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London, Mexico, Wanderer

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[ 23:50 friday 21 january – shipton street, london ]

last friday was the third anniversary of michael young’s death. i saw his face looking up at me from a pile of junk newspapers and undelivered mail in a box downstairs. it turned out to be the local council’s monthly rag, full of notices for employment training and drug counseling. i wonder if anyone ever reads it? the article was a routine one-page sweep through his career, trumpeting his connections with this part of london. it was nice to read it though; an quick visit from an old friend.

the despatch that follows was written at the beginning of the month whilst i was traveling in mexico but i wasn’t able to send it until now. at the start of december i was really feeling the need to get away for a couple of weeks and started scouting for bargain air tickets to leave immediately after christmas. i was primarily looking for sri lanka, thailand, india and the maldives but the best deal that came up was for cuncun on the yucatan peninsular so i grabbed that and flew out on the twenty-eighth of december. on this occasion i was fortunate not to get what i wanted. it was a wonderful journey. as i write these words my new nikon film-scanner is whirring and humming through the slides that returned with me.

but enough of the present, i return to the second of january and to another world.

[ 18:12 sunday 2 january – bus from merida to santa elena, yukatan state, mexico ]

i’m writing this on my smart-phone, bouncing along in an elderly bus with forest pressing in on both sides. to form words i tap a plastic stylus against a miniature image of a keyboard on the screen. normally i’m quite deft at this but the irregular motion of the bus makes it tricky and errors are frequent.

from merida, yucatan state capital, this service meanders through a succession of remote towns and villages before arriving at campeche, capital of the eponymous state, several hundred miles to the south. there are about forty people on board, most of them returning to their villages with packages and bags after merida’s sunday markets and festivities. there generally seem to be more passengers than seats on these services, often by a significant margin, and several people are standing in the aisle clutching the luggage racks as the vehicle sways and lurches. six passengers, including sergio and myself, are evidently tourists. the remainder mostly have the nut-brown skin, sloping nose and high cheeks that signify mayan genes. many of the women sport the traditional white smocks colourfully embroidered with flowers and birds, very simple but each one different.

as we leave behind the streetlamps of merida the driver snaps out the interior lights and no light is visible except the swinging loom of the headlamps on the road, the stars blazing above the flat horizon and the blue glow of my smart-phone screen as i tap away. there is no sign of habitation in the surrounding landscape, the savannah is empty blackness as far as the eye can see.

sergio and i must exit the bus shortly after it passes through a
village called santa elena. we’ve heard of a place with a few rooms where we hope to stay the night. there’s no telephone and no address, and of course it might be full; but we seem to be lucky more often than not. in the morning our aim is to reach the ruins of the mayan city of uxmul a few kilometres from santa elena, whose architecture is reputed to be breathtakingly sophisticated and expressive.

sergio and i arrived in cancun on tuesday evening, delayed by five hours as our plane had been sent to rescue stranded tourists from the maldives. cancun is not a place to remain so we immediately headed south down the caribbean coast. we spent a couple of days at tulum where we slept in a bare stick and palm leaf hut on the beach beside the mayan ruins. there was a storm during the night and we woke with a start to cascades of water splashing down on us from holes in the roof. i thought we were going to have to pack everything and abandon our simple home, but there were enough sound parts of the roof that some judicious rearrangement proved sufficient and we went back to sleep.

on new year’s eve we decided at the last moment it would be fun to be in merida, 200km away, to celebrate the new year. a surly lady behind the counter in tulum’s little bus office told us flatly there was no space on any service to merida that would get us there in time but we hung around anyway and pestered the driver of each bus that came through. sure enough after a few hours we got a space on very comfortable first-class one and off we went.

we reached merida around nine in the evening, found somewhere to stay in a turn-of-the-century merchant’s house (nineteenth-twentieth century, that is), and headed into the centre. at midnight we found ourselves seated on the road in front of a slightly surreal italian restaurant beside merida’s main jesuit church (consecrated 1618). they gave us a wonderful sicilian wine i’d never encountered before. this somewhat made up for the fact each course took an hour and a half to arrive. we politely bailed out after the primo and wandered round the streets.

so now, speeding through the yucatan night with my smart-phone clutched in my hand, i smile and think of my friends. i wish you all courage and joy for this year 2005.

: c :

Cornwall, In transit, London, Wanderer

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[ 23:56 monday 8 november – shipton street, london ]

i wrote this four weeks ago. the final sentence, in retrospect, is ironic and slightly forlorn.

