[ 00:50 thursday – off the sciara del fuoco, isola di stromboli ]
as i sit here on the boat with my friends there’s an explosion from the top of the volcano, sending up a burst of fire followed by a puff of dark gas which coils up into the air.
: c***
[ 00:10 thursday 12 june – isola di stromboli ]
i’m sitting on the starboard bow of antonio’s catamaran on a flat flat sea looking up at the stream of lava coming down the west side of the island. the air is hot and humid. i’m sitting here without a shirt. a three-quarter moon casts a ghostly blue light over everything. the black silhouette of the volcano in front of me is sliced down the middle with a line of bright orange. to the right it forms a solid stream. to the left it breaks into pieces which tumble and bounce down the mountainside. it’s indescribably beautiful. there’s a sense of incredible force, but also a filigree delicacy to the shimmering particles of fire.
the lava makes a continuous grinding sound, underpinned by a deep bass rumbling. every few seconds there’s a fat crump as a mass of solidifying lava hits the sea.
this is the first time i’ve seen the lava flow from the water.
with my new sony ericsson telephone and gprs account i can send this message right away, from where i’m sitting in the boat. i’m still a bit awed by the fact.
: c***
[ 22:00 sunday 4 may – casa schuldes, isola di stromboli ]
sergio and i spent a couple of hours yesterday afternoon in snorkels and masks scouring the coast below the house for limpets. armed with blunt knives we hunted out the biggest juiciest specimens in every nook and cranny, trying to catch them by surprise before they could fix themselves immovably to the rock. all the while we kept a lookout for the purple jellyfish currently swarming around stromboli’s shores, which have tentacles several feet long and give a nasty sting. we came up the steps to the house with a good harvest and left them in fresh water to purge themselves of sand particles.
in the evening, joined by maria, we made a cous cous in the manner traditional to trapani (sergio’s home town at the western tip of sicily). starting with semola flour and hands dipped in olive oil we painstakingly rolled little pellets between our fingers. when these were fine enough we boiled a pan of water with bay leaves and steamed the cous cous above it for what seemed like an eternity. in the meantime we steamed the limpets vigorously for 15 minutes, during which time they obligingly shed their conical shells, then put the rubbery little chaps into the water in which they’d been steamed, added tomatoes, dried chilli pepper and garlic, and boiled the sauce gently for about half an hour. a little scorpion emerged from the chimney above the stove to investigate what was cooking. i took his photo then squashed him with a stone without much scruple. they’re not very friendly creatures. it was getting on for midnight when we finally transported everything up to the table on the roof and tucked in with the waves lapping the beach below us on one side and the volcano brooding above us on the other side. it was absolutely delicious.
i’m a big fan of wild food, as readers of this journal will know. but until recently i regarded limpets as somehow beyond the pale. they are plentiful and grow very big in cornwall and the isles of scilly, yet the people hold them in a disdain which exceeds any other shellfish. i never met a single person who likes them. they are described as tough, tasteless and inedible. in the isles of scilly there is a sort of folk-memory that during periods of starvation in the eighteenth and nineteenth century limpets were the “last resort” source of sustenance, and consequently they have particularly unpleasant associations. yet here in the south of italy “patelli” are highly regarded. last month i had a revelatory experience with them during a magnificent dinner cooked by giuseppe and emanuele. this meal also included sauro, ugly deep-water fish hauled up that morning by emanuele, which we ate raw with lemon juice, olive oil and wild fennel.
whilst we were gobbling up our cous cous last night dad, mum, anna and adam were at rick stein’s fish restaurant in padstow, cornwall, for a surprise dinner to celebrate dad’s 60th birthday and anna’s 30th. i had a romantic notion that i would fly from palermo to stansted, then fly on from there to newquay in cornwall and get to padstow in time for dinner. but none of the connections connected properly and it would have taken two days, so i had to be content telephoning my congratulations when they’d finished dinner. dad still acts younger than many of my contemporaries (he and mum are just back from skiing in the canadian rockies) so i presume he’ll be wearing this decade as lightly as the previous ones.
it’s three months since i wrote my last despatch, describing my illicit return to stromboli in the middle of a force 8 gale. during this period my attention has been obsessively focused on building up the intelligence i will need for the next stage of my trampoline project. it feels as if i have retreated into a sort of cocoon, continuing frenzied activity connected with the venture at the expense of almost everything else in my life, including communications with family and close friends. possibly this despatch marks my reemergence.
being in stromboli through these months has been a remarkable experience. but i’ll write about that later.
