Category Archives: Wanderer

Canary Islands, Spain, Wanderer

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[ 10:21 thursday 7 january 2016 – la graciosa, islas canarias ]

after a glorious and windswept christmas in cornwall with my family i felt an urge for a period of complete solitude to clear my mind for the year ahead. by the end of 2015 there were so many alluring opportunities to expand the trampery that i realised i no longer had a clear sense of direction or purpose. i needed to get away from the complexity and noise in order to choose the right path.

thus on the thirtieth of december i booked a last-minute flight to the canary islands and twenty-four hours later i found myself stepping out of the airport terminal at lanzarote, blinking in the soft afternoon sunlight. looking at a map the most remote village i could find was el golfo on the west coast of the island, surrounded by a vast expanse of bare lava. so i booked a room, rented a car and set off.

speeding along the empty roads through the arid black landscape in the golden afternoon light i felt a sense of exhilaration rising in me. coming down the hill towards el golfo the village revealed itself as a small cluster of low white cuboid buildings huddled against the jagged black shore. a huge swell was rolling in from the atlantic. the wind tore the crests horizontally from from the waves sending feathery plumes through the air. everything was filled with the roar and spray of the surf as it crashed against the black rocks. i breathed it all in.

for as long as i can remember i’ve been superstitious about new year, looking to it for a sign of what the coming year will bring. i’ve always spent it with close friends. sometimes in a big city, sometimes in a beautiful wilderness. last year i saw in the new year with martin and jens on lyngen fjord at the arctic northern fringe of norway. previous locations have included stromboli, merida, berlin, london, the isles of scilly (for the millennium), melbourne and salvador da bahia. this is the first time in my life i’ve ever chosen to spend new year alone. i can’t deny i felt a little anxious about it, but i had a strong instinct it was the right thing to do.

after dropping my bags in el golfo i walked out to the rocks and immersed myself in the sound of the breaking surf. i walked to a small black sand beach at the end of the village where i sat and watched the final sunset of 2015. in the evening i drove into the island’s capital arrecife where i found the streets deserted. it felt as if the town had been abandoned. walking along a backstreet i was hailed from a small columbian restaurant, one of very few that were open, so i went in and dined on plantain and cheese.

afterwards i found my way to the old harbour and a neapolitan-run bar from which music and laughter were emanating. no sooner had i arrived than the staff began to race around distributing sealed plastic bags. one was shoved in my hands. i tore it open and found a party hat, a garland, a party hooter and a strange device comprising two plastic hands on a stick. suddenly everyone was cheering and honking. i thought there was another hour to go before midnight but i’d set the time zone wrong on my phone. 2016 had caught me by surprise. it seemed like a poetically apt way to begin the year. i joined the cheering, hooted my hooter, clapped the plastic hands and exchanged greetings with everyone on the tables around me.

the three days i spent in el golfo were passed in almost complete solitude; walking around the coast, swimming in the clear water and hiking across the barren lava fields. each evening i sat with my notebook scribbling down thoughts about projects, goals and possibilities; waiting for structure to emerge from the tangled mass. each day the shape become a little clearer. meanwhile i had two conversations where a tiny and exquisite island called la graciosa was mentioned. i knew that’s where i needed to go.

so on sunday day i packed my bag, bid farewell to el golfo and set off north along the central spine of the island. i drove through spectacular volcanic landscapes and small agricultural villages where vines were painstakingly grown in pits with low semicircular walls to shelter them from the incessant north-easterly wind. overnight i stayed with a couple in a fishing village called punta mujeres. after supper i went for a walk to explore. i heard music and found a group playing in a side street. gradually more musicians arrived until i counted three lutes, five guitars, two timples (tiny guitars specific to lanzarote), a castanet and a percussion instrument made from a ladder of goat knuckles worn round the neck.

several of the musicians took turns singing. the group would stand in front of a house and perform until the owner of the house opened the doors and windows to pass out small glasses of homebrewed sweet wine or pastis to all the musicians. after a few songs the music would stop and everyone would chatter for a while. then the group would start playing and proceed down the street until they picked the next house at which to pause. speaking to the musicians i learned this was a tradition specific to the north of lanzarote. for several days following new year musicians assembled and played in a different village each evening. this was their final night. i walked with them for an hour or more, delighted in my good fortune at crossing their paths.

the next morning i drove up the coast to the port of orzola on the northern tip of lanzarote. i locked the car and walked down to the little harbour to wait for a ferry. three hours later i was on a sturdy vessel pitching through the swell on the crossing to la graciosa. from the sea the island appears as three low volcanic craters sitting on a flat sandy base. two clusters of white dwellings were visible, the main village in the centre and a smaller settlement at the north with no more than a score of houses. pulling alongside the quay at caleta del sebo i was met by a young fellow called javi with whom i’d arranged to stay.

these last three days on graciosa have been sublime. my friends are all too familiar with my penchant for small islands. at eight kilometres long and four wide with a permanent population of seven hundred and no metalled roads (just sand), la graciosa feels very far from civilisation. i’ve spent the days walking for hours without seeing another soul and pausing to swim when i found a sheltered cove. the north-easterly wind and my rolleiflex have been my constant companions. the evenings have been spent talking with javi, continuing my writing and reading the pile of books i brought with me. javi has been perfect company, full of wisdom and curiosity.

last night, sitting in the kitchen, the final pieces came together and i knew i’d achieved what i came here for. now i write these words on my phone, seated by the starboard rail of the ferry carrying me back to orzola. by this evening i’ll be in london.

wherever you are, i send you my gladdest wishes for the year ahead. the darker the world grows, the brighter we must shine.

: c :

Macedonia, Wanderer

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[ 12:07 sunday 29 november 2015 – gradski trgovski centar, skopje, macedonia ]

this is simultaneously my first visit to the balkans and my first despatch written from a shopping centre.

here i am in skopje, capital city of the republic of macedonia, nestled in the southern balkans with serbia and kosovo to the north, greece to the south, bulgaria to the east and albania to the west. the british council flew me over to give a speech at a summit about supporting entrepreneurs across the region. they were kind enough to let me stay for a couple of days extra so i could explore the city.

over the last few days i’ve met a lot of people involved in technology and the creative industries. but in parallel with this the trip has become an impromptu pilgrimage for brutalist architecture and urban planning.

it was in my early teens, living in cornwall, that i first started taking an interest in contemporary architecture. during my time at truro school a new crown court was constructed the city. it was unlike anything else in truro, designed in a modernist style with geometric massing, undecorated white surfaces and a circular tower at its centre. it’s the first building i ever remember catching my interest architecturally. around this time i started sketching imaginary structures, exploring the relationship between different spaces and functions.

by the age of fifteen i was thinking seriously about a career in architecture. with my parents’ encouragement i arranged a visit to the father of one of my classmates who ran a small architecture practice in cornwall. i spent an evening with him looking through plans he was working on, listening to him explain the logic behind each element and hearing how he designed buildings to reduce energy use by harnessing heat from the sun. i was transfixed. it felt like i’d found my calling.

