Category Archives: Wanderer

Hungary, Wanderer

b u d a p e s t

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[ 18:44 tuesday 9 october – budapest, hungary ]

a funky cafe behind the opera house. high ceilings, warm colours and a smattering of young people, many poring over laptops. budapest is a curious place. its profusion of vast monumental buildings reminds me of vienna but the preponderant style here is art nouveau rather than neo-baroque. walking around almost every building looks as if it originates from some time between 1880 and 1915. but all is not as it seems. the city was almost completely flattened by the russians towards the end of the second world war then rebuilt in the fifties. notwithstanding this pervasive fakery it is an impressive and beautiful city.

the conference has been fun. i gave my presentation yesterday afternoon and it got a great reaction. an intimidating slice of the world’s most influential venture capitalists are here, with a few technology bigwigs thrown in for good measure. the floor sessions i’ve attended haven’t been particularly stimulating but as usual it’s the conversations and encounters around the edges where interesting things happen.

i seem to be getting a reputation for my dress sense. on the plus side this gives me licence to wear interesting clothes. on the minus side reputations have to be lived up to. yesterday i wore a magnificent jacket i picked up second hand at spitalfields market. it’s got sections in salmon pink and cream with embroidered decoration in silver. i wore it to my great aunt jean’s ninetieth birthday last month (she’s a great dresser herself and she loved it) but yesterday was the first time i’ve worn it for business. everyone else here is wearing dark suits so it’s fair to say i was noticed. actually it provoked some unexpectedly confessional responses, with a succession of people coming up to me through the day to admit they hated wearing the business uniform. i bonded with one of the stewards called bob who’s been sporting natty suits he had made in vietnam.

one observation about the locals is that they expect rules to be observed. my first experience was arriving at the airport, buying a ticket for the bus and metro to the town centre, putting it in the validation machine on the bus, then being stopped by an inspector when i arrived at my destination. it turned out the validation machine hadn’t stamped the ticket. i explained that it was my first time in budapest, that i’d bought a ticket and attempted to validate it, but the inspector was completely unsympathetic. he flatly repeated that the fine was five thousand forints (about thirteen pounds) until finally i paid up. then on my first morning i got down to breakfast in the hotel five minutes after breakfast officially ended. there were still half a dozen people eating and the food was all laid out but the waiter bluntly told me i was too late. when i insisted he eventually allowed me to pick up a plate and get some bits to eat but then he made me go to a different room to eat it. there were still a couple of people finishing their breakfasts in the restaurant when i handed in my plate and left so the whole exercise seemed ridilulous. i don’t think i function very well in cultures where rules are followed too rigorously. i suspect that’s part of what i find so agreeable about southern italy.

: c :

In transit, UK, Wanderer

t r a i n c h a o s

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[ 14:13 sunday 7 october – first capital connect train, streatham to luton airport ]

my elaborate web of connections across italy, spain and morocco went off without a hitch. today’s journey from london to budapest has made up for all that. my flight departed from gatwick an hour ago and i was not on board. i arrived at london bridge station three hours ago with plenty of time in hand for my train. but the moment i set foot on the platform a twenty minute delay was announced. then ten minutes later the train was cancelled. this was irritating but the next train would still get me to the airport in time. however after twenty minutes this service too was cancelled. at this point i started to feel at little anxious. a rumour went round that someone had committed suicide at purley and services across south london were in chaos. there were no announcements about the situation but it wasn’t looking promising.

together with three other passengers i set off in a taxi for gatwick. but driving from london bridge to gatwick takes half an hour longer than the train and speaking to the driver as we sped south it became clear the likelihood of me getting there in time was slim. i called kaz and rebecca who generously interrupted their sundays to assist me. in minutes rebecca had booked a flight from luton to budapest which departs at five o’clock. yipee! i asked the driver to drop me off and bid farewell to the other passengers. the cab dropped me in front of streatham hill station but that had no useful services so i walked the half mile to streatham, studied the routings and decided my best bet was to take this train. it follows an improbable route from here heading south then westward through tooting and wimbledon, then north and eastward through bermondsey to london bridge before turning north-west through king’s cross thameslink and continuing to luton. the train is half an hour late but it’s running and i expect to reach luton airport with plenty of time to spare for my flight.

i’m going to budapest for three days for the etre conference, a gathering of influential venture capitalists and technology moguls. i’m due to give a talk tomorrow afternoon. as soon i’ve checked into my hotel and found some supper i ought to start working on my presentation. rebecca mailed the briefing notes to my house so they were there to pick up when i arrived last night.