: c*
[ 22:10 thursday 6 february – piscita, isola di stromboli ]
i’m here, i’m back on stromboli!
the conditions yesterday did indeed render a landing at stromboli impossible. i sat watching its grey triangle emerge out of the rain on the port bow and pass agonisingly by. i could see clouds of steam rising from the sciara where the new lava flow enters the sea. we passed by panarea too without attempting a landing. at lipari the captain made five runs at docking, which took over an hour, but each time the wind forced him to back away again. in the end he abandoned the attempt and headed straight for milazzo on sicily’s north coast. there we docked at half past seven, twenty-two hours after i’d boarded the ship.
first i checked into a little hotel and deposited my bags. then, not having eaten a proper meal for two days, i went to a fish restaurant i know and wolfed down a pile of their home-made pasta with broccoli and bottarga di tonno (tuna eggs which have been dried and seasoned). yes, it was exquisite. then i went back and fell asleep at once.
this morning i woke at nine and phoned the shipping company office to check the situation. they said the 10:00 ship would be operating and they thought things had calmed down enough that it would be possible to land at stromboli. so i got my things together, grabbed a couple of jam-filled croissants and got to the ship. it was a beautiful departure, a broad panorama of snow-covered mountains with alternating patches of black rainstorms and sunlight roving across the leaden sea. slowly stromboli grew larger ahead of us. an officer came round asking for documents from everyone who wanted to land at stromboli to be checked against the list of formal residents. i sat with my book and pretended not to hear, my heart beating noisily.
after two hours we were drawing close. suddenly we were engulfed in a fierce rainstorm and visibility dropped below a hundred metres. the ship slowed to a crawl and we continued. once again the scattered passengers were pressed against the windows in silence. from time to time a gap would open and we would glimpse a part of the mountain before the clouds closed over again. one such opening revealed the miraculous fact that the top of the mountain was white with a once-every-thirty-years covering of snow.
the rainstorm passed and we came in sight of the quay. the sea was still rough, breaking white over the concrete platform. but it was clear the captain was going to try to dock. the anchors dropped, we turned slowly and crept astern metre by metre with the anchor cables holding us steady. the first line thrown across to the quay fell short and the stern began to drift sideways. the second line was caught and secured. other lines went over and little by little the ship inched backwards until the gap was just a couple of metres. at this point i quietly collected my bags and slipped down the companionway to the stern.
i got down there just as the ramp began to lower. one of the officers saw me and came over with a quizzical look. my heart was in my throat as he said surely i was going to panarea. i did my best to look surprised and said very emphatically “no, i live on stromboli”. he still looked unhappy but at this point the ramp bumped down onto the concrete quay and everyone was shouting “vai, vai, vai!” and people were running in all directions. in a couple of bounds i was on the quay, back on stromboli, with a great sense of jubilation.
the description of what i found here must wait for another time. for now suffice to say the house is fine, although the storeroom is indeed devastated. my slides are undamaged. i’ve started the job of cleaning the place out. there’s a fire burning in the wood stove. i’ve greeted many of my friends and established details of what’s going on.
right now the sea is growing rougher again and the wind is strengthening. from time to time there is a flash of lightning. occasional squalls of rain pass over but between them the stars are bright in the inky sky. the clouds over the entire western flank of the mountain are glowing a deep red. after sending this mail i’ll set off for punta u bronzu. it’s time to see this new lava flow with my own eyes.
i’m back.
: c* * * * *
[ 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*
[ 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*
[ 17:35 wednesday – st john’s college, cambridge ]
sitting on the step of “d” staircase, second court, powerbook on my lap. from time to time a student clipclops across the unlit echoey quadrangle. most are alone and most are carrying a rustling polythene bag, conveying the evening’s groceries back to their rooms. this is a large simple court from the sixteenth century with red-brick ranges rising three storeys, triangular gables capping the upper row of windows. in the middle of the northern range is a tower. on top of this was once an observatory, from which the planet pluto was discovered. or perhaps it was neptune or uranus, one of those icy remote bodies anyway. the observatory was dismantled when it was found the tower was subsiding under its weight. i lived in the tower one summer.
the college bell chimes the quarter. a gaggle of youths lurches past joking and laughing. the stars are clear overhead, a few wisps of cloud.
yesterday was the first anniversary of michael’s death. on the underground, arriving back from berlin, i looked over someone’s shoulder at a magazine and after a while realised the face i was staring at was michael’s. not the face i knew but a face of fifty years earlier with black slicked-back hair and smooth skin and less laughter. the photo was one of four. another was the queen mother, another was john thaw, an actor famous for playing a television detective, i cannot remember who the final one was. the title at the top of the page was “those we have lost in 2002”, the magazine was “the week”. how strange, i thought, that they have chosen michael, a man whose name was not familiar to many and whose face was known by hardly anyone. nonetheless i felt like pointing to the little picture and shouting to the carriage: look, look here, this was a great man.
i came up here to cambridge today to speak with ray jobling, the senior tutor, and catherine twilley, the development officer. it’s always a pleasure to visit and catch up. plus i hope to get a small article about trampoline in the alumni newsletter.