all too soon mum arrived to collect me and it was time to go. as i was saying goodbye my friend’s father hesitated for a moment then took me to one side. he looked me in the eye and said “listen, you go into architecture thinking you’re going to change the world but you end up designing petrol stations and supermarkets. don’t do it charles, find something different.”

i’ve never forgotten those words. i was devastated. i don’t think i said a single word on the journey home in the car. mum must have thought something awful had happened. in that moment my friend’s father changed the path of my life.  all thought of becoming a professional architect was abandoned and my life developed in a different direction. my passion for architecture, however, remained undimmed.

arriving at cambridge in the 1990s architectural discussion was polarised into two camps: proponents of modern architecture and those who advocated a return to traditional forms and styles. this seemed like a totally bizarre dichotomy to me. it had never occurred to me there might be a serious body of architectural opinion that set itself against new ideas. i found myself cast as an arch-modernist and forced for the first time to justify my beliefs.  it was a valuable experience and helped to clarify my thinking. it was during these years i realised that many of the buildings which excited me the most were lumped together under the term “brutalist”. generally these were large-scale projects with experimental geometric forms and undecorated concrete surfaces.

this is where the story returns to skopje. in july 1963 a huge earthquake levelled eighty percent of the city and killed more than a thousand people. the yugoslav government called in the united nations to run an international architectural competition to rebuild the city. the winning entry came from kenzo tange, a young japanese architect with a penchant for avant garde brutalist design. tange proposed a bold masterplan for skopje structured around a semi-circular “city wall” of tall housing units with a “city gate” axis running from a new railway station through a business district to the city centre. the genius of tange’s plan was taking familiar mediaeval models and translating them into a futuristic vocabulary.

only about half of tange’s plan was actually implemented, but the city government continued to commission extremely abstract brutalist designs for new construction projects until the mid 1980s. as a result  skpoje has a higher concentration of full-blooded brutalist experiments than anywhere else on earth that i’ve seen. for someone like me it’s like arriving in the promised land. a lot of the buildings are now run-down but they’re still being used as they were intended. indeed the biggest threat they face is the current regime’s desire to turn skopje into a surreal theme park of las vegas baroque.

i spent yesterday exploring by foot with my trusty rolleiflex, visiting a dozen sites. the highlight was the university of saints cyril and methodius, a jaw-droppingly complex ensemble built around a central courtyard with beams and towers sticking out in all directions. today one of the british council officials (a fellow brutalism fan) was kind enough to drive me to some of the more inaccessible sites, including the beautiful but decrepit goce delcev student accommodation complex, and tell me about their history. i’ll put up the photographs once they’re developed and scanned.

for many people buildings like these are hideous and misguided failures.  i’m often asked disbelievingly why i like them. part of the answer is aesthetic. at their best these buildings represent the freest use of architecture as a sculptural medium. they seek to deploy materials in new ways that are expressive as well as functional. but more important to me is the deep sense of social purpose they embody. most brutalist buildings i’ve encountered were created by architects who sincerely believed in their duty to lay foundations for a better society. this sense is absent from most large buildings constructed since the 1980s and i believe that is an important loss.

the shopping mall where i’m currently seated is a fine piece of work in its own right. we’re so used to the american template of the mall as huge sealed bubble with just a few entrances and exits, like a fortress for retail, we assume that’s the only possibility. this place is certainly huge, occupying several city blocks and spread over three levels, but in every other respect it defies the familiar model. most radically this mall is completely porous. a series of side streets connect it to the city grid enabling pedestrians to criss-cross it twenty-four hours a day. sections of it are also open to the sky so rain and light can enter small courtyards. the impression is of a modern reinvention of the labyrinthine mediaeval bazaar just across the river in skopje’s old town.

it’s ironic that having decided against a career in architecture i’ve ended up designing buildings anyway. when i founded the trampery in 2009 it was an experiment in fusing architecture with sociology, entrepreneurship and community development. six years later i find myself working on projects that apply this recipe to startup workspaces, corporate offices, housing and whole city districts. life is full of surprises.

Greece, Wanderer

f o l e g a n d r o s

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[ yacht “tramontana”, crossing from sifnos to folegandros, greece – 22:05 saturday 5 september 2015 ]

i’m sitting on the foredeck of a yacht gliding through silky black water surrounded by an explosion of stars. the warm air flows over my skin. the massive silhouette of folegandros island blots out the sky to starboard. the lack of even a single light visible on the island thrills me, suggesting a barren wildness remote from civilisation. the sun set a couple of hours ago, a molten red disc dissolving into the azure horizon.

i arrived in mykonos four nights ago with my friend derek. after a day’s entertaining exploration on quad bike we took a ship to pafos and picked up the yacht. at this time of year the meltemi brings a constant northerly blast through the cyclades islands. however we managed to choose a freakish week when the air is completely still. it feels like a karmic trade-off for the superb winds i had sailing with dad last week in cornwall.

so the sails remain resolutely furled and we proceed by motor. but there’s still the same joyous freedom and autonomy of living afloat. from pafos we crossed to sifnos where we coincided with a one day gathering of folk dancers and musicians from all over greece. i was fascinated by the trance-like music of the pontiac culture, originating from the shores of the black sea. after the formal performances the musicians carried on playing in a local nightclub. we staggered back to the yacht as the sun was rising.

tonight we’ll anchor off folegandros. then in the morning derek and i will leave the yacht and try to find somewhere to stay on the island.

[ galifos, folegandros – 19:55 monday 7 september ]

having tried to moor in the main port and been turned away we finally anchored just after midnight in the bay of angali on the south of the island. in the morning we woke to find ourselves surrounded by spectacular cliffs and stony hillsides. derek and i came ashore and took the footpath around the coast to galifos where we’d heard there were some rooms. we found two simple white buildings containing ten bedrooms and a communal kitchen, in complete isolation above a small beach. one was available so we took it. now i’m sitting on our terrace overlooking the bay, shimmering violet in the deepening twilight. a paraffin lamp on the table behind me provides the only illumination. there’s no electricity.

folegandros is everything I dreamed of. the landscape is mercilessly stony and barren, sliced with vertiginous precipices and ravines. the island is seven miles long but has a permanent population of fewer than seven hundred. the air is pervaded by an intense silence, broken only by the rustle of wind in the scrub and the lap of waves.

my days here have been spent walking, taking photographs with the rolleiflex, swimming naked in the turquoise water until my limbs ache and sitting on rocks lost in the stark sunlight. it’s been sublime.

this journey has made me think a lot about how and why i travel. i don’t look for it to be easy or predictable. when i travel i seek to be tested, place myself in uncomfortable situations, learn new things about myself, get inside different cultures, pursue elusive goals. i prefer only to have a minimum of fixed points and not to know much about where i’m going. for the current trip i didn’t make any plans until a week beforehand. at that point i decided to spend a week with my family in cornwall then a week somewhere different. i didn’t book the flights to greece until a few days before departing, by which time derek had decided to come too. he’s one of few people I know who prefers to make travel plans at the last minute.

we reserved a place to stay in mykonos an hour before taking off from gatwick. i’d booked the yacht a few days earlier but without any idea where we’d be meeting it to go aboard. for folegandros all we had was an intriguing three year old photograph of a sign advertising rooms without electricity.

this has been my first trip for more than ten years where i haven’t brought a laptop. in the past i always felt the need to be prepared in case a crisis blew up with one of my businesses. this time i felt a strong urge to leave that responsibility behind and it’s been fantastically liberating. i did have my telephone but even that has been kept switched off most of the time. i’m writing these words on the phone now. i’ve avoided connecting to the internet except for a few occasions when i needed to check a timetable or confirm a booking.

tomorrow i catch the ship for athens. i’ll spend one day there before making my return to london.