[ 21:53 monday 11 october – first great western train from hayle to paddington ]

i’m on my way back to london after spending the weekend in cornwall. leaving this remote limb of britain always provokes a slight lump in my throat, a gentle yearning. we are all imprinted in some way by the environment in which we spend our childhood but some places seem prone to leave a stronger mark than others. my (wholly subjective) impression is that cornwall is located at the more affecting end of the spectrum. the identity of many of my friends who grew up in cornwall seems to remain in some way anchored to its landscapes, climate and culture long after their lives take them elsewhere.

at a quarter before midnight on friday evening i checked into my cabin on the sleeper train at paddington. this is only the second time i’ve travelled on the service, the fist being in spring 1999 when i was living on the island of st agnes. on that occasion i recall a rather splendid dalliance kept me from my cabin until the final hour of the journey so i arrived in penzance exhausted and slept the whole journey by ship to the islands. traveling on this sleeper is overpoweringly nostalgic. arriving on the platform one is greeted by uniformed train officials standing outside every carriage with documents, a much larger crew than any other train service i’ve used. stepping into the train feels like entering a museum of 1970s british industrial socialism. the rolling stock was financed, constructed and brought into service in that period; fully in the state sector of course. somehow it has carried on ever since despite the intervening privatisation and general rendering-down of the railways. it is hard to believe this is a profitable service. i can only imagine that enough politicians with constituencies in devon and cornwall find the sleeper convenient to ensure a nice subsidy is maintained.

the cabins are all formica surfaces and sturdy cast steel fittings. everything has a chunky engineered feel to it. it doesn’t scream “design” in the way contemporary rolling stock tends to but all the details are pleasingly resolved. i like the clothes hangers built into the wall, integrated with elastic restraining bands to stop your clothes flapping around. this is what british design used to be, before it stopped being an engineering-driven discipline and became a fashion-driven discipline. one half expects to find harold wilson puffing on his pipe in the restaurant car.

at half past seven on saturday morning a steward called tamsin tapped on my cabin door and brought in a jug of coffee and some biscuits. twenty minutes later sand dunes hove into view outside my window and the train pulled into hayle station where i alighted, to be met by anna (my sister).

the two poles of the weekend were a big family dinner on saturday night and a long coastal walk on sunday afternoon. dinner brought together my parents, my aunt jill from canada, anna and adam, sergio and myself. anna and adam won’t be in britain for christmas so the meal was slightly surreally accessorised with streamers and crackers. sergio and i braved the rain before supper to pick our way through the cowpats and gorse to the top of trencrom hill. this is a westerly outpost of the west penwith moors, a rugged windswept landscape dotted with weathered granite outcrops and stunted trees. from the top of the highest carn, buffeted by the wind and rain, we could see both coasts: the sand-fringed sweep of st ives bay stretching to godrevy to the north and st michael’s mount to the south.

on sunday we set out from lamorna cove around eleven in the morning. the strong easterly wind and a rising tide sent the swell crashing against the quay and sending plumes of spray high into the air. i find the atlantic incomparably thrilling, cold and mighty and relentless. a straggle of off-season tourists perched slightly nervously near the quay with their cameras poised, unsure how close they should advance. jill walked straight to the end of the quay and a huge roller exploded all around her. she returned grinning from ear to ear and miraculously dry.

from lamorna we walked along the coastal path to penberth, the first time i’ve covered this stretch of coast. every step was accompanied by crashing of the atlantic to our left. about half-way along we descended into a patch of ancient oak and chestnut woodland, with arum lillies peppering the ground. lowland cornwall was once covered with this habitat but today it is extremely rare. for me it is magical to be in such a place. under the canopy formed by the trees, their lichen-covered branches formed into a smooth mantle by the wind, everything was bathed in a damp greenish half-light and the roar of the sea was muffled. in places such as this i have a sense of enormous spans of time.

later on, at porthcurno, we ate pasties sheltering from the rain under the cliff whilst the rollers crashed against the beach. jill ventured to the shoreline and this time she get soaked. we found a slow-worm on the beach, just twenty centimetres long with a lustrous golden skin. maybe he had fallen from the cliff, certainly the sand is not his favourite habitat. as i held him in my hand he twisted around my fingers, as if fearful of falling, and pressed the side of his head against me, his tiny black tongue darting in and out against my skin. we carried him up the beach and placed him in some grass where he darted off.

my life is bursting with unshared stories. i am absorbed in trampoline to the exclusion of almost everything else. previously i believed it was just a question of finding time to write these despatches, but i now realise the reflection that underlies the writing is equally important; and it is this that i lack. my days are given to the ceaseless demands of my business. it is thrilling. but having achieved a near-perfect balance in my way of living between 1999 and 2003 it pains me to recognise how unbalanced my life is become. yet this is what i chose, in full consciousness, and through this imbalance i am achieving things i could achieve no other way.

in the last few months we have brought several more people into the team, and have moved the company’s office out of my house into a rather splendid neo-classical pile off old street. week by week the momentum is increasing.

a month ago i was in japan with christian and kumi. i have 400 photographs to show for this and a half-written wanderer despatch. two similarly half-written despatches from sicily were lost when my computer was stolen from a train between florence and milan in july. a further half-written despatch describes these losses. somehow i have to learn new habits which permit me to write and send these things, rather than having them fester unfinished on my computer. possibly i should try to write briefer observations rather than the rambling descriptives towards which i seem inclined.

with perfect timing my train is now arriving into paddington. this message, at least, is complete.

peace to all : c*

Sicilia, Wanderer

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[ 23:05 monday 19 april – torre ventorello, sicilia ]

cross-legged in my tent on the edge of a small bay. sergio is lying next to me tapping out a message on his mobile phone. the area is a nature reserve which means camping is prohibited. we saw some wardens doing their rounds earlier and we’re eager not to attract their attention, so we haven’t got any lights on. in such circumstances the powerbook’s backlit keyboard is a great asset, making it possible to dim the screen and type without any light.

