head. i couldn’t believe my eyes. fabrizio explained that a couple of pet turtles were released into the lake a few years ago and have established a thriving community. it all seemed very improbable, like finding orangutangs swinging from the trees in st james’ park.

kiriku was only a few months old when i first came to live in italy. now he’s a fearless six-year-old. indeed it’s almost three years since i last saw napoli, a city that fascinates and thrills me. i hope to meet pasquale for dinner then take the overnight ship to stromboli. this is a holiday weekend so the ship could be busy. if i can’t get a cabin i’ll have to sleep on the deck. a few years ago this prospect wouldn’t have bothered me in the least but now it provokes a mild sense of unease. living in london i see myself growing inflexible and domestic. the balance in my life needs to change.

: c :

v e n e t o

[ 19:45 tuesday 26 july - british airways flight 696, vienna to london ]

a slightly dazed post-meal, post-alcohol glow pervades the cabin as middle europe slips past thirty thousand feet below. i’ve spent the last two days in almost constant travel. yesterday morning i woke up in porto levante, a quiet fishing village on the adriatic coast. fernando picked me up and drove me to rosalina, a 1970s beach resort up the coast, from where i trundled along in a tiny regional train to the end of the line at chioggia, on the southern shore of the venetian lagoon. i crossed by vaporetto to the southern tip of the island of pellestrina, then continued by bus to the island’s northern tip. the bus drove onto a ferry which crossed to the south of the lido, where the bus rolled off and carried me on to the north of the island. here i boarded a vaporetto and finally arrived, fairy tale style, in venice.

after five hours exploring (this was only my second visit) it was time to take a vaporetto to the railway station for the train to treviso, a taxi to the airport, a flight to stansted, a coach to liverpool street and a bus home; where i arrived at two in the morning. less than four hours later, at a quarter to six this morning, a taxi arrived to take me to paddington station for a train to heathrow and a flight to vienna. i’ve been in meetings all day and now, happy but weary, i am going home.

getting to the airport after thursday’s explosions proved less difficult than i feared. ironically, the greatest challenge was travelling the short distance from the office to the house by bike. the police had cordoned off a big area around the junction between hackney road and old street, cutting off all direct routes. the policeman i asked wasn’t optimistic of my chances of getting to the house, telling me all side roads onto columbia road had been closed off. i was mentally preparing a list of items for sergio to pack for me (he’d been in the house all day), but thankfully i was able to pick a route through back streets further north which cut back onto hackney road between the road blocks and got me home.

these four days in the veneto have been fabulous. from our base of a loaned apartment in porto levante (mille grazie, fernando) we took the tiny ferry to a wild beach-ringed island on friday afternoon.  i swam in the murky water, found a turtle shell and photographed sea holly. a couple of hours later a boy drove down the beach in a tractor to tell us the boatman was nervous about the weather and was making his final journey back to the mainland. when we got to the jetty he’d already departed and leaden clouds were amassing on the horizon. luckily he heard my hollering above the noise of the motor and came back, or we’d have been stuck there overnight.

we spent saturday amidst the massed ranks of ombrelloni and lettini occupying the beach at rosalina. fernando is working here as a lifeguard through the summer, attracting a devoted following of scantily-clad young ladies.  on sunday we braved the ever-present mosquitos and set off into the nature reserve lying to the south of porto levante. amongst the swamps and lagoons we found an abandoned house which looked like it had last been inhabited in the fifties or sixties. naive scenes of the surrounding land and seascape had been painted on the walls, an oddly intimate connection with the former resident who so sought to record the world he inhabited. most of the furniture and chattels were still in place, covered with cobwebs and bird droppings. a deck of cards lay spread on the floor. my camera was busy and i was in my element.

on sunday night we went to a party on the beach at bagni di spina as the sun set. then we drove further down the coast to ravenna and threw ourselves into another party on another beach. this was a real corker, crammed with maybe two thousand exotically-dressed revelers, driven by excellent and surprisingly abstract music. i had a wonderful time.