: c :

Norway, Wanderer

s u m m e r h o u s e

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[ 19:27 monday 10 august – hytta wichstrøm, førenes, norway ]

i’m in a sublimely beautiful place. a house made from pine and glass perched on a wind-smoothed outrcop of rock with forest all around and a sheltered bay below. the coast is folded into intricate bays and inlets dotted with a thousand islands. the house was built in the early 1970s for the grandfather of my friends thor and stephanie. architecturally it comprises a series of joined single-pitch structures with wooden terraces at the front and back. the living areas are surrounded by an almost continuous band of floor to ceiling windows framed with a rectangular grid of pine. some of these glazed walls slide open to link the inside spaces with the terraces. meanwhile the house nestles in the irregular structure of the rock outcrop, a section of which pushes up through the rear terrace. the overall effect is a blurring of inside and outside, a sense of the house as an extension of its surrounding landscape. the building’s geometric forms and its harmony with the environment carry echoes of traditional japanese architecture.

the forest here is predominantly oak and pine. almost everywhere i walk there’s a dense undergrowth of blueberry bushes at the apogee of fruiting. it’s almost impossible to resist the temptation to stop every minute or two and gorge oneself. more than once i’ve returned to the house with a guilty look and purple stains all over the lower part of my face. even more exquisite are the wild raspberries, harder to find but equally at the pinnacle of ripeness, super-sweet miniature originals of the cultivated versions found in gardens and supermarkets.

here at the southern tip of norway civilisation feels reassuringly distant. the nearest shop is in lillesand, a couple of miles away as the crow flies but much further by road or sea. getting to and from the outside world is most easily accomplished via a dinghy with an outboard that’s moored at a jetty below the house. to get here i made the four and a half hour train journey from oslo southward through the forests and lakes to kristiansand, followed by a forty-five minute bus trip to lillesand, then finally a twenty-minute skim between islands in the dinghy. as we neared the quay thor stopped the engine, leapt out into the shallow water and returned with a dozen wild oysters. the largest of them was as big as an ostrich egg. we ate them with chopped red onion in vinegar.

yesterday afternoon thor and stephanie took me out fishing. it’s the first time i’ve used a proper rod rather than a primitive line wound around a piece of wood. over a period of three hours i caught two cod and thor caught three more. all were duly baked for supper. today we took the boat to a tiny island with a lighthouse. the whole island was bare rock with broad stripes of grey, pink and black like a 1980s minimalist interior, worn into smooth curves by centuries of wind and sea. the only flora were wild pansies and daisies nestling in sheltered folds in the rock. the inter-tidal rock was coated with mussels and barnacles. we swam in the rolling swell which was bracingly cold. afterwards i sat in the warm breeze watching the horizon and felt myself dissolving into the rock and the rush of waves.

: c :

Cornwall, Wanderer

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[ 20:33 sunday 12 july – river fowey, cornwall ]

i’m sitting in the cabin of dad’s 22 foot yacht “wild rose”. we’re moored in the river fowey about quarter of a mile upstream from the town. the boat sways gently in the ebbing tide. around us the trees press down the sides of the valley stretching their gnarled limbs towards the water. the air is almost motionless. wisps of mist twist and weave among the darkening trees. a grey-feathered heron stands motionless at the edge of the water watching for prey. across the channel a complex mass of girders and ducts juts into the river, part of a structure for loading china clay onto ships.

yesterday afternoon i sailed down the coast with dad and adam. we set out from mylor in a brisk south-westerly, weaving between the traditional working boats racing in falmouth harbour. by the time we rounded dodman point the wind was freshening to force six and a heavy swell had started rolling beneath us. we sped into fowey harbour on an exhilarating run then came upriver seeking a sheltered mooring.

this has been my best ever year for sailing. three weeks ago i travelled down to salcombe to join my friends arthur and gregoir who’d just arrived after crossing the channel from normandy and spent a magical week with them. the plan was to sail west along the cornish coast and cross to the isles of scilly. over the years i’ve arrived in the scillies by freight ship, ferry, helicopter and light aircraft but never under sail. it’s a long-standing dream of mine. however in the face of unremitting westerly winds we only sailed west for a single day, reaching cawsand at the southeastern eastern tip of cornwall. this is where we spent the solstice, starting with a group of villagers at a pub where a band was playing, then sitting on the darkened beach with a bottle of rum. the next day we turned around and headed eastward along the devon and dorset coasts stopping at dartmouth, teignmouth, exmouth, weymouth and poole.

we had some adventures along the way. leaving exmouth a fog bank descended on us and we spent most of the day sailing without any sight of land or other vessels. being isolated in cold, clammy greyness is tremendously unsettling. one’s senses are so amplified by the fear of collision with an unseen boat that one begins to hallucinate shapes and sounds. later that day approaching portland bill we realised with sinking hearts that we’d miscalculated the tidal flows and would be reaching it when its notorious tidal race was in full flow with its whirlpools and 10 knot currents. we could have been stuck for six hours before being able to get around. but following arthur’s instincts we headed close in to the land, as close as we dared go, and sure enough we found a counter-current that swept us around in the direction we wanted to go. the finest sailing was on my last day when we spent several exhilarating hours playing in  the wind before scudding into poole harbour with a force six wind behind us.

my dad worked in yacht-building when i was a child  so i was always around boats. likewise during my year in the isles of scilly and my two years on stromboli i was frequently on the water. a couple of years ago i felt the impulse to start taking it more seriously and did the royal yachting association’s day skipper course. now i’m trying to get out as often as the possibility arises.

one think i appreciate about being on a yacht for even a few days is the way life is stripped back to its essential components. the layers of modern behaviour which occupy so much of our attention simply melt away. if you go for days without seeing yourself in a mirror you stop worrying what your hair looks like. the end of daily showers makes concerns about hygiene irrelevant. there’s no deliberation about what clothes to wear when you wear the same clothes day after day. meanwhile the lack of electricity means mobile phones are turned off and the mass of neurotic habits for checking messages and status updates just fades away.