looking back to the last forty-eight hours, the thirteen-hour bus journey from ouazazate to tangier was far less arduous than i feared, largely because it was half empty. andrew, cristina and i arrived in tangier at eleven, fantasising about coffee and pastries, only to discover that all the cafes were shut for ramadan. so we got straight into a taxi for the two-hour journey along the coast to the spanish colony of ceuta where we were finally able to satisfy our cravings. after that we went for a swim and spent the afternoon vegetating blissfully on the beach. to enter ceuta from morocco one passes through a proper old-fashioned frontier with border guards, check- points, barbed wire and a stretch of no-man’s-land in the middle. it projects a powerful sense of crossing from one world into another. in the evening we united with some of cristina’s journalist friends. after an orientational stroll around the town we dined on intriguing spanish-moroccan hybrid tapas then moved to an irish pub which seems to be the hub of the ceutan journalism community. i didn’t miss alcohol during the week in morocco but the first cold beer did taste good (as did the second, third..).

the spanish coast is clearly visible across the mediterranean sea from ceuta and the next day i said goodbye to andrew and cristina after our journey together and got on a ship for the hour-long trip to algeciras on the other side. from there i took a bus round the bay to la linea then walked over the frontier into gibralter. the contrast was much less dramatic than the morocco/ceuto border but it was surreal suddenly to enter a domain peppered with british symbols like gilbert scott’s red telephone boxes and double decker buses. gibralter felt simultaneously nostalgic and a tiny bit seedy, an echo of a world where such impositions were common-place. after checking in at the airport (the first i’ve encountered where a main road crosses the middle of the runway) i picked my way behind a row of sheds and found a dirtly little beach facing algericas and the afternoon sun. a couple of english families were set up, with the children playing in the shallows. i propped a broken chair against a concrete wall and sat there sunbathing for a last luxurious half- hour. then i walked back to the terminal and got on my way. the flight back from gibralter was uneventful. next stop budapest.

: c :

In transit, Morocco, Wanderer

o u a r z a z a t e

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[ 21:03 thursday 4 october – overnight bus ouzazate to tangier, morocco ]

andrew, cristina and i have just boarded this long-distance bus at ouzazate in the far south of morocco. i’ll be in this seat, hopefully with occasional remission, for the next fourteen hours. it’s not likely to be pleasant.

my preference would have been to take a taxi collectif to marrakech (three hours, crossing the high atlas mountains), then a train from there to casablanca (another three hours) and finally the sleeper train to tangier (i don’t how long this takes). that would offer much more chance of arriving in tangier fresh and relaxed rather than crumbling zombie-like out of this bus in fourteen hours’ time. i love sleeper trains anyway. however we wanted to spend a night in the fringes of the sahara desert and the only way we could fit this in was by taking the overnight bus back north. our moment in the desert was magical so i don’t begrudge the coming ordeal in the least.

the coach’s cabin lights were extinguished shortly after departure and the reading lights don’t work so i have to hold my diary right under my nose so i can see to write. meanwhile the coach is lurching around as we start the climb into the mountains. it’s not the easiest environment for writing but the effort is quite entertaining. andrew and cristina are in the row in front of me. niko and pau (new friends with whom we journeyed to the desert) are in the row to my right. a few minutes ago niko held the ink bottle so i could refill my pen, quite a perilous undertaking.

my smartphone continued its decline to the point where i can’t even use it as an address book now. the wretched thing lost two wanderer messages in successive system freezes, obliterating my accounts of madrid and marrakech. hence i’m writing this despatch by pen in my diary, a more trustworthy technology.

: c :

Italy, Wanderer

p i a z z a d a n t e

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[ 17:41 friday 28 september – piazza dante, napoli ]

sitting on the plinth of dante’s graffiti-laden statue in the centre of the piazza waiting for maurizio, a talented performer of the city’s traditional music and street theatre whom i met a year ago on stromboli. there’s a band warming up on a stage to my right. the early evening crowd ebbs and flows around me.

napoli overwhelms the senses. this decaying, anarchic, spectacular city grips and fascinates me like no other. its vitality is uncontainable. every facet of human possibility is found here, crammed into this this highly unstable patch of ground.

: c :

In transit, Italy, Wanderer

h e l i p a d

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[ 22:25 thursday 27 september – mv laurana, stromboli to napoli ]

i’m huddled in the ship’s bar with irene and her friends, an hour out from stromboli. this journey has so many memories for me. today i’m sharing a cabin with maurizio, on his way back to melbourne to rejoin his girlfriend.

yesterday evening i had dinner with gustl and valerie then walked up the mule trail to punta la bronza. the moon was full and the sky was completely clear. the volcano was unusually quiet, expelling a glowing fan of lava every half hour or so.

i sat on the helipad for a couple of hours watching a cloud front slowly drift in from the north-western horizon. by the time the wispy outrunner clouds passed across the moon orange flickers of lightning were starting to flash in the distance and it was clear a storm was coming. i did a few sets of yoga sequences, bid farewell to the mountain and started my descent. a few minutes after i got back home an hour later the heavens opened.