this place is fantastically beautiful. behind the curving white sand a series of pools and marshes overflows with plants and birds whose ecosystems have not been disturbed. shortly after we arrived this afternoon a flock of flamingos flew over. later on thousands of swallows swooped and dived around us as the sun set. further inland there’s a stand of tall eucalyptus trees surrounded by orange and lemon orchards. on the point of the bay, just beyond us, are the ruins of a rectangular fort (aroganese i think, from the eighteenth century) and the columns and chimney of a tonnara where freshly-caught tuna was offloaded from boats to be salted and packed.

the nearest streetlight is several miles away. the sea is very still, just a slow lapping of waves. the light this afternoon was golden and rich. my camera was busy.

the ventorello reserve is on the east side of the rolling plains which occupy the southern tip of sicily. to the south west there is the town of pachino, where we bought some groceries earlier. to the north rise the long ranges on which the towns of noto, rosselino and ispica are perched. the ancient cities on these sites were flattened by a big earthquake in the late seventeenth century so the baroque architects and town planners had a field day. likewise ragusa, spectacularly wrapped around a lump of rock.

this will be my fourth night in a tent on a beach since arriving in sicily a couple of weeks ago. the first was the day after i wrote my previous despatch, when gabriele guided me along a bumpy dirt track to the shore below torre salsa, far to the west near sciacca. this was an amazing place, absolutely unspoilt with nobody for miles. the second was last wednesday, on stromboli’s spiaggia lunga. i remember sleeping on the beach here back in august 2000, when i built a shelter from palm leaves and wedged some candles in the rocks. the third occasion was last night, which we spent on the long straight beach at marza, to the west of pozzalo, a tip we got from a barista in a caffe in ragusa. there was a strong wind blowing all night and the tent was bowing and shaking but it stood firm. this morning sergio and i emerged from the tent to find the beach stretching for several miles in each direction without a single person in sight. we both ran naked along the beach whooping with joy and splashing in the waves.

tomorrow morning we’ll drive back to milazzo, hand over the car and get a train to palermo. we’ll spend the night there before catching the plane early on wednesday morning. sitting here in this wonderful place with the gentle waves and the tent rustling in the breeze london seems a long long way away. by the miracle of bluetooth and gprs i can send this email right now, direct from the tent!

: c * *

Sicilia, Wanderer

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[ 20:15 wednesday 7 april – via castore e pollusa, selinunte, sicilia ]

sitting here on the rooftop with the bark of three or four dogs echoing across the fields, mingling with the warble of crickets and night birds. the moon has not yet risen so venus’ cold blaze commands the sky. to my right the floodlit columns of a two-and-a-half-thousand year-old greek temple stand out on the dark hillside. i cannot hear the sea but it is there below me.

the process of arriving in selinunte has been as beautiful as the place itself. forty-eight hours ago i was in london, mid-way through a tele-conference with some possible clients in america. my flight was at seven on tuesday the morning and i didn’t get any sleep on monday night. i was tying up loose ends with my work until about three in the morning, after which sergio and i wandered round the cab firms of shoreditch and bethnal green to book the friendliest. just after five we were collected and whisked to heathrow as the sky started lightening. at the airport i bumped into john and janie maclay (janie’s my third cousin i think) on their way to croatia. this was doubly improbably as i also bumped into john and janie the last time i was in heathrow, back in february when i was flying to vienna and they were on their way to morocco.

i like alitalia. the dark green upholstery reminds me of being in a forest and the staff resemble prison warders less than those of other airlines. italians make good fellow-passengers too. our flight was packed but when it emerged that a mother and two young children had been seated separately a cry of “c’e una mama con due bambini!” went up and everyone rearranged to give them a row together.

en route to palermo we had an hour to kill in rome. the sardegnian cashier in the airport’s self-service restaurant taught us some numbers in sardo dialect, to which sergio replied with the equivalent words in the trapani dialect. arriving at palermo airport i was too knackered to feel much excitement, even greeted by the hot sun and clear skies. having taken the bus into the stazione centrale we went straight to the gelateria da ciccio round the corner where we revived ourselves with some of their fabulous ice-cream. the mulberry ice-cream they produced last summer was one of the most impossibly good things i’ve ever tasted. i went back for three cupfuls in a row of the deep purple confection. mulberry (“gelsi”) is out of season at the moment so i’m counting the days until june or july when the trees are once again dripping with the dark red fruit.

after our ice-cream break sergio took the coach westwards to trapani to stay with his parents (where i’ll join him on friday) and i set to thinking about where i was going to go. gabriele was in the port at palermo working on his boat so i organised to meet him there and maybe spend the night at his flat before heading on. but encountering a coach that was about to leave for castelvetrano in the south i had a sudden impulse to get to selinunte straight away, so i jumped on board. the coach dropped me in castelvetrano about half past six. an old lady came up to me and started babbling away in pure dialect. i couldn’t understand a single word, which delighted me no end. it’s the first time i’ve met someone in sicily who doesn’t speak italian. only when she pressed a timetable for the airport coaches into my hand did i realise that she’d seen my backpack and assumed i was trying to get to that destination.