: c :

Norway, Wanderer

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[ 15:52 saturday 3 january 2015 – lyngen, norway ]

i’m sitting at a great oval table with a computer-fabricated viking longship suspended above me. the building is a spectacular updating of a mediaeval great hall, an immense open space with a steeply pitched roof held up by the huge trunks of eight pine trees . the roof and walls are clad in pine planks. the floor is stone with a fireplace in its centre surmounted by a copper hood and steel flue which runs to the roof.

the hall sits on the west side of lyngenfjord, norway’s largest fjord. the small town of lyngseidet with its three thousand inhabitants lies six miles to the north. on either side of the fjord jagged mountains rise sheer from the water to a height of six thousand feet. beyond the mouth of the fjord are the grey wastes of the arctic ocean. at a latitude of sixty-nine degrees north this is the fringe of the human-inhabited world, deep inside the arctic circle.

this far north the sun doesn’t rise for two months during mid-winter. the landscape is bathed in a mysterious blue twilight for four hours each day from ten in the morning until two in the afternoon. the rest of the time it is darkness. each day during the precious hours of light i go walking beside the fjord with my rolleiflex. the rest of the time i am here in the hall chatting, reading and writing. last night i had my first glimpse of the northern lights, sending bands of electric green swirling and flickering across the velvet sky.

as 2014 neared its end i felt a growing hunger to escape from the world. so much has happened and so many new doors are opening. i needed to get away from everything, clear my head and ready my focus for the year ahead.

typically my first thought was to seek out a small island. i started looking at the cape verde group and preparing plans. but my friend jens dyvik, a designer and fabricator based in oslo, suggested a trip up here and it seemed perfect. my friend martin dittus from london was also able to join us.

the reason for jens’ suggestion was not just the spectacular location. the hall where i’m sitting was the world’s first “fablab”, a workshop with a strong community ethos providing a variety of computer-controlled fabrication devices for contemporary craft workers. there are now more than three hundred fablabs around the world but this is where the movement began in 2003. its founder haakon karlsen is a remarkable man who has pioneered everything from the most efficient technique for artificial insemination to wireless systems that track sheep roaming free in the mountains. it’s been an inspiration learning about his philosophy and experiences.

jens specialises in systems of community design and production. he publishes the files for his designs without restriction so they can be freely reused and adapted by other people around the world. he spent two years visiting fablabs in twenty countries and working on projects with them as he went. he’d made two prior visits to lyngen to meet haakon and was eager to make a third trip. it’s been fascinating to be a bystander as they take a laser scan of an iron-age brooch and fabricate a mould so they can cast replicas; or as they cut text into a raw pine plank with a computer-controlled milling machine to create a sign for the sheep farm where the fablab is based. it’s the first time i’ve seen experts working with these tools at close quarters. the path from an idea to a beautifully-crafted physical object is astonishingly fluid and immediate.

jens, martin and i joined a dozen of haaken’s family and friends to see in the new year with a vast norwegian feast of fish, meat and salads in the hall. at midnight we went outside in the snow with glasses of champagne to watch fireworks going off all around the fjord.

2014 has mostly been a wonderful year for me. the trampery opened two new buildings. the first was fish island labs, a centre for digital arts created with the barbican centre in an edwardian stable block beside the river lea. the second was the trampery old street, where we transformed an abandoned 1960s building in  central shoreditch. old street was the culmination of three and a half years’ struggle and probably the most difficult thing i’ve ever undertaken. i ended up taking responsibility for the entire interior, down to the selection of every light switch and tap, so it was also the biggest design project i’ve done. sulaiman sibai made a beautiful film about the creation of the building. with poetic timing the trampery old street opened five years to the day after the doors opened at the trampery’s very first site at dereham place.

it was also an exciting year for trampoline systems. craig and i rebooted the company in 2011 with a new focus to develop innovative techniques for analysing business data. 2014 was really the year this approach came of age. in the spring we were appointed by the european commission to undertake a two year initiative analysing the startup economy across the whole continent. then in the autumn we won a project from the mayor of london’s office to undertake the most detailed ever analysis of the science and technology sector in greater london. in between we completed projects analysing the employment and revenue created by the uk’s venture capital industry and tracking all the country’s high-growth firms.

having been such a woeful correspondent over the past three years the backlog of untold stories is too intimidating for me to even think about trying to chip away at it. the most i can attempt is to fill in a couple of the larger pieces.

after six years living upstairs from a glass foundry in dalston, in september 2013 the glassmaker sold the whole building for redevelopment and i was obliged to move out. i’d loved being there despite the constant filth percolating up from below, the leaky roof and the impossibility of heating the place in winter. in particular i loved the immense roof terrace where i cultivated a wild garden complete with summer house. the prospect of moving was horrifying. first because of the sheer quantity of stuff i’d accumulated through inheritance, ebay purchases and picking stuff up on the street. second because it seemed highly unlikely i’d ever find another place that suited me so well.

the search was every bit as depressing as i feared. but at the last minute i came across something so peculiar  it made my jaw drop. it was a 1940s lock-keeper’s cottage in hackney wick, converted into a television studio in the 90s, sandwiched between the river and the canal, without any road leading to it, surrounded by lawn and mature trees. in an extra bizarre twist the house was the closest dwelling to the olympic stadium. i raced over to see it and fell in love right away. the owners lived next door and were understandably picky about who moved in so i had an anxious few days while they considered my suitability. thankfully they concluded they could put up with me as a neighbour.

moving my belongings from dalston to hackney wick required three days, three vans and a team of four burly lithuanians. the lack of road access meant every item, including my piano and spinet, had to be carried across the canal on a footbridge then wheeled up the towpath to the house. it was one of the most appalling experiences of my life but at last it was done.

after fifteen months living at old ford lock cottage i’m still intoxicated by the miraculous improbability of it. the house is like a sanctuary, a pocket of rural tranquility cheek by jowl with london’s most creatively energetic district. often the loudest sound i can hear is the wind rustling in the trees, birdsong or the rush of water from the lock sluices. yet i can walk out of the house and within ten minutes be watching experimental theatre or bouncing around at a rave.

the house is spread over three floors with dining room and kitchen at ground level, the main living space on the first floor and a spiral staircase leading up to a bedroom and dressing room on the second floor. the building was beautifully refurbished by my landlord with a variety of reclaimed materials. in contrast to dalston the windows are double glazed, the walls are insulated, the roof is waterproof and  everything in the house works.

as summer approached i constructed a south-facing deck in front of the house where i have breakfast as often as conditions permit. i also acquired a five-man inflatable dinghy (with electric outboard) and a one-man kayak to escape up the canal alone or with friends whenever the mood takes me. they have been well used.

2014 was a year of hectic travels with trips to warsaw, paris, brussels, cannes, toronto, san francisco, copenhagen, austin, salzburg, oslo, geneva, chamonix, stromboli, pizzo callabro, jeddah and finally lyngen. it’s been a bit exhausting fitting all this in alongside my labours in london but the succession of encounters with different people and places has been magnificently energising.

i’ve left the biggest development of these years until last. specifically it consisted of meeting a beautiful young architect called mattia at a club in dalston in september 2011. he was dancing in a world of his own, as if the rest of the crowded club didn’t exist. i was immediately smitten. we spent the next three years together.

i never expected to find a partner who shared my guilty adoration of brutalist architecture and 1970s urban planning. we worked together on a series of trampery interiors, bickering like a pair of old women. these were supremely happy years for me. it was hard when our relationship came to an end in september but i remain grateful for every moment of it.

here’s to 2015. for everyone reading these words i send my wishes for courage, truth and joy in the year ahead.