: c :

p a s s a g i o

[ 23:30 tuesday 4 february - mt vittorio carpaccio, porto di napoli ]

sitting here in the ship’s deserted saloon, only the hissing and inane chatter of a badly-tuned tv for company.

i arrived last night in florence to be met by seb and ardis, who whisked me off along ever-diminishing roads until we bounced along the dirt track to seb’s house. supper was a magnificent artichokes risotto (seb’s a fantastic cook). we stayed up late talking, listening to music and knocking back weird italian liquors. around three in the morning a strong wind arrived out of nowhere and started rattling the windows and doors. i slept like a log.

today i planned to get the 15:54 eurostar from florence down to napoli, but seb’s sister amanda visited with her partner and two-month-old baby and they proceeded to get their land rover firmly stuck in the mud. this delayed our departure long enough for me to miss the train. i took the opportunity to buy some duck tape for makeshift draught-proofing and a box of face masks for the task of sweeping ash out of the house (both suggested by my father). after making my goodbyes to seb and ardis i got on the next train, an hour later than the one i’d intended.

the ship for stromboli was scheduled to leave napoli at 21:00, half an hour after my train’s scheduled arrival. from the railway station to the port takes about twenty minutes in an aggressively-driven taxi. i spoke to pasquale from the train and he proposed meeting me at the station with his old suzuki motorbike. this seemed like a perfect solution so i started trying to figure out how i was going to carry my huge rucksack, roll-up bag of books and slides and my precious hard drive on the back of his bike.

the train pulled into napoli at 20:35 with me hovering impatiently by the door ready to leap off. the door hissed open, i ran up the platform and around the front of the station, but no sign of pasquale. back into the station and there he was, very dashing in bright yellow waterproof trousers and a himalayan woolly hat. shouting his name i ran to greet him and together we stumbled out laughing to his waiting steed. with my rucksack on my back, the roll-up slung over my left shoulder, hard-drive clutched under my right arm and my left arm around pasquale’s waist it was possible to achieve some semblance of equilibrium. with a whoop of excitement we accelerated off into the rain-filled streets, dodging between maniacal cars and buses.

ten minutes later we pulled up at the ship’s stern and the crew explained that the sea was very rough and they wouldn’t be sailing until five in the morning at the earliest. so i went for a quick drink with pasquale, came back to the ship, waved him goodbye, and here i’ve been since then.

i followed paolo’s advice and bought a ticket to panarea (the next island after stromboli). i’m hoping there won’t be any difficulty sneaking off at stromboli.

[ 14:00 wednesday ]

sitting once again in the saloon, this time accompanied by six other passengers and as many crew. the passengers all have their faces pressed against the windows. the sea is breathtaking, beyond description. i’ve never seen anything like it. a libeccio of quite extraordinary ferocity is blowing from the north-west, i’d say force eight. the waves are white-streaked mountains of grey, five or six metres high. this is not a small ship but we are being thrown around like a toy. typing is tricky because my chair and table keep sliding across the floor at different speeds.

after all my efforts i rather doubt it’s going to be possible to dock at stromboli.

: c*

t o r n o

[ 17:59 monday 3 february - eurostar 9449, stazione centrale, milano ]

dalek-voiced announcements echo around the station’s cavernous iron-ribbed vault. a buzzer sounds, the external doors of the carriage hiss shut. we slide out of the station precisely on time.

landing in milan a week ago i was greeted by a taxi strike, the roads around the airport stacked with hundreds of static white-painted cars. i climbed into a bus which crept through the traffic-choked streets emitting sinister announcements that the day’s service would be “irregolare”. the bus deposited me at san babila. i walked towards la scala with my bags and quickly found myself in the midst of a noisy demonstration. it wasn’t clear what everyone was worked up about but every few minutes the crowd got swept up chanting another insulting phrase at the top of their voices. a lone trumpeter played a short fanfare whenever it seemed like things needed livening up. a row of carabinieri with riot shields and guns were lined up in front of the crowd, looking somewhat edgy and self-conscious. i took some photos, joined in some chanting (very satisfying), then picked up my bags and continued. it seemed like a good sort of welcome back to italy.