in the next ten minutes i garnered two pieces of information, neither of which was encouraging. first, the day’s final bus for selinunte (14 kilometres hence) had departed a couple of hours earlier. second, there wasn’t anywhere in castelventrano where i could spend the night. my impulsive decision to head south was not looking like a good choice. feeling crestfallen i wandered into the station bar and ordered a coffee. it was an unassuming place, selling newspapers and lottery tickets as well as drinks and pastries. i asked the girl running the bar if she had any ideas about what i could do. she said i should ask the owner, which i did.

the bar owner, michele, thumbed through the phone book and made some calls. i gathered he was trying to track down a place in selinunte called “il pescatore” but was having trouble getting its number. he spoke to a couple of other hotels in selinunte but didn’t like the sound of them. a detective from the local caribinieri called matteo came into the bar and soon joined the search. i felt pretty overwhelmed. i don’t know many places else in the world where a stranger could walk into a bar and be treated in this way.

half an hour later, after speaking with several friends, michele got the number for “il pescatore” and spoke to its proprietor, salvatore, who agreed to drive to castelvetrano to collect me. michele, matteo, valentina and i took each other’s photos, joked about the price of wine in restaurants and swapped addresses. if i needed any reminder of why i am so enraptured by sicily, and why living in london so depresses me, it had been convincingly provided.

on the way to selinunte salvatore told me about the village and how his family balances fishing with running their small pensione. when we arrived there the streets were completely silent and the air was fresh and clear. i was led up marble stairs to a spotlessly clean room overlooking a terrace. i had a shower then went out for a wander; down to the shore, around the port, everything silent. my heart was leaping with delight. i returned to my room and fell into a deep sleep.

that was yesterday. i spent the whole of today exploring the ancient city which covers 300 hectares of the neighbouring hillside, carpeted with daisies and mimosas and other spring flowers. late in the afternoon i found my way down to a deserted beach where i took my first delicious swim of the year. now i am sitting here writing waiting for gabriele to arrive from agrigento, where he had a meeting this afternoon. we’ll eat together and he’ll stay here at “il pescatore” for the night, then tomorrow we’re planning to head further east with my tent and see what we can find.

this is all wonderful

: c **

Austria, Wanderer

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[ 12:30 thursday 19 february – “nice rice” cafe, mariahilfer strasse, vienna ]

back again for a pot of green tea.

this visit to vienna has been the first time i’ve used the combination of bluetooth (a radio link from my powerbook to my mobile phone) and gprs (mobile phone to the internet) to maintain a connection whilst traveling. it works well. without any new configurations i can connect from other countries using my uk orange account. unlike the infra-red link i was using on stromboli, with bluetooth it doesn’t matter where the phone is so i can connect even if the phone is in my pocket or my backpack.

right at the end of the lunch break in yesterday’s renewable energy conference, a lady from the austrian foreign ministry came up to me and asked if i could give her a quick demonstration of trampoline. i was able to plonk my computer on a table, connect to the internet at once, and give her a whisk round the system before the next seminar commenced. i am becoming some kind of glorified traveling salesman, ready to trot out my wares at any opportunity.

in the evening i had a yen to search out some off-mainstream entertainment, so i connected and found a site providing information about underground parties and events here in vienna. having chosen one that looked promising i set off around ten for the periphery of the city armed with vague address details garnered from the site. for over an hour i wandered up and down streets trying to find the place amongst the strip clubs and run-down bars. i was close to giving up when i had the inspiration that “U-Bahnbögen” might mean railway arches and turned my attention to the railway running down the centre of the street rather than the buildings lining its sides. sure enough i found my goal, a bar called “chelsea”, occupying four successive arches. going in i found it packed and lively, low lights, the walls packed with enamel signs advertising beverages. pushing through the crowd from one arch to the next i got to the final one just in time to catch the last set of a band called “jellybeat”. the line-up comprised a lead vocalist who appeared to be pregnant, electric guitar, bass guitar, keyboard player with a 1980s oberheim synthesizer, roland digital piano and de-rigeur ibook running a drum sequencer. the music was the kind of rock-plus-deranged-electronics that i have encountered and enjoyed so much in london in the past couple of years. i took some photos, danced a bit and chatted with a couple of the friendly people.

the one sad thing is that now i have finally made it to vienna and my friends gustl and valerie, who live here, are in india of all places. it’s hard to catch up with people who travel so much.

in a couple of hours i will set out for the airport and thence london. i will be sad to leave this city.