: c :

Italy, Stromboli, Wanderer

d i n u o v o

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[ 18:39 wednesday 27 august 2014 – piscita, isola di stromboli ]

i’m sitting on paolo’s long terrace, dripping wet after swimming. the evening sun hovers low above the flank of the volcano. below me the sea is almost motionless. tiny waves lick and fizz against the black sand. the day’s hydrofoil from napoli creeps across the horizon, the growl of its powerful engines clearly audible in the shimmering air.

it’s twenty-nine months since my last entry in this journal. this has been a wondrously fertile period for me. seeds i’ve planted and tended over a decade are sprouting on every side. the trampery has grown from one building to four; spreading across software, fashion, design and the arts. two more buildings are due to open before the end of the year, including a spectacular new flagship in the centre of shoreditch. the trampery’s also part of a project to develop a completely new kind of “entrepreneurial community” integrating 500 apartments with 50,000 square feet of workspace, studios, cafes and event spaces. meanwhile after years of ups and downs trampoline systems has found a solid niche as a data analyst focused on business clusters. over the past year the company has won a string of landmark projects including one from the greater london authority to undertake the most detailed ever analysis of the region’s technology industry and one from the european commission to analyse europe’s entire startup ecosystem. finally one click orgs has launched the world’s first fully electronic co-operative, providing member-owned organisations where membership, voting and governance can all be managed online. i could happily write an essay on each venture but this journal exists to chart the personal journey rather than the entrepreneurial one.

two years have passed since i last set foot on this island of stromboli. after living here from july 2001 until july 2003 i’ve continued to come once or twice each year. the island became a second home for me, a parallel set of continuing relationships and experiences, an opposite pole to my frenzied life in london. stromboli was my safety valve, a retreat open to me whenever i needed it. here i could find the solitude and the immersion in wild nature which london denies. this second universe allowed me to throw myself into my work in london with a vigour that would otherwise have been impossible.

by my last visit in 2012 my relationship with the island felt out of balance. after coming here as a complete outsider in 2000 with he photographer fabrizio ruffo i’d gradually become an insider. my time with matteo sforza in 2010 accelerated the process by casting me as partner to someone who grew up in the community. without realising it i’d developed a sense of entitlement, feeling aggrieved if i wasn’t invited to certain parties or gatherings. this was ironic bearing in mind that during my two years living on the island i carefully maintained my status as an outsider and sought to avoid entanglement in the complex systems of obligation and affiliation.

i needed a break to reset my relationship with the island. the two year gap since my last visit has done the trick. when i arrived on the island last friday i felt like an outsider once again with a fresh sense of humility. during these days, as in my earliest visits, i have mostly sought solitude. during the afternoon i pass hours sitting alone on the black rocks bathed in the intense white blaze of sunlight watching the shimmering azure horizon. in the evenings i become more sociable, circulating around the village and visiting friends. i find myself eschewing parties in favour of smaller private gatherings. i feel close to my dearest friends again in a way i haven’t done for too long. everything has come back into focus.

this restoration of balance has manifested itself forcefully through my photography. from my earliest visits the camera was a catalyst for my exploration of the island and its people. behind the lens i would become entranced, completely absorbed in the delicate rhythms of light and colour around me. over the years the trail of images i left served as a record not only of my obsessive explorations of the island but also my changing relationship with it. one of the most unsettling aspects of the final years was the increasing difficulty i found to capture the inspiration which had arisen so effortlessly in the past. from this perspective my arrival on this visit was like my very first arrival. everything that had become familiar and over-explored was once again new and mysterious. 

this sense of a new beginning was heightened by having a new camera in my hands; indeed not just a new camera but a completely different photographic format. a couple of months ago i lost my faithful canon eos 3. instead of replacing it i started researching medium format cameras. the eos 3 subsequently reappeared but by that point it was too late to turn back. i spent a month trying to make sense of the byzantine variety of formats, bodies and lenses before concluding that i wanted a rolleiflex 6008i with a 6×6 back and a 40mm or 50mm lens. a happy combination of destiny and ebay then delivered me precisely what i sought. one evening a couple of weeks ago i cycled up across walthamstow marshes to collect a tightly packed box from a fellow called ibraam. i spent the next few days putting everything together and figuring out how it worked. after a week i felt confident enough to load my first film and take the camera blackberrying with some friends by the river lea. each roll of 120 film provides just twelve frames, each frame six centimetres by six centimetres square. this encourages a certain economy in usage. so far on stromboli i’ve used three rolls. the camera is considerably heavier and bulkier than the eos but this should be amply compensated by the quality of the images that result. of course until these first films have been developed i can’t be entirely sure i’m actually using it correctly. i half expect a set of blank images to be returned from the laboratory.

three weeks ago a lava flow formed on the side of the volcano, the first time this has happened since 2007. stromboli’s typical pattern of activity is three or four eruptions an hour from craters at the summit. this pattern switches to a lava flow if the pool of magma rises to the top of the cone. the last time i saw one was in january 2003 shortly after a massive explosion ripped the top off the mountain and a tsumami triggered the island’s evacuation. the opportunity to capture the new lava flow with the rolleiflex was an irresistible mission for the trip. just before sunset on monday i set off up the mountain with paolo and a group of friends. we’d ascended to around three hundred and fifity metres when we were stopped by a pair of guides who informed us that the mountain was closed above two hundred and ninety metres for safety. usually in these situations if a guide recognises you they’ll turn a blind eye but on this occasion they made it clear they weren’t budging until we turned round and descended. reluctantly we began to retrace our steps with the guides following at the rear. having lugged the camera so far and got so close to my objective i wasn’t going to let anything stop me. so i nonchalantly wound my way to the front of the group and waited for a sharp bend in the path then darted into the bushes and hid myself. once i was sure everyone had passed, including the guides, i returned to the path and continued the ascent. to avoid attracting attention i avoided using my torch, relying on starlight and peripheral vision to follow the path.

i spent the next five hours on the mountain, ascending to six hundred metres and being rewarded with a jaw-dropping experience of the lava flow. the fact i was the only person on the mountain made it feel even greater a privilege. it’s hard to express what it’s like to be so close to a lava flow. it’s like watching a massive incandescent creature, writhing its way across the mountainside, probing for new gullies to occupy, constantly in motion. whilst i watched a new channel formed and pushed its way down a hitherto dark section of mountainside. the lava was orange and red with brighter whites and yellows where the crust cracked exposing hotter material inside. in parallel with the viscous lava rocks were constantly solidifying and breaking off, rolling down the slope like incandescent snowballs, exploding with showers of sparks where they bounced. the visual spectacle was accompanied by an incessant fizzing, crackling, popping and banging. i could feel the heat on my face.

on this visit, as with so many previous visits, i am staying with my friend paolo russo on his estate at piscita. to a large extent the preservation of my sanity over these past ten years has been thanks to his hospitality. 