: c :

In transit, Italy, Wanderer

r i n e l l a

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[ 05:21 friday 21 september – ryanair 3916, stansted to palermo ]

here i am, fitting myself into a seat in a packed plane at this truly unholy house. karsten dropped by while i was packing this evening and suggested my expectations of getting a couple of hours´sleep were optimistic. he was right. i didn´t get any.

thus commences an alarmingly complicated journey. after this flight to palermo i´ll take the train to milazzo, a hydrofoil to stromboli (where i´ll stay a week), then the overnight ship to naples, from where i´ll fly to madrid for a night, then fly to marrakech, drive around morocco for a few days, up to the spanish colony of ceuta on the mediterranean coast, take a ship over the straits to gibralter and finally fly back to london. with any luck i´ll manage to meet a succession of friends along the way. i didn´t intend the trip to be so tortuous, it just gradually got that way. sorting out all the connections has been a nightmare.

13:00 / now seated on an even more crowded train waiting to depart from palermo. this is one of the ancient regional efforts with no air conditioning and seats designed to banish any possibility of sleep (of which i´m in sore need). nonetheless i´m feeling excited. it´s a while year since i was in sicily and it´s wonderful to be back in the midst of the familiar sounds, perfumes and chaos.

my first liaison has already gone awry. antonio was due to travel down from tuscany today but he had a run in with a dentist and won´t be coming til tomorrow. meanwhile he´s told me where i can find a key to one of his aunts´ houses on stromboli so i have somewhere to spend the night.

19:44 / perched on the wall overlooking the little port at rinella, on the south-western corner of the island of salina. from where i´m sitting the islands of lipari and vulcano spread out to my left, with filicudi and alicudi to my right. i shouldn´t be here at all but the hydrofoils switched to the winter timetable two weeks early so there was no way to get to stromboli today. rinella was the most remote place i could get to and i´ve never been here before so it was the obvious choice to spend the night. so far nothing is going to plan.

i arrived an hour and a half ago, sorted out a room in a deserted hotel by the harbour then swam off the rocks with the sun setting over alicudi. preparations are underway for an open-air theatre performance on the little square above the harbour but it´s hard to predict what my state of consciousness will be by the time the show commences. i´m already hallucinating from sleep deprivation.

: c :

Italy, Wanderer

t r e m i t i

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[ 19:53 monday 29 july – cala tonda, isola san domino, italy ]

the sun descends into a purple cloud-bank spanning the horizon. the turquoise sea glints golden in these final rays. i sit watching cross-legged on the bone-white rock.

after our adventures in the mountains christian and i decided to come out here to the tremite islands, clustered in the adriatic near the puglia’s heel. this is the only group of italian islands on which i hadn’t set foot.

my expectations were not high. i imagined a few featureless islets smothered in concrete villas and knick-knack shops. the reality is much more wonderful. there are two inhabited islands and two uninhabited. the total population is below four hundred. most of the history and population is on san nicola. most of the tourism is on san domino where i sit.

the dominant rock is limestone, riddled with fossil shells and bleached white by the sun. the dominant vegetation is the scrub and pine which once stretched along the adriatic coast. the south-eastern side of the island is a warren of secluded coves and sea caves. the north-western side faces the prevailing wind and is much more rugged and windswept.

there are three or four hotels which look like they were built in the seventies but overall the island feels undeveloped. the main settlement seems to have grown out of the streets and houses constructed by the mussolini administration to accommodate political prisoners. there’s no sign of any structures that pre-date this.

the first thing we did on arrival was find somewhere to stay. after several false starts we found a hard-as-nails pugliese crone who reluctantly rented us a room. she seems to have us marked as trouble-makers and she’s watching us like a hawk. next we rented a couple of bikes and zipped off to a cove for a swim. the sea reminds me of pantelleria, turquoise green and hypnotically clear.

cycling off-road at midday when the temperature is above forty degrees has a remarkable effect on one’s metabolism. it’s simply impossible to get enough oxygen. one swiftly becomes light-headed and intensely exhausted. on the hills i found myself needing to stop every couple of minutes and stand panting frantically waiting for my pounding heart to return to something resembling its normal pace.

this afternoon we’ve been exploring the north-west coast with its spectacular outcrops and bays. the rock samphire is in blossom and its pungent odour is carried on the air. the rocks are also dotted with beautiful tall-stemmed flowers topped with round seed-heads. my camera has been busy.

it’s doing my spirits a power of good to be here.