: c*

Austria, Wanderer

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[ 00:45 tuesday 3 february – shipton street, london ]

a quick glance round my desk. 1 steel tape measure. thirty or forty business cards associated with sustainable enterprise, renewable energy and venture capital. aphex twin’s “classics” album, freshly sucked into my powerbook. the thick wadge of guidelines for a government r&d grant programme. a big brown elastic band. “the augmented social network” by jordan, hauser and foster, printed from the internet.

things feel more settled. i adapt. i worry about adapting too much.

last wednesday afternoon the sky went dark and snow began to tumble and flurry around the windows. snow divides london into two tribes. there are those who shuffle grimly along the streets filled with resentment at this unwelcome element that disrupts meticulous timetables and makes the daily walk from the underground an effort. there are those seized with childlike excitement and glee, for whom every white-capped car is ripe for scooping snowballs and every icy pathway begs to be slid along.

as the snow began to fall, a retired irish judge sat in a tall red chair and pronounced his verdict (deliberately, word by word, without excitement) on the future of journalism in britain. by the evening the chairman of the bbc had resigned. during events it deems important the bbc streams its 24 hour news channel on the web. whilst i worked i followed the news presenters and journalists struggling to report objectively as their institution crumbled before the hutton-blown whirlwind. occasionally an emotion peeked through, an edge of desperation discernible in an interviewer’s questioning or urgency-seized reporters interrupting one another pell-mell. somehow these moments of cracking sang-froid conveyed the significance of what had happened more eloquently than the slew of reportage.

at two o’clock last thursday the director general of the bbc resigned. greg dyke is not a man about whom i have ever given a thought in the past. his reputation in the television industry was based on bringing a talking rat on board a moribund programme and thereby reviving its fortunes. however during these days he has become a sort of hero to me, a martyr to journalistic freedom and integrity where i least expected to see one.

in the past the bbc has inspired ambivalence in me. compared with other mainstream current affairs broadcasters it does seem to sustain more balanced reporting of events, but that is like saying “compared with other junk food a big whopper is not too bad”. a big whopper is still revolting and the bbc still reflects paternalistic establishment values, just a shade more liberal and less grotesquely partial than cnn. however faced with the likelihood that the bbc will now be shorn of what little critical freedom it has exercised i realise how much i will miss it, and how much worse off the world will be without it.

the bbc has been around for eighty years and its castration is a moment of some historical import. a couple of hours after mr dyke’s resignation the photographer couldn’t resist the chance to be among the group of disconsolate bbc employees who had left their work and were hovering in front of broadcasting house. so around four o’clock, at a convenient break in my work, i took to my bike and sped through the snow-covered streets to central london. to my disappointment the truculent employees had already gone back to their warm desks and all that remained in front of broadcasting house were a gaggle of film crews and cameramen. i wandered about, looking for something interesting to photograph. suddenly there was a commotion. people started grabbing their equipment and a lady trotted past nervous muttering at me “he’s coming out, he’ll get into this car” gesturing to the large lexus beside which i was standing. and sure enough at that moment greg dyke came out of the door and up to the side of the car, just a metre and a half from me from me. the next thirty seconds were chaos, a barrage of questions and flashes and people pushing to get a good view. it’s hard to say why, but i felt a strong liking for mr dyke. he seemed extraordinarily relaxed and there was a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. when asked if he had anything to say to tony blair, he paused, looked at the journalist who’d fielded the question, smiled and said “no”. then he got into the car. i got about a dozen photos.

[ 21:05 wednesday 18 february – “nice rice” cafe, mariahilfer strasse, vienna ]

here’s what i do. i write these things, then i don’t send them because i want to add to them or rewrite them or whatever. my “drafts” folder is a graveyard of half-baked jottings that never made it to the outbox. almost daily i have an urge to write something new, yet nine times out of ten i do not. this is all very frustrating. surely i can develop less dysfunctional writing habits. i look back with a kind of nostalgia to 1999 and my time on st agnes when unselfconsciously i’d record every change in the sea state or my mood and broadcast it without a second thought. now i seem to be much more self-conscious.

it also seems that i spend less of my time documenting things. between 1999 and 2002 i was constantly carrying a computer, two cameras (slides and digital) and my diary. several hours each day were devoted to recording what i was doing and seeing. between 1997 and 1999 i was also recording what i was hearing, carrying a minidisc recorder and microphone at all times. my friends got used to me sitting on the floor in a club and scribbling for half an hour in my diary, or pulling out my computer on the beach at night to write about the starlight reflected on the water. in the past year my behaviour in this regard has become slightly less narcissistic. this is probably a good thing, but there was something exhilarating about my hyper-documentation which i miss.

now i am sitting here in a tiny and rather magical vegetarian cafe on a cobbled alleyway in vienna. the walls are yellow and there is a big blue painting on one wall depicting snooty diners sitting along a table with curled-up noses. the tea and food (vegetarian) are excellent. i’m in vienna for a couple of meetings with partners in the foreign office’s renewable energy partnership, discussing trampoline and introducing the directors from south america, eastern europe and the united states to working with the system.

i like the city much more than i expected. the people are gentle and wry. the architecture is absurd, it makes me feel that i am in a fairy tale and have stumbled into a city built by giants. it never occurred to me before that the baroque style would be an appropriate vehicle for inspiring imperial awe amongst citizens.

on tuesday afternoon i went through a door in a courtyard and found myself in the augustenkirche. this is an enormous old church, long and narrow with a pitched roof that goes up and up and up, stylistically much more sober than the others i have seen here. as my eyes adjusted to the gloom and i walked through the building, my footsteps echoing, it became clear that i was the only person in there. no sign even of a priest. as i reached the centre of the church i stopped and stood there for many minutes looking up at the evening light reflecting in the huge chandeliers, the rumble of traffic infinitely distant. there was something magical about being there, tiny and alone in this massive space, i felt a great sense of wonderment and privilege.