[ 13:32 wednesday 3 september 2014 – cinema mele, pizzo, calabria ]

on saturday afternoon pasquale dropped me at the port in stromboli and i hitched a lift to vibo marina on the return leg of a day-tripper boat from calabria. my friend giuseppe picked me up in his gorgeous 1970s fiat minivan (a 900 pulmino) and drove me back to pizzo. i’ve spent the last five days staying with him in the clifftop cinema his grandfather built in the 1950s.

cinema mele is an exquisite and miraculous survival of post-war italian architecture. one descends a narrow side street in the old city of pizzo to find a tall doorway at the end with “cinema mele” written above. the entrance opens into a grand marble-floored lobby with a huge square window offering a panoramic view over the sea. to the left one staircase ascends to a lobby at balcony level and another descends to a lobby at stalls level. tall teak-veneered doors open from each of these lobbies into the flank of the main auditorium which is twisted around to place the screen on the same side of the building as the entrance.

the walls and ceiling of the auditorium are covered with moulded white plaster panels in three different designs. the floor is polished concrete. the lower sections of the walls are painted brick red or cream. the doorways and windows are trimmed with red velvet pelmets and gold tassels. the auditorium seats 500 in rows of delicate curved plywood chairs mounted on thin steel legs. the staircases and balconies sport simple steel bannisters with a zigzag motif. at the rear of the auditorium a terrace runs the whole width of the building. from the edge of the terrace. at the edge of the terrace the cliff falls away to the sea a couple of hundred feet below.

the cinema fell out of use thirty years ago and has lain abandoned since then. for reasons nobody can fathom giuseppe’s great uncle had the windows removed. as a result the building has suffered. in places the reinforcing steel rods in the concrete structure have corroded and chunks of concrete have crumbled away. damp in the walls has caused paint to peel away and the rendering to bubble up. the velvet pelmets are rotted and hanging in tatters. leaks in the roof have stained a couple of the moulded panels. but overall the building has survived miraculously well. the cinema has never been refurbished so the building one experiences today is fundamentally as it was designed by giuseppe’s grandfather sixty years ago.

two years ago giuseppe took upon himself the epic task of bringing cinema mele back to life as an arts venue. over the last two summers he’s installed new electrical and plumbing systems, created a kitchen in the stalls lobby and started work to stabilise the building’s condition. in the process he’s turned its ruined aspects into sculptures and things of beauty. through the summer he lives here with the artists and performers he invites from around the world to collaborate in this extraordinary environment. his next challenge is to raise money to put in windows and waterproof the roof. my rolleiflex has been busy documenting the building in its current condition. i’m up to eleven exposed rolls now.

this evening i fly back to london and resume battle on my ventures. i feel ready for everything.

: c :

France, Wanderer

s i x m o n t h s

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[ 20:28 tuesday 20 march – tignes le lavachet, france ]

here i am in the alps with leigh anne and clarence. we drove up from their home in geneva on monday morning coinciding with the first snow for several weeks. the boarding has been fantastic.

it’s more than six months since i published anything to “wanderer”, the longest gap since i started this open journal thirteen years ago in february 1999 (the word “blog” was coined later that year). it’s not that i’ve lacked interesting things to write about in the last six months. actually there have been so many interesting things i’ve barely had a moment to gather my thoughts.

forgive me if this despatch is rather long. there’s a lot to catch up on.

last autumn two projects simultaneously went big whilst an opportunity popped up for a third project that i couldn’t resist. as a result i spent the latter part of the year in a frenzy, working every hour of the day, spending weekends at my computer, switching manically back and forth between projects and trying desperately to hold everything together. one panicky night at the start of october i decided to sit down and list all the different things i was responsible for delivering before the end of the year. it took about an hour to write it all down.

the first project was the trampery, the shared workspace i founded in 2009. i’d been thinking about ways of organising multi-tenancy offices to speed up network development and trampoline had more office space than it needed. it seemed like an obvious step to open it up as a home for the interesting start-ups that were popping up in shoreditch at that time.

as a teenager i’d been fascinated with architecture and might have pursued it professionally had a friend’s father not told me “you start off wanting to change society then spend your days designing petrol stations and supermarkets .” notwithstanding this warning i retained a fascination with the way space shapes collaboration and culture. with successive offices i paid obsessive attention to layout, furnishing and decoration. unfortunately this drove my office managers mad since they couldn’t buy a mug or waste-paper basker without my approval. opening a shared workspace finally gave my obsession a practical outlet. as for the the name, the trampoline team chose “the trampery” by vote after it was suggested by craig mcmillan, my friend and co-founder in the company.

the trampery wasn’t an instant success by any means. for the first six months a succession of people drifted in and out without anyone staying more than a month or two. the space was often intimidatingly quiet, with every rustle and belch echoing around the room. i began to think i’d miscalculated and there was no demand for what we were offering. but just as i was about to give up some mysterious balance shifted and people started coming and staying. the community grew to ten people, fifteen, then twenty. in place of silence there was now a constant hum of energy and activity. we soon hit the maximum capacity of twenty-five with a vibrant community of people from technology start-ups, arts organisations and non-profits. meanwhile the trampery was gaining a reputation among east london’s cognoscenti as the coolest place to work
in the area.

by the end of 2010 the building was bursting and lots more companies wanted to join so i decided to spin off the trampery as a separate social enterprise and move it to a larger site. the very first place i looked at was a new building on bevenden street, just to the north of old street roundabout. it had been on the market for two days and i was the first person to look around. it was perfect and i quickly agreed terms with the owner. the whole thing seemed destined.

planning and fitting out the new building was one of the most enjoyable tasks i’ve ever performed. the site was just a concrete shell so i had a completely blank canvas. everything i’d ever observed about people’s habits for collaborating and socialising were distilled into the plans. the key to the final layout was pushing the kitchen to the front of the building creating a junction where residents could chat with each other over lunch, hold a quick meeting or bump into visitors. i wanted to avoid the sterile holding pen of a separate reception area and immediately drop guests into the thick of the action. having finalised the layout i spent dozens of hours scouring ebay and street markets for interesting antique furniture at knock-down prices. i bought a huge edwardian oval mahogany dining table from manchester, a job lot of 20 victorian dining chairs from somerset, a gilded louis xvi settee from shropshire, an art deco kitchen dresser from hertfordshire. week by week vans arrived to offload my purchases, each one more eccentric than the last.

the bevenden street site had twice the capacity of the original building, spread across two floors. but in four months every desk was gone. at the same time word was getting round about this peculiar workspace that looked more like a country house than an office. by the summer we had a steady trickle of people coming for tours, including journalists, investors, government officials and corporate bigwigs. we also had a variety of curious passers-by knocking at the door wanting to know if we were a furniture show-room, cafe or members club.

