[ 22:20 monday 1 october – casa melo grano, piscita, isola di stromboli ]

well here i am, back on stromboli. i sit cross-legged on the roof of my current home with the powerbook on my lap and a caving torch strapped to my head illuminating the keyboard. to my left the full moon looks down from a perfectly clear sky. in front of me the volcano rises black against the stars. behind me the sea rushes and sucks at the pebbles. a warm breeze, heavy with jasmine blossom, blows across me as i write.

the last two weeks on pantelleria with seb and karen were as close as i come to a holiday. i did write and submit one funding proposal for circus foundation’s bushlink project, aiming to develop basic digital telecommunication networks for remote villages in africa, but that was about it. i continued to check my mail every few days, connecting in the back room of a local shop thanks to an arrangement negotiated by seb with the lady who runs it.

we were living in a wing of an old farmhouse surrounded by vineyards. our landlord, batiste (whose wife’s family formerly inhabited the place), was a splendid character. scrumpled face, shock of white hair, gruff basso-profondo. seb, a connoiseur of italian dialects, wept whenever he heard him speak. by the time one gets that far south people are more or less speaking arabic. batiste was magnificently kind, dropping off bucketfuls of grapes every few days and towards the end of our stay inviting us to a feast with what seemed to be his entire family. afterwards i could scarcely move. at seb’s suggestion i showed batiste a convincing photo-montage, manufactured by bobo, depicting osama bin laden doing something unspeakable to the younger bush. this provoked great delight, together with a request to see them the other way round. i was able to oblige after a few minutes cutting and pasting in photoshop.

pantelleria was the first bit of italian territory to be “liberated” by the allies during the second war, a sort of appetiser before the invasion of sicily. mussolini, lacking any aircraft carriers, had turned the island into a static equivalent (though this turned out to have a few strategic shortcomings). the official history describes a prolonged aerial bombardment of the island by the americans, reducing its mediaeval port to rubble. however we met a fascinating old photographer, resident on the island since the thirties, who explained that the whole thing was a complete fabrication. the americans landed without meeting the slightest resistance, invited the population to leave their homes and dynamited everything in sight so they could get the propoganda footage they wanted. all the photographs showing bombers flying over the island are fakes.

the result of this terrorism is that the port area is now 100% concrete and entirely unattractive, which is a tragedy. the rest of the island is dotted with the traditional dwellings, which have dry-stone walls of the local volcanic tufa up to a metre thick with lime-sealed roofs designed to capture rainfall in the winter and channel it to a subterranean chamber. it’s a strong and beautiful indiginous architecture. in the last decade the island has become a voguish retreat for wealthy north-italians. these folk generally inhabit huge modern parodies of the traditional dwellings, sporting jauntily domed roofs and with a tufa facing glued to the walls to hide the concrete beneath. the most obscene of them come with swimming pools and rows of giant palm trees imported at several million lira each.

at noon on saturday i left pantelleria on the ship for trapani. since there was no possibility of travelling to stromboli the same day i decided to spend the night there and continue on sunday. after hunting for an hour for a pensione (the youth hostel helpfully signposted from the station turned out to be in erice, several miles away and on top of a mountain) i resorted to the advice of a taxi driver. in sicily this is generally not an intelligent tactic, or at least it tends to be an expensive one. but in this instance the result was that i spent the night in a baroque palazzo bang in the centre of the old town for ten quid. pretty good! trapani is a lovely little city, much under-rated. i was woken in the early hours of the morning by a huge thunderstorm.

yesterday i aimed to reach stromboli. but all the connections took an age and by the time i reached palermo it was clear i was not going to make the last hydrofoil. so i resigned myself to spending the night in milazzo. but i got talking to a swiss lady on the quay when i arrived there and after a couple of phone calls had organised a bed in malfa on the north coast of isola di salina, another of the six eolian islands.

i’d never visited any of the islands in the archipelago except stromboli. the others are lipari (the capital), vulcano, alicudi, filicui, panarea and salina. they form a curving three-pointed star each of whose limbs stretch about fifteen miles.

it was magical to be standing on the open deck at the stern of the hydrofoil, skimming across the smooth water in the violet-hued twilight with the mountainous coast of sicily receding aft, and later skirting the dark masses of the islands.

the “bed” i had organised on salina turned out to be a whole house, ancient and rambling. its owner, to whom i had spoken, was a lovely fellow called renato who runs a restaurant in malfa. i think he liked my impulsiveness. after pantelleria the island seemed overwhelmingly verdent, with trees and flowering plants bursting up on every side. i now learn that it, alone of the eolian islands, is blessed with a dependable natural water supply.

an extremely efficient service of little blue buses connects the disparate settlements dotted around the island’s two peaks. i was interested to discover that the company operating them was formed through a collaboration between the island’s three “comuni”, a fine example of local entrepreneurship.

with a slightly heavy heart i left salina this afternoon and travelled first to lipari, then to stromboli, exactly a month since i departed. from the port my bags and i were conveyed in an electric golf cart (just like st agnes!) to this house at the opposite end of the settlement. midway i bumbed into alice and nancy, with whom i stayed in ginostra, who also arrived back today. alice, a sculptor, has decided to buy a house here (they’re shockingly expensive).

over the coming week i shall finalise negotiations over the house in which landon and i shall live through the winter. the place in question is a stone’s throw from where i sit now. landon leaves his job in seattle on the fifth and makes his way here. then our work begins.