: c*

UK, Wanderer

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[ 18:40 thursday 25 december – all stretton, shropshire ]

sergio lies snoring quietly on the rug in front of the gas fire. bach preludes and fugues scurry from the powerbook’s little speakers. clusters of newly-opened presents dot the floor and tables. mum, dad and granny are in the kitchen fighting with the electric oven which switched itself off halfway through cooking their duck.

i’m here at granny’s house sitting in the armchair that was permanently reserved for grandpa, somewhat in the centre of the room with prime position for the fire and the television. it’s a month since grandpa sat in it for the last time. one morning granny found him unusually difficult to awaken and it turned out he wasn’t breathing. he was ninety-seven years old and the last ten years were a battle with depression, fear and physical decline. i visited just a couple of weeks before his death and found him lucid and calm. when the time came to leave i crouched beside him, clasped his hand and stroked his wispy white hair. in my heart i had a sense it was the last time i’d see him. when dad phoned to tell me he’d died i felt no sadness. i pray that he has found an afterlife filled with the serene mountains he loved to climb so much in life.

it’s been a long time since i wrote. now i break my silence. happy christmas to friends everywhere.

[ 18:20 friday 26 december – ludlow, shropshire ]

supper at granny’s last night was a splendid affair. it felt like we’d returned to the christmases of my childhood, to the time before the air around the dinner table was heavy with grandpa’s joylessness. after sixty-five years’ devotion to him it’s not going to be easy for granny to build a new life as an individual. but after a month it already seems to me that she is talking more lightly and laughing more. she’s a strong lady. i’m sure she enjoyed having us all there.

now sergio and i are here with bear and david, my excellent godparents. we spent this afternoon exploring ludlow in the freezing rain. everywhere are echoes of the former power and importance of this place, perched strategically in the midst of the wild march-lands between england and wales. the church is quite spectacular, a spacious gothic edifice most of whose fabric dates from a refurbishment in the fifteenth century at which point a majestic 135 foot tower was also added. the misericords are smothered with gorgeous carvings of beer barrels, pigs, hanging fowl and other accouterments of mediaeval life.

[ 00:45 wednesday 31 december – shipton street, london ]

back home, typing away to napolitan music. it’s been several years since the words “home” and “london” have been linked for me. ah well, i find myself more adaptable than i expected. the last time i wrote was in july when i was on my way back to stromboli after two weeks staying in warren and ann’s greenwich house. i spent just five days on stromboli, shifting all my belongings to gustl and valerie’s magazzino down by the beach at scalo dei balordi, packing everything into a transportable form and organising for its despatch.

predictably this turned out to be considerably more complex than it had any right to be. on poste italiane’s website i’d found details of a european package delivery service which looked ideal. so on my final full day on stromboli sergio and i lugged all the boxes to the post office in the blazing sun. we filled in all the forms then giuseppe (the most agreeable postmaster in the world; he phones when anything arrives for me) pointed out that the european package service was not available from stromboli. it’s too remote.

oh dear. leaving all the boxes in the post office i embarked on a flurry of research into the options. one possibility was to despatch my boxes from the post office either in lipari or in milazzo. but how i was going to get them that far was not clear. officially there was no outbound courier service operating from stromboli, but mario the pasticciere from bar ingrid had recently taken over responsibility for incoming courier deliveries and suggested i speak to universal parcel service. i phoned and after a few seconds consultation the lady said it would be no problem to collect a consignment from stromboli. she told me the local office was siracusa and they would send a van to pick up my boxes. bearing in mind that it takes at least a day to get from siracusa to stromboli this seemed slightly unlikely, but she insisted it was the case and proceeded to take my order. discussing it afterwards with mario he predicted that the ups office in siracusa would umm and ahh then call the company on lipari that handles all courier deliveries in the eolian islands. this company in turn would ponder awhile then most likely call mario and get him to send my boxes over. this didn’t seem like a watertight system but during my time on stromboli i have learned to trust to fate in such cases.

there being nothing more to do, i passed the evening getting nostalgically drunk with paolo and a few other friends. as dusk fell sergio and i excused ourselves, careered down the steps from paolo’s terrace, threw ourselves into the sea and swam out a little way, from where we watched the sun dissolve into the golden horizon. the next morning we shifted all the boxes from the post office into maria’s shop on the piazza, where she kindly agreed to keep them until someone turned up to collect them. then it was time to get on the hydrofoil and say goodbye to stromboli for the time being.

for the next two months i stayed on in warren’s house as britain sweltered in absurd temperatures. london was horrible and i felt wretched, but i kept my attention fixed on setting up trampoline and getting some investment together. i also started house hunting. in the meantime the sequence of events proceeded exactly as mario had predicted and after a week he received a call to pick up my boxes and send them over to lipari, from where they were conveyed to siracusa and entered the ups system, arriving creditably intact in greenwich a few days later.