from la scala i threaded my way up through via verdi, via brera and via solferino to fabrizio’s light-filled apartment, which has again been my home for the week. these days have been blessed with clear skies and bright sun. fabrizio is currently much absorbed piecing together plans to revive an enormous botanic garden around the corner from his house, which has been abandoned for many decades. it’s a big undertaking but the potential is tremendous.

on friday evening bobo, roberta and their friends in the box collective had a party to launch their third group show. the exhibition is in a large modern apartment rather than a gallery, which gives it a relaxed informal atmosphere. it brought to mind the philosophy of the circle group of artists from the 20s and 30s, which challenged the sanctification of art works in museums and galleries, proposing instead that they should be absorbed into living domestic environments. the box show presented diverse work from six members of the group, united by a dark-humoured scepticism of modern society. it was a great party and i spoke to a lot of people i liked. amazingly for a milan art event there didn’t seem to be any of the fashionistas who usually turn up and pose like statues in their carefully-arranged clothing. there seems to be an inverse correlation between the prevalence of these people and the quality of a party.

while i was in london i managed to speak to a few of my stromboli friends. they were all living in temporary accommodation on lipari and counseled against returning to stromboli in the near future. i was sad to learn from antonio that his two boats, on which i have spent many happy hours, have been completely smashed. however last week i called paolo russo and caught him relaxing in his hot tub at home on stromboli. he told me he’d stayed on stromboli throughout all the shenanigans, resisting the calls to evacuate, and that the old strombolani were much amused by the fuss everyone was making. according to them the volcano has an episode like this every few decades then settles down afterwards. contrary to the reports i’d heard the electricity supply only failed for a few hours and one shop has continued trading throughout.

heartened by this information i plan to get the ship from napoli tomorrow night, stopping overnight with sebastian in tuscany. officially the island remains closed to all but home-owners, but i reckon i’ll be able to sneak back. paolo’s advise was to buy a ticket for panarea then quietly disembark at stromboli. we’ll see.

quite what i’ll find when i get there i don’t know. from what i understand there are only 40 people on the island so it’ll have rather the atmosphere of a ghost town. everything is covered in black ash and sand. gustl and valerie’s house may have survived the tsunami entirely unscathed, or it may have been inundated with water. the state of my photo printer, my film scanner, my musical instruments and several thousand slides remains uncertain. i’m bracing myself for the worst but the loss of my slides in particular would be a heavy blow. those little rectangles of coloured film are probably the most precious objects i possess. but i must remember they are only objects.

: c*

m i l a n o

[ 18:22 friday 1 november - via solferino, milano ]

it’s a little more than two years since i was sitting here in fofo’s apartment, writing a wanderer despatch describing my preparations to depart for london and thence for ghana. my heart was fresh with the exotic pulse of the south, i knew i would be back. and i haven’t been in milan since.

indeed i wasn’t expecting to be here now, but my powerbook needed repairs so i deposited it in rome and took the opportunity to sneak up to this end of italy. first a couple of days with sebastian in the rich hill country east of florence, then onward to this misty grey canvas on which my friends splash their brilliant colours.

this isn’t just a metaphor. everywhere i walk in these streets of hurrying unsmiling faces i come across delicious fragments of graffiti deposited by bobo, roberta and fofo. each one brings a grin to my face. the three of them are stubbornly getting on with the beautiful mischievous truthful work they want to do, in all manner forms, media and collaborations. it’s wonderful to be with them again.