then in september the day arrived when i answered the phone and it was buckingham palace on the line asking if the duke of york could visit the trampery to meet some of the entrepreneurs working there. i took a deep breath. i’d never hosted a royal visit but i had a feeling some preparations would be involved. it was also clear the visit would have considerable symbolic weight since it would be the first time a member of the royal family had come into the east london technology community. i was thrilled the trampery had caught the attention of the duke’s team and told them we’d be honoured to welcome him.

for the next month the small team running the trampery worked like demons to get everything ready. we engaged a brilliant designer (david cuesta) to create a new logo in double-quick time, found a local catering business (“we made it for you”) to provide british-sourced trout and stilton sandwiches for tea, bought some giant steel tea-pots on ridley road market, had an aluminium plaque made for the duke to unveil, paced the floor with the duke’s team to choreograph his path through the building, went through the plans with his security detail, refined an agenda for a round-table discussion with the entrepreneurs, printed place cards, made arrangements with the media, selected a photographer to document the day, printed posters to put on the walls. five minutes before the duke’s arrival we were still rushing around getting everything ready. but when his bentley pulled into the mews outside outside everything was ready.

the duke was with us for an hour an a half. the discussion with entrepreneurs was considerably livelier than i’d predicted. the duke swiftly dispensed with small-talk and started asking pointed questions about the barriers that prevent technology start-ups from growing faster and what could be done to overcome them. he formed an easy rapport with the entrepreneurs and soon got them speaking without inhibition or stiffness. after the discussion i ushered him downstairs, stopping with the fuerte team so the duke could play with one of their augmented reality apps on an ipad. then we went through into the studio where the duke mingled with guests. i gave an address to welcome him, including an impromptu suggestion that he might consider turning one of buckingham palace’s bedrooms into a start-up incubator. then he made a speech, hailing the trampery as one of the most interesting things he’d seen in ten years supporting uk businesses. finally he unveiled the plaque we’d prepared.

initially i’d not been enthusiastic about having a plaque. the whole business of pulling a string to open a little curtain seemed rather trite. but the palace was keen to do it so i racked my brains for an approach more in keeping with the trampery’s spirit. the weekend before the visit i was trawling round spitalfields market when i spotted an offcut of purple suede which i thought would make an excellent curtain. after that i visited a craft market on brick lane and came upon a stall selling little people made from clothes pegs, with drawn-on faces and pipe-cleaner arms. i bought a peg in the form of a glamorous lady with flowing hair. i thought we could use this to fix the suede curtain on the plaque. to release it the duke would simply unclip the peg. it occurred to me the curtain would need something to hold it taut and ensure it fell away cleanly so i bought a couple of nine-inch nails from a hardware shop. my friend ben pickering, who’d just joined the trampery team, trimmed the suede to size and glued the nails at the bottom, then secured it to the plaque with the clothes peg.

to his credit the duke was completely unphased by our eccentric plaque unveiling and sailed through it without skipping a beat. at the end of his speech he turned round, grasped the clothes-peg lady and lifted her from the plaque. the purple suede curtain plummeted to the ground with a satisfying thud revealing the plaque beneath. then he turned straight round and pinned the clothes peg on the lapel pocket of my jacket. everyone was laughing, the duke included. it felt like a proper trampery ceremony.

there are some photos of the duke’s visit here.
and some general pictures of the trampery here.

the second project to take off was trampoline’s “tech city map”. back in 2008 i’d suggested analysing the networks linking technology businesses around shoreditch as a way to understand how the cluster was growing. however at that time nobody was interested and the idea didn’t go any further. then in november 2010 the new government announced its “tech city” initiative to boost east london’s technology community and suddenly everyone wanted to understand the cluster and help it grow.

in february 2011 i was invited to join a group of entrepreneurs, industry leaders, investors and university heads meeting monthly at downing street to brew policy for the east london technology community. i was asked to outline an approach to map networks across the cluster. the suggestion i put forward involved analysing the data published to social networking platforms day by day from businesses in the east london ecosystem. using trampoline’s technology we’d be able to see which businesses were talking about each other, forwarding each other’s messages and following each other’s activity; giving us a detailed picture of networks spanning the community plus a barometer of changing patterns of influence and interest. nobody had ever tried to conduct a live analysis of an entire business community before but based on trampoline’s experience analysing corporate communication networks i was certain we’d get interesting results.

this time my proposal was received much more enthusiastically so i set out to raise funds for the project. over the next few months a consortium of powerful technology and media businesses came together around the project and finally the “tech city map” (as it had become known) had sufficient resources to get underway. by september development was in full swing and the first glimmers of data were looking exciting. we were on course to provide a completely new source of insight for researchers and entrepreneurs interested in the east london community.

then the day came when i answered the phone and it was downing street on the line asking if the prime minister could launch the project to mark tech city’s first anniversary. i took a deep breath. this would place the project in a completely different context from the geeky research tool i’d envisaged. it also risked politicising the data generated by the project which might prove uncomforatble. but i was thrilled by the opportunity as any entrepreneur would be and quickly agreed. as icing on the cake, the launch event would be hosted at the trampery.

for the next month everyone in the trampoline team worked like demons to get the map ready for launch. we added extra features, partnered with a graphic design agency (playgen) to create a vastly improved user interface, juggled priorities day by day to squeeze every iota of functionality from the remaining time. to everyone’s horror a fatal bug came to light the evening before launch. i went to bed late that night not knowing if there’d be anything to launch the next day or not. craig and daniel were up all night battling with it. but at 10am on the 10th of november when david cameron’s car pulled up in front of the trampery the problem was fixed and the map looked ravishing.

i was with the prime minister for an hour but i was so exhausted it passed in a blur. first there was a discussion upstairs in the yellow room for the prime minister and twenty corporate leaders. then i chaired a discussion in the studio with the prime minister and half a dozen east london entrepreneurs, during which he tried out the map. next the bbc’s technology correspondent rory cellan-jones interviewed mr cameron in the green room with the map projected on the wall behind him. then he greeted the partners who made the map possible. and with that he was whisked off to his next engagement.

everything went without a hitch. the bbc’s interview with the prime minister was broadcast on the main evening news. a separate interview with me went out on the london news. in the hours following the tech city map’s launch 10,000 people explored it on the web. thanks to craig’s impeccable engineering the system performed flawlessly. the political storm followed soon enough, in the form of a notably futile argument about the exact number of technology businesses in east london. it seemed best to keep out of it and let people make up their own mindes. a couple of journalists made slightly unpleasant personal attacks on me, portraying me as political stooge raking in taxpayers money whilst prancing around in peculiar clothes. not a word of it was true (except the part about the peculiar clothes) so i just ignored it and got on with my work.

you can see the tech city map here.
and some photos from the prime minister’s launch event [7]here.

2011 was an amazing year for me and i loved it. i was blessed with magnificent friends and collaborators in every area of my life. at the height of the whirlwind in september i also met a beautiful man called mattia and we’ve been together ever since. in the middle of it all i turned forty.

if you’re wondering about the “third project” i mentioned at the beginning, i hope to be able to talk about that very soon.