on 18 september sergio and i moved into the house where i sit now. it’s the first floor of a victorian bakery in the no-man’s land between shoreditch and bethnal green, with most of the internal walls knocked down and steps which fold down from the ceiling to lead one to the roof. there’s a fireplace where we burn timber harvested on late-night scavenging missions on local streets. during the day three big windows wash the room with december light, and draw one’s gaze up the long straight road towards haggerston. on sundays the cobbled alleyway below the house becomes an open-air cafe and we find ourselves in the thick of the columbia road flower market. the many diversions of old street, brick lane and kingsland road are a few minutes’ walk from the front door. it is a satisfactory sanctuary. my new address is 36b shipton street, london e2 7ru.

on the first of october trampoline systems limited officially raised its first commercial investment. the total, £127,000, is tiny from the perspective of the venture capital market but it’s twice what we set out to raise and from my working-on-thin-air perspective seems like an amazing sum. craig and i are busy transforming it into magic of various kinds.

then on 23 december, just in time for christmas, a signed license agreement arrived from none other than the british foreign office, our very first clients. they’ll be using trampoline to provide communications and information management for an initiative they’re setting up to create a worldwide partnership of governments, businesses and non-profits involved in renewable energy. there are mountains to climb to make the business a success but this has certainly been a well-augured beginning.

during these months there have been many experiences about which i’ve wanted to write. a street full of steel bands going full tilt the night before notting hill carnival. a party around a fire by the banks of the canal in west london with eric, bobo and roberto. ten days of equinoctial sun and storm on stromboli in october. the turning on of hayle’s christmas lights with anna and adam in cornwall, accompanied by the town’s brass band. the tumultuous anti-bush demonstration in trafalgar square with craig, sergio, kirmo, warren and ann; after which we arrived back slightly late for our housewarming party. and so forth. on each occasion something has held me back from writing. i’m not sure what it was. maybe i was waiting to change in some way.

after writing the paragraphs from bear and david’s on 26 december sergio and i stayed with them one more day. in the afternoon we borrowed mountain bikes and headed out into mortimer forest. it was a beautiful day, crisp cold air with occasional pockets of mist hanging over the trees. the ground was covered with fallen leaves and still muddy from the previous day’s rain. we had a wonderful time skittering along the paths between the trees and zipping up and down hills. i got us rather lost and as the sun was setting i did feel a twinge of anxiety as the forest is large and we were not well prepared for a night in the wilds. however we carried on following our noses and eventually we emerged on a road, about ten miles from where i thought we were. we made it home shortly after sunset, covered in mud from head to foot.

i’ll be seeing in the new year from a crowded dancefloor in the centre of london. to everyone who’s reading this i pray 2004 realises old hopes and brings new dreams.

* : c : *

London, Wanderer

c o m i n g & g o i n g

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[ 13:30 saturday 12 july – liverpool street station, london ]

the train hums angrily and creeps along the platform. a pre-recorded voice announces excitedly, in various languages, that we’re off to stansted airport. after 11 days in london i’m going back to stromboli for three days to pack up all my equipment and entrust it to poste italiane’s european delivery service. hopefully at least some of it will find its way to london (possibly even in working order). it can’t be any worse than parcelforce, surely?

being back in london is strange. the unremitting grey skies hovering over the city for the first few days felt like they were pressing me in into the ground but i started feeling more cheerful when the sun came out. the things i miss most are the freedom to swim in the sea on impulse and bumping into friends whenever i set foot outside the door. i hate having to think about locking doors again. my first visit to a supermarket was a predictably grim experience. but lots of positive things are happening with trampoline and this keeps me from getting too gloomy. this is why i came back, after all.

warren and ann were in london when i arrived, fresh from their journey through italy (to my delight they even paid a flying visit to stromboli). they’re back in san francisco now but have kindly let me stay in their house in greenwich for a few weeks, so i have a breathing space before i have to get to grips with house hunting. on july the fifth they held a “fourth of july” party. visitors were greeted with a rainbow-striped italian “pace” flag alongside an american stars and stripes, which i thought was an intriguing conjunction.

: c*

Sandhurst, Wanderer

p a r t e n z e

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[ 09:20 tuesday 1 july – train leaving central palermo ]

i spent much of sunday night reorganising my chattels and carrying boxes to gustl and valerie’s magazzino on the beach at scalo dei balordi, assisted greatly by sergio. leonardo came by with his taxi at eleven forty and conveyed me to the port where we shared a last bottle of water. at quarter past twelve i was on the hydrofoil to messina. from there i took the four o’clock coach to palermo, where i met some friends. we had some truly excellent pizza together, followed by some of the best ice cream in palermo (and therefore the world). the gelsi nero is exquisite at the moment. after supper we drove a little way out of palermo to the east and had a swim with the plankton sparkling around us. now i am on my way to the airport for a flight to london.

this first chapter of my life on stromboli is now complete. for the next six months i will be based in london. leaving the island isn’t something i particularly want to do, but it’s clear this is what trampoline needs from me at this stage. for the final week i lived once again in paolo’s house above the beach where i spent my first six months on stromboli. on wednesday evening i held a dinner party for 15 of my closest friends on the island, around a long table amongst the mesumbryanthemums, lit by candles and the stars.

in the last few days the volcano has started making its familiar grumbling noises again. the islanders greet this much as anxious parents greet the renewed crying of a baby that has been silenced awhile by a fever.