two months ago i was on a hydrofoil speeding towards the first user trials of the learning web system, excited and a little nervous. those days in london were frantic. twenty-four hours before the trials the system died completely and resisted attempts to revive it. we stayed calm, worked through the possibilities. i went to bed around two in the morning, with richard still trying more options and keeping up pressure on the technical support team responsible for the server.

when i woke up the next day everything was working perfectly. it turned out the server’s hard disk had chosen this moment to fail, an extremely rare incident. fate often seems to have loki’s sense of humour. the trial group of sse students from around britain assembled in the early afternoon, along with the staff from bethnal green, and over the next four hours we worked through all the main aspects of the system. it couldn’t have gone better. it rapidly became apparent that my carefully-prepared explanations were redundant, everyone just wanted to dive in and work out how to use the different features by playing with them. so i left them to it, staying on hand to help out when a question arose or a bug cropped up. richard stayed at the end of the phone line ready to resolve any problems that occurred.

at the end of the session i felt exhilarated and exhausted. three years after my first speculations trampoline had completed the first step of its journey from concept to reality.

so much has happened since then. i returned to italy with james fink and we spent several delicious days in southern tuscany with don matteson. last time i met don he was a hard-nosed foreign exchange trader in london. this time he was living in the mediaeval hill-town of montalcino writing a book and preparing to participate in the grape harvest. quite a transformation.

then i dashed back down to stromboli, arriving barely twelve hours before mum and dad who to my joy came to visit for a week. i got them the house next to mine, up the torrente where the rustling bamboo stretches up the side of the volcano.

what can i say, it was just fantastic. the weather was idyllic. the dreadful mass of tourists was gone. the island was in a state of post-season euphoria. we went out on the catamaran with antonio, alessandro and valentina to swim where the lava comes down into the sea. we ate magnificently. mum and dad met all my friends on the island. they both made it up to the top of the volcano and saw some spectacular eruptions. i was overjoyed to have the opportunity to share it all with them. too soon it was time for them to leave, hastened by approaching storms. i waved them off from the quay with a lump in my throat.

then it was time to immerse myself in my work again. with learning web completed the next challenge is to raise finance to develop the full trampoline system. to kick-start this process i’ll be spending most of november on a blitzkrieg tour of the united states, spending time in san francisco, seattle, chicago, washington and new york. it begins on wednesday.

warren langley has made this possible and is arranging a succession of meetings along the way with potential investors and others who have valuable insights into the technology sector. i’m unlikely to come back with cheques in my pocket but i will learn a massive amount and initiate some relationships which may result in investment in due course. warren’s constant level-headed support for the venture is one of the things that gives me the confidence to keep pushing ahead whilst the markets collapse around us. this is going to be a tough challenge.

for the past month i’ve spent twelve to fifteen hours each day sitting in front of a computer, spewing out draft after draft of proposal documents, researching subjects ranging from constitutional systems in 6th century bc athens to complexity theory and emergent phenomena, solidifying technical elements of the system with craig and marshalling support from every direction i can find.

craig and heidi meanwhile have become the parents of tiny kai and are living on an island off the norwegian coast. craig’s contributions to trampoline are now made in moments snatched between changing nappies and holding back the forces of baby-driven chaos.

in the final days of september i asked my friends gustl and valerie if they would let me live in their house on stromboli through the winter. they spend four months on the island each summer and for the remainder of the year are based in vienna. to my delight they agreed. their house is one of the most spectacular on the island, even more connected with the sea than the house in which i lived last winter. on the first of october i loaded all my belongings onto the back of leonardo’s ape, bounced across the island in clouds of smoke, and unloaded everything into their house. every minute i spend there inspires me.

when one walks amongst blossom one must be prepared for thorns. a couple of weeks ago i was presented with some truths about the world i might have preferred not to know. it changed my perspective a little and made me feel very alone for a few days. but reality is always preferable to illusion. i am strong. i continue on my path with undimmed faith and determination.