: cH

[ 23.38 saturday 25 august – ginostra, isola di stromboli ]

some scene-setting. i’m sitting on the white-washed stone terrace of my house looking out over the quiet mediterranean. a crazily-tilted half moon descends towards the horizon in a sky strewn with stars. above me the black bulk of the volcano. far to the south the lights of panarea and salina glimmering across the the water. vines drape from the wooden framework overhead, weighed by bunches of wizzenned grapes. pomegranites and lemons grow beside the house. water is pumped from a cistern with a big lever. from time to time a siamese cat called felice winds herself around my ankles.

this is ginostra, a tiny village on the opposite side of stromboli from the main settlement. a year-round population of about 30, rising to a couple of hundred in the summer. no electricity. no telephone. no motor vehicles (there is a mule to bring supplies up the vertiginous steps from the tiny harbour).

by now i expected to be in sicily. but this feels like the right place to be. each day i clamber over the rocks to join friends swimming and playing. i’m doing a little work, but not much.

: cH

[ 23:53 thursday 23 august – scari, stromboli, italia ]

i’m crouched on the little quay, people milling around in a good-natured way under the only street-lamps on this island. the ship back to napoli was scheduled to arrive at eleven. it hove into view about ten minutes ago. high high above us are the twinkling lights of a party heading up to the summit of the volcano. it’s a clear night with a less-than half moon. the view will be spectacular.

fabrizio is leaving for positano. i am here to say goodbye.

things have moved very quickly. on monday i bought a ticket to rome and collected a new passport (in that order). the whole night was spent packing in preparation for two months life and work in italy, conducted in parallel with clearing out the flat ready for mr vajra spook to arrive from new york in september.

a car came for me at 05:10. i took off from heathrow at 07:50, was in rome in time for lunch, napoli in time for tea. i boarded a ship sailing from napoli at 21:00 and arrived at stromboli at dawn on wednesday. i took a cabin on the ship. my sleep was deep and wonderful.

the ship edges up to the quay as i write. people prepare their goodbye gestures and words. luggage is coralled and balanced.

all change please.

: cH

[ 22:19 wednesday 13 december – sandhurst , gloucestershire , uk ]

twenty-four hours ago i was walking across the tarmac at accra . twelve hours before that i was playing in the atlantic surf beneath tall palms . now i am sitting in my parents’ house on an island amidst cold grey floodwater .

very tired now . i’ll write more in a day or two . thanks for all your messages . the last couple of weeks have been fabulous .

: cH

10:22 sunday 20 august – fico grandi , isola di stromboli

it is almost a week now since i arrived on this extraordinary little island and picked my way through the narrow streets as the sun rose . the town is stretched out around the base of the volcano , with on circumferal street near the water and another higher up , connected by innumerable radial pathways zigzagging between the white-painted cuboid houses .

my directions from fabrizio were simply ” find your way to the splash disco , we live underneath it ” . having spent perhaps quarter of an hour of rewarding but tiring random exploration i passed a house outside which half a dozen young people were sitting , looking a little dazed . i stopped and turned to them , provoking some rubbing of eyes , bemused peering and chuckles . scusi , dove il disco splash ? more laughter : you are a bit late now , it is closed . eventually i was offered some directions but they were no more than half coherent and it was a little while before i found the place up a steep winding path above the town , surrounded by tall cactus and oleander. i briefly greeted fabrizio then unfolded a rusting sun lounger beneath a vine on the terrace , covered myself with a blanket and dozed for a few hours with the flies nibbling at me .

by noon that day i was in an open boat with fabrizio and viola , three of fabrizio’s childhood friends from napoli , two more from sweden , baby kiriku in a wicker basket and an enormous great dane called guapa , pushing off from the jet-black beach beneath the town .

[ continuing 11:23 – latartana club ]

we crossed to strombelichio , the rock which rises perhaps a hundred feet , vertical and jagged , from the water to the north of stromboli . here we anchored and swam . the water around the island is the most astonishing colour , a blue so deep and clear one’s eyes are drawn to stare into it endlessly .

after a while here we proceeded to encircle stromboli , stopping at a beach from time to time for a swim or a picnic . we passed the volcano’s active flank , where smoking rocks tumble constantly down into the sea . we landed briefly at ginostra , the village on the opposite side of the island from the main town , whose inhabitants continue to survive , i believe , without electricity .

it was dusk when we returned to the town beach . milano seemed already a million miles distant . after some pasta , some beer and some jovial conversation i stretched out happily on my makeshift bed and …

… had one of the most horrible nights of my life . the moment i lay down a swarm of mosquitoes descended upon me . not the big , whining monsters of milano but tiny silent creatures . the first warning one has of their presence is a thorn-like jab on the skin , by which time it is too late to do anything . seconds later the insufferable itching begins . despite putting all my clothes back on and burying myself completely under my sheet i managed only an hour or so of sleep . the whole surface of my body was peppered by the morning . i could only half-open my eyes in consequence of bites on each eyelid .

i was in a state of shock after this existential horror , particularly coming after such an idyllic day . i was gripped by an antisocial temper which lifted only when i ate a couple of the odd-shaped flat peaches grown on the island , possessing a degree of perfection entirely beyond my descriptive power .

i spent two more nights on that bed , sleeping with a small mosquito net over my face my face and reluctantly setting a noxious tablet to burn during the night . then fabrizio’s researches bore fruit and a beautiful house was found , at the other end of town , close to the cleanest beach and in an area unbeset by mosquitoes . into here i moved with sasi , a sculptor from napoli . having slept like an angel for the last four nights it was time to leave this morning . once more i am uncertain where i shall find myself sleeping tonight but quite relaxed about it .

each day i spend a few hours working on my document for the sse , my project for this period , framed by swimming and walking and lounging . the words and the ideas come freely , it is scarcely any effort . i will stay for a few days more then take the hydrofoil to palermo . i spoke to gabriele yesterday , the fellow i met on the ship from napoli . he has invited me to stay for a few days .

: cH