Category Archives: Italy

In transit, Italy, Stromboli, Wanderer

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[ 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*

In transit, Italy, Wanderer

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[ 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*

Italy, Wanderer

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[ 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***

In transit, Italy, Stromboli, Wanderer

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[ 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 * * *

In transit, Italy, UK, Wanderer

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[ 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

In transit, Italy, Stromboli, Wanderer

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[ 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

Italy, Wanderer

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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

Italy, Wanderer

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23:04 thursday 7 september – via solferino , milano

one of the too-numerous fears which hang over me is that by trying to do a million things i will render myself incapable of achieving anything .

there is this extraordinary drive in me which compels me ever to challenge new boundaries , not just one at a time but many at once . somehow it seems i must be a great musician , photographer , writer , social theorist , entrepreneur , philosopher , revolutionary , adventurer , all at the same time . it is absurd , i know , but i do not know how to stop it .

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19:48 saturday 9 september – via solferino

it was perhaps predictable that the theft of those tools which enable my nomadic existence would trigger a period of lively introspection . readers should be grateful they have been spared more passages like the one above !

but i must tell the story . i arrived at palermo’s central station , where i met gabriele . he drove me to the family house around the coast at capaci . i had a shower , changed my clothes , then we made a plan . we would drive back into palermo , collect two of gabriele’s girlfriends from a tango club (they happened to be architecture students as well as dancers) , then i would be treated to an introductory tour of the ancient city .

it was i who proposed we should park the car and make the tour on foot . it was i who removed my small rucksag from inside the large one in full view of whomever’s eyes chanced to be observing the goings-on in piazza marina . i who slung the small bag on my back and left the large one in the boot of the car , beside the case containing my computer and its accessories , without a moment’s thought . the time was about quarter to two in the morning . people were still dining on the terrace of a restaurant in the piazza . the streets were otherwise empty .

for an hour and a half the four of us walked about , carola and lucia maintaining a torrential commentary on the history and stylistic characteristics of each building , each street . we stopped for gelati for half an hour . it was all delightful . then we returned to gabriele’s parked car .

i was walking slightly ahead of the others . arriving at the vehicle i noticed a small cardboard box on the front passenger seat where i had been sitting . i was puzzled but thought no more of it . the others arrived . i do not remember if the doors were locked or unlocked . the box was observed . it had been in the glove compartment . in a moment the thought was given breath : someone had been inside the car . but the car remained , we were lucky .

then i felt a chill . i asked in a quiet voice , a voice without emotion : could we have a look in the back , please . the penny dropped , i saw gabriele’s face freeze . the back was opened . every degree of the tailgate’s ascent remains fixed in my mind as the truth i knew already was confirmed indupitably . none of my belongings remained .

from my friends erupted declarations of horror but i was silent , motionless . ever since i started travelling with a computer this moment had been with me , a nascent possibility . the knowledge of consequences was pre-prepared , ready to flood through me , ready to shift my world a little on its axis .

i said : ok , can we go to the caribinieri please . then for half hour i did not utter another word . we ran to the nearest police station and gabriele launched into fevered discussion . then he realised that the keys to his family house in palermo had been taken and we had a new alarm to contend with . we ran back to the car , sped through the deserted streets to the house . it was undisturbed , but until the locks had been changed the threat persisted . i remained there , sitting with my thoughts , considering everything i had lost , whilst gabriele drove carola and lucia back to their houses . several of gabriele’s neighbours stayed there with me , but sensing my need to be alone they remained talking amongst themselves in the kitchen .

surprisingly i slept deeply and without anxiety that night . when i awoke it was lunchtime . in the early morning gabriele had been called by the carabinieri to tell him that some clothes had been seen lying in the gutter near piaza marina . he had driven in and collected what he found . a shirt i bought in malaysia , another from madeira , a third particularly precious one which my grandfather bought in brazil , a fourth i had bought in a sale in milan just a few weeks earlier . also my shaving things , my towel . to me this was a small miracle . a handful of those things i had counted lost now returned to me .

i sense that i have learnt more than i could have imagined through the events of the past weeks but it is too early to attempt description . i daresay i shall reflect further on this in future paragraphs . my losses have been considerable and inconvenient but quickly i picked up the threads of my work again . in the end what i lost were just objects and i do not think we should care too much about objects . the financial implications are not comfortable for me but i shall survive . in retrospect i understand that this situation would have affected me far more severely had i been alone . it is to the company and the understanding of gabriele that i owe my easy forbearance . therefore i thank you , my friend , with all my heart .

by ship and by train i returned to milano last sunday/monday . my arrival happily coincided with my friend roberto protei , on his way back to london after a weekend with his family in arezzo , participating in an annual festival celebrating an ancient victory in the crusades . we spent an hour or so together , though i was like a sleep-walker after my long journey . he gave me a jar of fantastic sugo prepared by his mother which formed my supper with some gnocchi . then i slept .

there is just one week now before i return to britain , albeit briefly . tomorrow i depart for one last foray , to the island of giglio , with my friend hans ektvedt who arrived from london last night .

life goes on .