: caro***

a l i s c a f o

[ 17:35 sunday 1 september - hydrofoil from stromboli to napoli ]

this is a rather soul-less way to travel. as with an aeroplane there is a sense of departing and a sense of arriving but between these points is a period of nothing. we left the quay at stromboli just over an hour ago. i’ve been sitting cross-legged on the little deck at the stern (the crew doesn’t seem to mind) with the afternoon sun on my face and the spray rising from the seething water behind us. now i’ve come into the cabin where people are dozing, reading papers and munching soggy cornetti bought from the bar. a cat in a carry-case squeeks from time to time. there is a constant roaring sound much like a jet aircraft, offset by inane radio. it’s soul-less, but it does get me from stromboli to napoli in about four hours as opposed to ten hours by ship.

i’ll stay the night with my friend alfonso in napoli then get a train to rome tomorrow morning, from where i fly to stansted. i can’t quite believe it but in a few days the learning web system will be complete. this visit to london is principally to spend an afternoon taking sse staff and students through how it works. this will provide the first indication of whether people find the system as easy to use as we have tried to make it. during my nine days in britain i’ll also have a chance to meet sse’s new director (rowena young). if there’s time i’ll get down to gloucestershire to spend the weekend with mum and dad.

the system we are completing now is almost exactly what i had in my head in march 2000 when i was sitting each day for a month at the table in ross’ home in sydney designing and building a new website for sse. it’s taken 12 months longer than i envisaged to finance and build the user-managed email and web publishing system to go behind the website. but finally we’ve done it and we can start seeing how it performs in practice.

there’s currently an exhibition of 32 of my photos on stromboli, in the garden of the little bookshop at piscita. typically i only decided to do it a couple of weeks ago. dad and craig despatched ink cartridges and photo paper respectively to me. after a week the cartridges had arrived (by airmail) but there was no sign of the paper. i mentioned this to craig and he let slip that he’d sent them by “datapost” which prompted a tinkle of alarm bells. datapost… but isn’t that a service from… oh no… surely not… parcelforce! but indeed it was, the very same undead travesty of a shipping company to whom i entrusted my belongings to be conveyed from london to stromboli last november (wanderer “m e s o”, 17 november 2001). six boxes were despatched on parcelforce’s 48 hour guaranteed service. five of them arrived after 22 days. the sixth took a couple of weeks longer having inexplicably followed the route london – croydon – rome – croydon – london – croydon – rome – messina – lipari – stromboli.

at this point i gave up hope of staging my exhibition. craig, with every good intention, had chosen their 4-day guaranteed service. extrapolating from my previous experience i might expect the photo paper to arrive after 44 days. craig called their “tracking hotline” who were able to confirm the package had arrived at croydon, but after this point it vanished from their system. i felt very morose.

but on tuesday evening i came back to my house and by some miracle there it was in the middle of the floor, just 11 days after it left london. i wasted no time. by midday on wednesday i’d produced all the photos, constructed mounts out of bamboo and string, designed and printed posters and burned an electronic catalogue on cd-rom. the exhibition opened (quietly) at half past five that afternoon.

so for the last three days i’ve sat at a little table in the garden with my powerbook in front of me as people wandered around peering at my photos of the island. the response has been very gratifying. these hours in front of the computer have also been notably productive, resulting in a user guide for learning web. i’ve even sold a few prints. chiara, who runs the bookshop, has kindly offered to keep the show going for another week in my absence.

this is the first photo exhibition i’ve put on. during the last few years i’ve accumulated thousands and thousands of slides, all of which have been stuffed in boxes and left to gather dust. buying my big epson photo printer last year was the first step to liberating them. in conjunction with the nikon film scanner i got in 1999 this provides a way to produce high-quality prints under my own steam. it took a while before i could reliably get good results. this winter i felt ready to make my first big attack on the back-catalogue, scanning and printing a couple of hundred of my frames from ghana in 2000. the quality isn’t the same as the very best photographically-produced prints but it’s remarkably close. producing high-quality digital prints doesn’t seem to be any less work than doing it the old-fashioned way (every print takes me about 20 minutes). but it’s a lot more convenient to lug a laptop computer, film scanner and photo printer around with me than to set up a darkroom.