: c***

Stromboli, Wanderer

o n d a

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[ 23:25 saturday 21 june – piscita’, isola di stromboli ]

seated in a deck chair with stars in the soft air above me and waves breaking on the beach beneath me. a candle flickers amidst the succulent mesembryanthemums covering the ground. my mobile phone is perched in the plants in front of me, the only place where it can find a signal. the phone in turn is connected to my computer by infra red. so long as i sit fairly still i have an internet link fast enough for me to be listening to thursday’s “late junction” programme from the bbc radio 3 website. a diverse selection as usual. it kicked off with some old skool ska and has now meandered into brazilian experimental jazz. turning my head 90 degrees left i can see the silhouette of the volcano with the now-familiar red glow in the sky above the right shoulder.

today was the solstice, the longest day of the year. as sunset approached i scampered round taking photos; then as the reddening sphere descended to the horizon i left the camera on a rock and threw myself into the sea, swimming out to watch it set with the silvery water all around me. there was nobody else in sight. wonderful.

there’s a party tonight on the beach at punta lena. i’ll head down there after writing this mail.

righto, time to backtrack a bit. when i arrived here on stromboli at the beginning of february there were about 60 people on the island, somewhat reduced from the usual 400. the rest of the population had evacuated to lipari (main island of the archipelago) and milazzo (nearest port in sicily) whilst hordes of vulcanologists checked out the situation and protezione civile installed an elaborate early warning system.

the top of the volcano was covered in snow. the island was veiled in swirling cloud. a layer of fine grey ash covered absolutely everything. and all around the coast was evidence of the wave which had hit a month earlier. at punta lena twisted remains of boats were piled on top of each other. the mesh fence in front of the power station was bent horizontal. daniella’s newly-planted garden was a bare patch of mud. the kitchen of a house at one end of fico grande had been demolished. sections of a substantial wall which used to stand behind the beach were scattered around at crazy angles. trees had been ripped off their trunks, leaving only ragged stumps. the narrow roads leading up from the beach were blocked waist-high with rocks. the whole front of a house at punta lena was taken off. everywhere the sand-covered ground was dotted with table lamps, pan lids, clothes, cushions and other everyday items, snatched out of their usual context by the water.

returning to casa schuldes, as i wrote at the time, i found the main house happily undamaged. there was a 5cm layer of ash on the courtyard and terraces. inside there was a fine layer of ash on every surface, and inside every cupboard and drawer. the magazzino (store-room) down near the beach was another story. this had taken the full force of the wave. all that remained of the stout wooden door was a foot-long piece of wood hanging from the padlock. inside was a scene of complete devastation. cupboards full of tools, cans of paint, the washing machine, an oil-drum full of petrol, an ironing board, hundreds of cassette tapes; everything had been picked up, thrown around and deposited in a tangled heap. i salvaged some items i found which were still intact but it didn’t amount to very much. the fridge was nowhere to be seen, either in the magazzino or further down the beach. the receding water had dragged it right out to sea.

eye-witness accounts of the event vary considerably. the picture which emerged was like this: a huge ash cloud rose up from the sciara and started drifting over the village, then the sea receded about five metres all round the coast, then the water catapulted back with enormous force, inundating low-lying areas and destroying anything in its path. it doesn’t seem as if the wave was enormously high, just a few metres. what marked it out was its extraordinary force. people who saw it describe the water hitting the coast as if shot from a gun.

there is little consensus about what caused the wave. initially the vulcanologists announced that there had been a large landslide from the sciara in which 5 million cubic metres of material had fallen into the sea, sending up the ash cloud and triggering the wave. this seemed like a reasonable explanation for the cloud but pretty implausible as the cause of the wave, which arrived at many points on the coast from directions inconsistent with a landslide at the sciara. the theory was later modified with a suggestion that the landslide above the water had triggered a larger one below the water (the volcano continues 2km beneath the sea) in which another 15 million cubic metres of material had slipped, and this had caused the wave. this sounds very grand but i still haven’t heard of any evidence for this theory.

the older islanders, on the other hand, say that part of the mountain under the water split away, sucking billions of litres of sea water into the fissure (thus the receding sea) after which the highly-compressed water exploded back out again (hence the super-charged wave). these people are hardly scientists but to me this sounds like a more credible explanation. there are others who believe there was a gas explosion on the side of the volcano deep beneath the surface.

whatever the cause, seeing a familiar environment so transformed is a powerful experience. it imparts a tangible sense of the terrifying forces lying dormant in this environment and the fragility of human tenure here. through february and march there was an unspoken sense of anticipation amongst the people who remained on the island. was there going to be another wave? would it be even more devastating than the first one? initially the protezione civile barred anyone from sleeping in houses less than 20m above sea level. this was ridiculous, and was of course ignored (not least by myself). then as the weeks passed and the sea showed no signs of further untoward behaviour people began to relax and those who had fled began to drift back to their ash-filled homes.

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