: *
[ 13:40 monday 6 january – yorckstrasse, berlin ]
on new year’s eve i landed in schonefeld, turned on my phone and received a message from patrick relaying a news report of major eruptions and tsunami on stromboli. i made my way into town with a certain anxiety. what had happened? were all my friends alright?
reimar met me from the u-bahn, accompanied me back to his apartment and got me online at once so i could check for news. the bbc had a couple of stories and a video clip showing lava flowing down the sciara, a dense cloud of smoke hanging over the island and houses covered in black ash. rai carried a story describing a huge wave which had struck the island destroying houses. it looked quite serious but there was no report of serious casualties.
i tried phoning friends on the island but i couldn’t get through to anyone. over the subsequent days i did manage to speak to several people. everyone is safe. the island has been evacuated (voluntarily) and most of the population is staying in hotels on lipari. on december 30th there was a series of unusually large explosions and lava started flowing down the western side of the mountain. then on the afternoon of new year’s eve a further explosion triggered a landslide in which 4 million cubic metres of the mountainside collapsed into the sea. this caused a 20m-high wave which spread round the island inflicting considerable damage and leading to the evacuation.
several houses were destroyed by the tsunami and the island’s little power station was put out of use. boats resting on the foreshore were smashed to matchsticks. initially i was concerned about gustl and valerie’s house where i am living, as it is directly on the northern shore and lower down the cliff than most other houses. but i spoke to gustl in vienna and was relieved to learn that the house is relatively unscathed. miraculously the surrounding rocks took the force of the wave and directed it away from the house. however the magazino located further down, beside the beach, where the washing machine and freezer are located, was engulfed by the wave and may not be quite the same shape as when i last saw it.
i planned to return to stromboli on the 15th to be joined by kirmo from helsinki so we could start discussing interface designs for trampoline. there haven’t been any further dramas so i’m still hoping it will be possible for me to return at this point, but bearing in mind the uncertainty i’ve suggested that kirmo postpone his visit til february.
for anyone who’s interested there are photos, maps and detailed information about the eruptions at these sites:
http://www.ct.ingv.it/Stromboli2002/Main.htm
http://www.educeth.ch/stromboli/beso/bes02c-en.html
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/2622099.stm (video report from link in top right of page)
new year here in berlin has been fabulous. once i’d eased my mind that there weren’t any serious casualties on stromboli reimar whisked me straight off to a dinner party hosted by his friends jurg and lars. they live in an old building across the road from goebells’ propaganda ministry, a few hundred yards from the brandenburg gate. because the house was in the eastern zone it was left alone for fifty years and its residents have fought off attempts to redevelop the (wildly valuable) site since reunification. so in the very heart of imperial berlin there is still this little haven of bohemian exuberance.
the house is a warren of small rooms, each one a different colour, heated by enormous tiled stoves burning lignite, the low-grade coal which traditionally choked berlin’s air with its sulphurous fumes. the guests (about a dozen) were an eclectic group with a creative bias from all over northern europe. everyone spoke excellent english. the meal was superb and continued for hours and hours.
ten minutes before midnight we all poured out onto the snow-covered streets and half-ran, laughing and shouting, towards the brandenburg gate. the air was already filled with the bang and shriek of fireworks, increasing in intensity as we neared the epicentre of berlin’s celebrations. the crowd was officially reported as one million people. we arrived at the edge of it just as midnight arrived. an enormous cry went up and the tirade of fireworks redoubled in intensity, filling the sky with light of all colours. i was swept away on the surge of excitement, laughing and springing around like a demented frog. we opened a few more bottles of champagne and hugged each other, then scampered back to the house for the main course (two enormous pike). i got to bed around six.
it’s a bit overdue, but to everyone reading this my wishes for a year of creativity and hope.
: *
[ 16:05 monday 30 december – train from swindon to london paddington ]
after my bleak christmas eve despatch it’s a little embarrassing to admit how enjoyable the past week has been. i feel closer to my family, and freer to be myself with them, than any time i can remember. what’s more there did seem to be a worthwhile point to the festival despite all my humbugging.
on christmas day my parents and i drove up to shropshire where my grandparents live. this is a sparsely populated area on the welsh borders crumpled into a chain of decent-sized hills interspersed with wild moorland and sheep pasture. my grandfather is a week short of 97, my grandmother a decade younger. grandpa is not an easy man. he grew up in a brutally scientific household where an individual’s worth was determined by their academic results. relatives were forbidden to perpetrate superstitious fictions such as the existence of a man who rides through the sky and delivers presents down the chimney. grandpa inherited a good deal of this outlook on the world.