i was planning to stick the catalogue up on my website so anyone who wanted could download it, but i notice now that i’ve only brought the high-resolution version which takes up 9mb. i’ll put up the low-resolution version when i get back to the island.

people keep asking me if i’m going to spend another winter on stromboli and i shrug and say i don’t know. why am i so reluctant to decide?

: caro * * *

e c c o m i

[ 14:09 thursday 21 march - alitalia flight milano to london, 3000 feet above the alps ]

mid-air is just about the only circumstance in which i haven’t yet written one of these things. well here i am, right at the back of a rather antique mcdonnel douglas super80, an aircraft which seems to form a large part of the alitalia fleet. the engines are bolted onto the side of the fuselage abreast of my seat which makes for a rather noisesome journey. i look out of my window onto a white cylinder which bears 50% of the responsibility for keeping several hundred humans suspended in the middle atmosphere.

[ 11:35 wednesday 8 may - via giacinto gigante, napoli ]

it’s raining. which is comforting since i’m going to be in britain for the next twelve days.

all correspondences contain periods of silence. sometimes these are more important than words. almost four months have passed since i sat desolate in my house amidst the breaking waves and collected my feelings about michael. there have been many moments since when i have thought, yes, today i shall write something for wanderer. but excepting the fragment above, written in the sky on the way back from my previous visit to london, these intentions have remained unrealised.

no, this is not quite true. on the outward journey of that visit to london i sat in a caffe at milan airport and wrote a long entry. but later that day i was relieved of my computer at heathrow airport and that was that.

really the difficulty is knowing where to begin. the past six months have been amongst the most intense of my life. a mountain has accumulated of experiences and thoughts i am impatient to share, yet i must be satisfied with chipping away at a corner here and there.

some basic things. i am still living on isola di stromboli. my six months in the house where i passed the winter ended a few weeks ago and i moved about twenty metres to another house. again i have been fortunate. it is the lower storey of a building constructed at the end of the nineteenth century in the usual eolien style. two big white-painted rooms, floored with the original hand-painted tiles, thick walls of volcanic tufa, a separate kitchen, a terrace dripping with honeysuckle and bouganvillea. here the waves are a background murmur rather than the constant splash and roar of the previous house. i’ll stay here until the end of june. then i shall spend the summer with matias and sara on the mountainside above scari, out of reach of the human maelstrom which seizes the island during july and august.

work is going splendidly. through this period my attention is principally focused on the creation of a learning and communication infrastructure for the school for social entrepreneurs. the system we are developing for sse (“learning web”) is itself the prototype for a more wide-ranging collaboration technology (“trampoline”) whose structure derives from my analysis of how traditional communities share information and make collective decisions.

it has been a very long path to reach the present point with many ups and downs. i took a gamble leaving london and moving to stromboli. at the time none of my bids for funding had been approved (several had been rejected) and i had no certain income whatever. but within a few weeks of arriving a bid was approved by the uk community fund (money from the lottery) and soon afterwards the gulbenkian foundation gave us another chunk of cash. it had taken three years of preparation but finally there were sufficient resources to put some of my ideas into practice. through november and december we started to work things out in detail and prepare to start building the system.

after spending christmas with my family i returned to the island for capodanno. in the end about 20 hardy friends joined me there. every single person was delayed either arriving or departing (or both) because of sudden storms. but while we were all together on the island the weather was wonderful. every day the light was different and a magical hush hung over the island. on new year’s eve 18 of us dined in my house on two tables set end to end. after midnight other groups of friends arrived and we danced. finally a few of us survived to join the party at a bar near the quay, a distillation of numerous private parties. i danced with complete joyous abandon, not a frequent experience for someone as self-conscious and inhibited as myself. i was unbelievably happy. the parties continued on stromboli for a week after new year. but on the sunday evening there was a palpable sense that we were marking the end of the festivities.