: c :

Italy, Wanderer

m a r y

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[ 23:08 saturday 28 july – piano imperatore, abruzzo, italy ]

i’m sitting on a limestone crag at the edge of a vast grass-covered plain, one and a half thousand metres up in the appenine mountains. the plain is ringed with mountains reaching up to three thousand metres, some forested on the lower slopes and some barren rock. everything is on a massive scale.

christian and i reached the plain just before sunset, after a tough trek through five miles of forested gorge rising nine hundred metres along its length. christian’s asleep now in our tent atop a flattened hillock below my current vantage point. the wide landscape is bathed in pale light from the not-quite-full moon. dogs barking at a shepherd’s hut the other side of the plain echo among
the mountains, reverberating sometimes beyond a second.

every sunday for the past four weeks i’ve cycled to waterloo station in london, slung my bike on the train to norbiton and visited my step-granny mary in kingston hospital. she was admitted in june with intestinal problems. i found her with one tube going into her wrist, another in her nose and an oxygen mask to help her breathe. her first comment to me expressed mortification that her “old ladies’ feathers” hadn’t been trimmed.

when i got up this morning i learned that mary died in the day’s first hour. a week on monday would have been her ninety-first birthday. she celebrated her ninetieth last year by going sky-diving, earning her a measure of notoriety in the world’s press. her decline in the last couple of months was sudden.

mary was a magnificent lady, full of spirit and laughter. she and my grandfather were married in 1985, shortly after my grandmother’s death. their twelve years together were ludicrously happy.

my initial visits to the hospital were chatty. i took flowers and a big photograph of a labrador puppy to tape over the television screen beside her bed. she wasn’t afraid of death and was curious about what, if anything, might come afterwards.

last sunday mary was a lot weaker and less responsive than previous visits. her speech was barely audible and much of the time i was there her eyes remained closed.

previously i’d asked if she’d like me to read her anything. her eyes had lit up and she’d asked for dickens’ “the old curiosity shop”, adding it was her favourite. so i brought a copy with me, rested it on the pillow beside her head and started reading softly just a few inches from her ear.

i couldn’t tell whether she was following the story or not but it wasn’t important. in two bursts i completed the first chapter. at some level i understood it was the last time i’d be with her. i cried more than i wanted to and lingered when it was time for me to go.

this afternoon in penne i bought a funerary candle and added it to my rucksack’s contents. now i’ve come to sit vigil for mary in this beautiful place. the candle is burning on a rock just in front of me. through tonight it will be visible for miles around, a point of light in the vastness of the plain.

: c :

London, Sandhurst, Wanderer

w a t e r w a t e r

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[ 01:18 wednesday 25 july – shipton street, london ]

since the weekend mum and dad have inhabited an island surrounded by flood-waters from the swollen river severn. there’s water lapping at the bottom of the garden but mercifully it hasn’t advanced further than that. nobody can get in or out of the village except by boat or helicopter. the water supply was cut off days ago. there have been periods without electricity but at the moment it’s working. mum and dad have moved everything valuable upstairs lest the water rise a few more inches.

i remember one year when i was at school there were severe floods, though not on the present scale. initially access to the village was tidal, with the roads becoming passable twice a day when the tide was low. then we were cut off completely.

we’d brought up a small dinghy with us from cornwall and i remember going out with dad to deliver supplies and sandbags to farms that had become completely cut off from the outside world. my most vivid memory is of going out on my own one evening and rowing through a neighbour’s apple orchard at twilight, navigating carefully to avoid catching the oars on the wizened trees.

: c :

London, Wanderer

s u m m e r s o l s t i c e

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[ 23:26 thursday 21 june – hampstead heath, london ]

sergio and i cycled up here to the middle of hampstead heath to mark the solstice. we’re sitting at the top of a hillock crowned with a circle of pine trees. i always found this place interesting. at the other side of the coppice six or seven people are sitting in a circle chanting. the sound of drumming drifts over from the other side of the heath. it’s almost midnight but the western the sky is still light.

as i write a curtain draws silently across highgate hill in front of us and shortly afterwards a fine drizzle starts to fall. the sound of drums grows more distinct and a walking band of half a dozen african drummers emerges from the trees and crosses the hillock behind us.

all in all the atmosphere is pleasingly strange up here. i thought we’d be alone so it’s good to see other people making an effort to celebrate today’s mid-point of the solar year.

one of the things i find most dis-spiriting about city life is the almost complete detachment from natural cycles. the same food is in the shops all year. the streets are light around the clock. concrete and steel stubbornly refuse to sprout and blossom in the spring.

what i miss most of all is the connection to the lunar cycle i felt on st agnes and stromboli. living there the nights around the full moon felt palpably different from other times and i think everyone in the community shared this consciousness. the effect it wrought on the environment was absolutely startling. here in london it’s possible for full moon to come and go completely unnoticed.

this year i decided to try and stay better connected with the planetary cycles, even though i’m here in london. so every full moon i cycle out to some patch of grass where there are fewer streetlamps and watch the moon for half an hour. and tonight, the solstice, i wanted to get away from the cars and buildings for a moment so here I am.

: c :