after a lifetime’s service as a schoolmaster he wanted to go back to the mountains of north wales, where he grew up, but granny put her foot down. shropshire was the compromise they arrived at, as close to wales as it is possible to be whilst remaining in england. of course it didn’t give either of them what they wanted. over the decades i have watched grandpa sinking into a kind of nihilistic joyless decrepitude, punctuated by bouts of depressive madness. granny has flurried about tending to his needs and maintaining outlets for her creativity in vigorous gardening, knitting and flower-arranging.
grandpa’s hold on life is intimidating, motivated not so much by a desire to live as a monstrous terror of death. up until the age of 87 there was also a competitive element: he wanted to live longer than his father had done.
as grandpa’s physiology has slowly deteriorated the strain on granny has grown. she is getting older herself and consequently her ability to cope with him has declined. there are few pleasures left in her life. on christmas day, for nine precious hours, we were able to bring some light and laughter into her world. i don’t give a damn about baby jesus and swapping gifts. but for those hours it felt like i was participating in a ritual that truly meant something worthwhile.
during the afternoon i snuck down the road to ludlow to gatecrash christmas “lunch” with my godmother bear and her family. she and her husband david been a fabulous subversive influence on me and my sister anna over the years but i see them all too rarely nowadays. it was great to be with them all. i forgot my camera there so mum and dad and i dropped in on our way back home after supper.
anna and adam arrived on friday from cornwall and we talked late into the night. yesterday evening dad dug out an ancient slide projector so i showed some of my photos from america and he showed some of the ones he took during the 60s when he was a dashing young officer in the merchant navy, travelling across the world in the final years of britain’s great merchant fleet.
here in my flourescent-lit plastic carriage the robot voice announces that we are arriving in paddington and everyone must prepare to leave the train. dutifully my fellow-passengers start to gather their bags. the robot (a humourless female voice) speaks with the flat vowels of estuary english, the favoured accent of the new british establishment, rendered uglier here by its disjointed electronic rhythm and intonation. a moment later the intercom crackles and the train manager informs us in his gorgeous devon burr that we are arriving in reading, not paddington, and apologises for “problems with the passenger information system”. people freeze for a second, then start putting their bags in racks and sitting back down, happy to follow whatever instructions come their way.
at swindon the plummy male robot voice was busy announcing delays and cancellations. in extreme cases it used the phrase “i am very sorry” which i found rather troubling. what entity is the “i” to which the voice is referring?
my intention was to go to the mountains in central spain to join my friends andrew and cristina for new year. however on impulse i decided a couple of days ago to go to berlin instead to visit my friend reimar, a saxophonist whom i met at a jazz event in wales ten years ago. somehow it feels like the place i ought to be, plus i’ve been promising to visit ever since we met. i fly there tomorrow afternoon.
: c
[ 23:30 tuesday 24 december – sandhurst, gloucestershire ]
three weeks since i landed in london. my plan was to whistle through some meetings there then race back to stromboli. but warren came over from san francisco and craig arrived from norway and we had so much to do and every day a new lead came up for someone else i needed to talk to. i wouldn’t admit to myself that i’d abandoned my escape to stromboli but i suspect i made the decision within a few days of arriving. it was all very productive and i was able to see a lot of friends but i’ve been pining for the sea and the ravens and the ever-changing silence. i have dreamed about the island several times. from september 2001 to october 2002 i was never away from stromboli longer that two weeks. it’s already two months since i left there bound for america. i doubt i’ll get back before the middle of january.
last week i tried to do some “christmas shopping”. i took a tube into central london and walked into one shop then another. i wandered through the relentless shelves of cheerful, pointless objects; trying to evaluate each one in relation to people i love. but after an hour i had bought nothing and was feeling nauseated. i walked out onto tottenham court road, put down my backpack in the middle of the pavement and remained perfectly still as the mass of shoppers streamed around me. almost immediately a sense of well-being and freedom sprang up inside me. i stood there for a long time, breathing slowly and smiling. from time to time someone would catch my eye and there would be a fleeting expression of puzzlement as they hurried onward. nobody smiled back at me.
i arrived here at mum and dad’s house a couple of days ago. it has been raining a lot. the fields are very muddy. yesterday i cycled into gloucester and got wet.
now it is nearly midnight, nearly christmas. the people scatter platitudes of peace and goodwill whilst an unneeded war is kindled in their name. everything grows dark and complex. my parents are at church. they were worried i would put too much garlic in the supper.
to my friends, the readers of this inadequate journal, in australia, malaysia, new zealand, brazil, italy, the united states, spain, germany, finland, china, norway, canada, ghana, japan, india and the united kingdom of great britain and northern ireland:
i bid you a merry christmas
: c
// charles armstrong // 