: cH

Italy, Wanderer

g a p s

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03:58 thursday 7 september – via solferino , milano

i lost a month’s worth of digital photos with my powerbook , including some i took whilst i was staying with my parents’ in sandhurst which i really liked . in fact i spent a few hours the evening before i left stromboli constructing the modules ready to publish . oh well .

there are some new pics at
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/snapshots/2000-08-06 . finally my interface has reached a state i’m quite pleased with .

: cH

Broken photo links, In transit, Italy, Wanderer

v i a g g i o

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16:10 sunday 13 august – eurostar , milano to napoli

a month to fill in …

my intention had been to return to britain for just a week , principally to gather with warren langley , craig and henry to discuss the next steps for trampoline and to start organising the sse learning web project with james smith . james had phoned me in milan a few days earlier to let me know that the school’s bid for core funding to cover its development for the next three years had been successful so we could start putting some of our plans into action . this is enormously exciting for me but it also brings new responsibilities . circus must evolve into a more formal structure than has been necessary hitherto .

when my work in london was done i decided not to return to milano immediately , but to head down to mum and dad’s house in gloucestershire and bite the bullet of scanning my slides from last year in the islands . ten days later i had 1050 of them digitised , cropped , resized and catalogued . this represents about half of the slides i took . the experience was a kind of purgatory , both for me and for mum who had to put up with my steadily declining temper . i really hope i never have to do anything like this again .

but the satisfaction of having the archive here on my powerbook is considerable . the process has also given me a clear sense of the raw material i have to work with , should i attempt any kind of publication or exhibition . it was , of course , a strongly nostalgic experience retracing my footsteps through the period , moment by moment . as i reached the final week i felt again the heaviness of each frame , remembering my sense that i was looking at things for the last time , paying my final tributes to places and objects i loved . my heart was in my throat once again .

during those ten days my relationship with sandhurst , my parents’ village , changed somehow . i explored the bank of the river severn on my bike , discovered favourite places to which i returned day after day . likewise the local hill with its views to the malverns on one side and the cotswolds on the other . experiences i overlooked when i lived there as a child . we take so much for granted . it has taken me this long to appreciate the beauty of the area and particularly of the garden mum and dad have created over the last dozen years . for a few days this became my office and i could not have wished for a more idyllic environment in which to pursue my unwelcome labours .

finally it was done and i was free to return to italy . i flew from stansted to brescia with ryan air . bizarrely the ticket cost even less than my previous charter horror but the service ran like clockwork and after an hour’s train journey i was back in fofo’s appartment on via solferino . to my delight my arrival coincided with a brief visit on business by my friend christian , so we had time for a fleeting coffee before he returned to london .

and in milano i have remained , buried in my work for the sse and the scillonia digital workshop . my only escape has been a day with a friend on the shores of lago di como … until today .

fofo and his family have been holidaying on the tiny island of stromboli , just north of sicilia , since my return to milano . finally , a few days ago , my resistance to his urging that i should join them collapsed . for one thing milano has almost completely shut down . over the last week swathes of shops have put up sheets in their windows and announced their closure until september . now that my favourite grocer , fruiterer , fishmonger and bakery have joined the stampede , life is scarcely worth living . on another note , this is a good opportunity to spend a week of retreat preparing the development plan and specifications for the sse learning web . and , of course , i am only too happy to be travelling to a small island once again .

so here i am , just leaving firenze , almost halfway through the six and a half journey to napoli . i had no difficulty deciding to travel by train rather than flying . this is a wonderful introduction to the changing landscapes and architectures of italy . what a trip !

from napoli i will board a ship for the six hour voyage to stromboli , where i shall arrive at five tomorrow morning just as it is getting light . what a way to arrive !

typically i am relying to a daft extent on fortune . i have no accommodation booked on stromboli and this is the peek week of the year , so i am likely to find myself sleeping beneath a tree . also i have no booking for the ferry . and i will have a mere thirty minutes between this train’s scheduled arrival and the ferry’s departure . not really a comfortable margin . who knows how it will all work out .

my absorption in various projects has resulted in a greater backlog of personal correspondence than i have ever accumulated before . it weighs heavy on me . when i return to milano i shall dedicate an hour each day to its reduction . if anyone were to draw the conclusion that their missives were unvalued they would be sorely mistaken . i regret my carelessness .

oh , there’s another batch of photos at
http://www.charlesarmstrong.net/snapshots/2000-07-01 . another experimental interface , i’m afraid … this time you only have to * point * at the thumbnails to download the large image ! i’ve already thought of some improvements for the next cluster … when i get round to it .

: cH