the next day landon fuller, the lead software developer we had recruited for learning web, the person charged with turning my designs into a working system, announced his decision to quit the project. this brought me back to earth with a bump.

it was not a good moment. finding someone with the necessary skills and attitude had been very difficult. craig and i had counted ourselves lucky to discover landon in seattle. now we were back at square one. sse, our partners in the project, gave us two weeks to find a replacement. if we hadn’t succeeded at the end this time my ideas would be put aside and we would have to install a microsoft sharepoint system for the school. for me, after three years of work on the trampoline design, this was a galling prospect. but we stayed calm and set about the recruitment process all over again, picking up threads that had looked promising and throwing out new feelers in every direction.

then, one week after landon’s defection, michael died.

somehow through my grief i kept up the hunt with craig. after a few false leads we got talking to richard mcgregor, a fellow-student of craig’s who had the right skills and an interest in social-sector projects. he was interested in what we were doing but he had existing commitments. we needed someone who would be able to start immediately and devote the majority of their time to the project for the next five months. our two week grace period ended. we didn’t have a firm agreement with anyone but on the basis of our ongoing discussions with craig’s friend sse gave us a few extra days’ grace. i flew to london and a meeting was arranged for the following afternoon. we met, discussed the project, sounded each other out. we knew we couldn’t afford another false start. the mood was good. we parted. twenty-four hours later, while i was trawling tailors’ shops in central london in search of a collar to wear for michael’s funeral, a text message arrived on my phone from craig. richard was our new lead developer. passers-by looked a little startled at the spectacle of me jumping up and down on the pavement shouting unintelligible blessings at the sky.

since that moment the project has been an immense pleasure for me. on one hand it is completely abstract, almost in the realm of philosophy. we are working towards a general mode of representing humans, their associations, their activities. on the other hand it is completely practical. we are developing a system to help several hundred social entrepreneurs around the uk to overcome the difficulties they face every day in their work. the first part of the system went live last week. this phase of development will be completed at the end of june. richard is a star.

meanwhile life on the volcano continues to beguile me. when i arrived in italy last august i didn’t intend to visit stromboli at all, let alone live there. when i arranged the original house for six months i didn’t plan to stay beyond that time. but now i have close friends on the island. there is a wider community in which i feel very much at ease. the environment presents me with a different beauty every day, every hour. for the first time i find myself wondering if i might stay for a number of years.

i cannot remember a period when i have been happier. i miss michael all the time but without any sadness.

[ 16:50 sunday 19 may - gloucester to london train, passing through the cotswolds ]

it’s a week and a half since i sat in pasquale’s apartment in napoli writing these paragraphs. my intention was to send them as soon as i arrived in london. i have had abundant opportunity yet they remain unsent. always after a period of silence i feel more self-conscious about resuming the flow of words.

tomorrow i return to napoli, and thence to stromboli. this period in britain has been productive. lots of good work on learning web with richard and craig. caroline and jeremy’s splendid wedding at st bride’s fleet street. a chance to catch up with a few friends, though there is never time to see everyone i hope to. then there’s been the usual dash round town to gather essential supplies for the coming months on stromboli (photographic paper, printer cartridges, computer accessories and so on: impossible to find in the south of italy). i spent a couple of days with mum and dad in gloucestershire but there wasn’t time to visit granny in shropshire. and as ever there has been administrative tedium to sort out while i’m in the country (tax, banking, bills…).