: c :

In transit, Stromboli, Wanderer

m e t e o r i t e

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[ 15:58 wednesday 3 may – hydrofoil from stromboli to milazzo ]

a few minutes ago i embraced matteo, salvo and my other friends on stromboli then hauled my bags up the gangplank to the hydrofoil and gave a final salute as it pulled away from the quay. today the volcano is sombre with a dense white mass of cloud swirling around the top. every fifteen or twenty minutes a black stain appears in the cloud as an eruption blasts its lava, ash and gases into the air. the weather has been restless the last few days with the wind veering from south to west to north to south to west again and the sea switching rapidly between calm and crashing waves.

i arrived the day before easter with some slight trepidation. what would it be like to be with matteo again so soon after we broke up? would we want to see each other? would the pleasure of being on the island be impaired? within hours of arriving my anxiety had evaporated. matteo and i spent time together each day. sometimes alone, sometimes with friends and family. there was never any awkwardness or rancour. we talked with the same honesty as before. i think we recognised this was remarkable for two people who have just separated and perhaps thought even more highly of each other for it.

matteo’s family were amazingly welcoming to me. they invited me to easter lunch at their house, second only to the christmas meal. there were twenty people at table including three aunts and two uncles who’d come over from puglia, matteo’s brother and two sisters, his older sister’s husband and their two children. the meal was exquisite and continued without pause for four hours. knowing i didn’t eat meat matteo’s mother and aunts had been kind enough to prepare several dishes specially for me. the high point was roasted totani (pink-fleshed deep sea squid) stuffed with ricotta, mint and walnuts. sublime.

for the first time in all my years on stromboli i followed the island’s easter procession before lunch. this is a ritualised portrayal of mary’s reunion with the resurrected christ and a symbolic linking of the island’s two churches. at midday on easter sunday a statue of christ departs from the church of san vincenzo in scari on the shoulders of four men whilst a statue of the virgin leaves the church of san bartolo in piscita. each statue is preceded by banners, bells and chanting with a crowd of islanders following behind. with careful coordination the statues meet each other mid-way between the two churches. as they close the final gap each statue bows several times to the other. at the climactic moment when they come together mary’s tightly-closed robes are unbound to release doves or swallows which fly away having been secreted inside. after this the two statues proceed together to san bartolo where they are placed on pedestals and the priest ends the ceremony with a short address. it was a beautiful piece of theatre, much lighter than the hysterical mortifications of the easter spectacles i witnessed at trapani and marsala. photographs and film will follow.

irene did add a somewhat macabre edge to the story, explaining that the island’s children are pressed into service to stalk the island with nets and clubs the day before easter to catch the birds for hiding under mary’s robe. apparently the young hunters are prone to be a little over-enthusiastic in their efforts resulting in a proportion of the fowl being despatched to the great aviary in the sky before they can participate in the procession.

a couple of days after easter i spent the whole night on spiaggia lunga with salvo, renzo, luca and arianna. we were graced by one of the most spectacular meteorites i’ve ever seen. it arced across the sky in a shallow diagonal right the way to the horizon leaving a thick trail of sparkling light in its wake. we were left whooping in wide-eyed amazement. towards dawn i became completely absorbed watching as the colours of sea, sky and vegetation changed hue minute by minute. then as the sun rose dozens of swallows started to swoop in a circuit around us flying just a few centimetres above the surface of the sea. at the same time thousands to tiny white moths, just one or two millimetres across, appeared around us in a layer a metre above the black sand. none of us had ever seen anything like it before. i felt lucky; more than lucky.

following matteo’s request the island’s priest (don luciano da rico) very kindly gave me permission to play the organ in the church of san vincenzo which i’ve never done before. as we ascended the spiral steps to the dust-covered balcony i didn’t have great expectations of the ancient, rarely-played instrument. underneath the stops was a handwritten maintainer’s note dated 1917. the panting and wheezing emitted when i turned on the pump suggested this might have been the the date of its last service. the air pressure was irregular, one stop produced a sound like a car’s starter motor, several didn’t work at all and those that did work were erratic and outrageously out of tune. but despite this i completely fell in love with the instrument. the principals were chaffy and sweet. the quints were piquant and angular. the acoustic was thick but still intimate. best of all the unpredictable air pressure gave rise to a tremelo effect which sounded uncannily like a human flautist and changed with different combinations of keys. over three days i recorded several hours of improvisation. matteo joined in for some of it.

on my way to the island sergio mentioned that telecom italia was offering a cheap deal for data so i called them to active it. predictably, nothing happened. after several persistent calls to their support centre matteo managed to get it working. but the moment it was running i realised i had no wish to be connected to the internet and the cat’s cradle of services that interlace my urban routine. so i turned it off.

: c :

London, Wanderer

e x e u n t m a t t e o

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[ 00:42 tuesday 5 april – haggerston road ]

as suddenly, as unexpectedly, as beautifully as it began; my relationship with matteo is over.

three weeks ago today we rose before dawn to catch a bus to london bridge station and then a train to gatwick airport. matteo checked in his luggage. we sat together and watched each other over cups of coffee in an airport cafe, echoing the day of his arrival. then it was time for me to turn around and commence my journey back to london, leaving matteo to catch a flight for naples and stromboli.

i’d imagined a million ways our relationship would end; always with cataclysmic arguments, infidelities or betrayals. but there was nothing like that. we carried on caring about each other, creating music together, holding each other close. a day simply arrived when it was time for us to finish.

the first sign was returning to london after giving a talk in cornwall to find matteo in a state of feverish agitation. all that evening he clung to me, talking continuously, unable to focus. i held him tightly, spoke soothing words, ran my hand through his hair and tried to understand what was going on in his mind. three days later we booked the ticket for him to return to stromboli.

our final week together was extraordinary. every moment glowed. we recorded songs together almost every night and spent hours talking. we held a leaving party for the friends who had made our time together in london so happy.

on the journey back from the airport i felt like an automaton. opening the front door and coming into the empty house i broke down and cried for the first and last time. after that there was no sadness. this was partly because in my heart it didn’t feel like anything had changed. but it was also because i’d tried from the start to appreciate each day together as if it was our last, to immerse myself in the relationship without clinging to it.

despite its brevity this has been one of the richest, most intense and most joyful relationships of my life. for the first time i came close to being the person i aspired to be for my partner. when we started off together my friends were concerned i would end up getting hurt. but of all my relationships this is the one that has hurt me the least and given me the most joy.

despite the gulf in our age and experiences we were perfect partners in crime. we shared a love of putting on a show, bringing friends together, disrupting our environments, bucking convention and creating beautiful things in every sphere we touched. we were always honest with each other. we always listened to each other. we were always faithful to each other.

from the first moment i found matteo beautiful. he inspired me to be something better than i was.

i’m proud of us both for seizing the improbable opportunity that fate presented and following it without fear where it would lead.

thank you matteo, thank you for everything.

: c :