[ 17:55 monday 20 may - go flight london to napoli, somewhere above switzerland ]

i arrived at stansted only twenty minutes before my flight was due to depart (this is not recommended). check-in was closed and all the other passengers were already in their seats on the plane. a humourless official called gordon told me there was no possibility whatever of getting on the flight and i should rebook for tomorrow. but being an inveterate chancer i hung around and after ten minutes standing there quietly with a mournful look on my face he suddenly started running around and shouting at people and next thing i knew i was being hussled through security with all my baggage and then out onto the tarmac to the plane. and now here i am speeding towards napoli.

the staff at penzance heliport nicknamed me “the luckiest man in the world” after the number of times i arrived there at the last moment with no reservation for a fully-booked flight, but somehow got myself a seat. fortune does seem to smile on me rather often. but i have a sense that this happy situation would quickly change should i ever take it for granted.

: cH

a t t e s a

[ 21:55 wednesday 17 october - binario 4, stazione di milazzo, sicilia ]

sitting here now on a marble bench bathed in flourescent light, my feelings for milazzo are quite different from one and a half months ago when i sat writing in the cafe, impatient to be away from this place.

i took the afternoon hydrofoil from stromboli, feeling most reluctant to leave, and docked here at twenty to six. a travel agent was able to tell me that there would be a sleeper train departing for rome at ten to eleven, arriving there around nine tomorrow morning. perfect. since this left me a few hours i walked up to the old castle and around the back streets. many impressions. ancient wizened women sitting in doorways, participating vicariously in the passing world, returning sage acknowledgements to shouted greetings. a street of shoe shops, a street of clothes shops, a street of bakers with sacks of flour piled to the ceiling and men in white hats pounding dough. a huddle of youths on the pavement, one of them accompanying their chatter with his guitar. something about these simple things made me feel very moved. i walked on with a lump in my throat. i love the way these people live.

later, trying without success to find a bus or taxi to the station, i asked in the restaurant where i’d supped. they laughed, said it wasn’t easy, and called a friend. ten minutes later an old mercedes pulled up, lovingly polished. mario, its owner, and i were not done chatting by the time we arrived here at the station and we continued standing by the boot with my bags at my feet for a good ten minutes. i complimented him on the car, said i much prefered the old ones to the new ones. he wanted me to drive it around for a bit but i was too shy. he gave me twice as much change as he should have done, counting it into my hand so i would know it was not a mistake. everyone told me i would be robbed blind here in the south.

landon arrived just after dawn yesterday. it was a perfect day. even the islanders were remarking on the stillness of the sea. we swam. talked of the work ahead. dined magnificently at punta lena. then i led landon halfway up the volcano where we sat watching eruptions for, well, however long it was. on the way down we passed three boys and sat on the ground chatting with them whilst watching a while longer. the volcano was more vigorous than i have ever seen it; orange plumes soaring high into the air then tumbling down the black flanks of the mountain. i think landon felt he had arrived somewhere.

yes, i was sorry to leave.

[ 08:23 thursday 18 october - sleeper train milazzo to roma ]

we’ll be in rome in twenty minutes or so. the countryside beyond the window looks more autumnal than in the south. a watery sun, misty fields. i have slept excellently on my little berth, though with strange dreams. just 21,000 lire (£7, $10) on top of the basic ticket. i love sleeper trains!

at messina the train is broken into several sections, each of which is then shunted onto a ship and conveyed across the straits to regio di calabria where it is reassembled and continues on its way. i was dozing through must of it but subliminally aware of the nudges and changing motions. one day i am sure a bridge will be built from sicily to mainland italy, cutting an hour from the journey time, and this wondrous feet of engineering will be forgotten.

crumbling sections of ancient aqueducts fly past. we are arriving at rome.

: cH

e x i t m i l a n o

07:11 saturday 16 september – via solferino

packing my final things . out of the door in twenty minutes . walk to moscova underground . tube to stazione centrale . train to brescia . bus to the airport . plane to stansted . train to chester . taxi to trafford hall , where there is an sse conference at which i am due to participate in a seminar tomorrow morning .

this has been a terrific summer .

: cH

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