It's a Big Day in the North

First off, a shout out to Cats On A Hot Tin

Debut EP be with us shortly, paws crossed. 

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Q: Which is the only European country to not have Starbucks? 

Q: Which European country ended WWII with more Jews than it started with?

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On Vesuvius I was almost engulfed by the Stone Beast who lives a hardened life within the rock face. His bulbous igneous nose travels just beneath the surface and sniffs out anyone who's feeling really cheeky. I was lucky to escape with my garters. 

It was ganz toll up the volc, feeling the weight of hope and hate and history curdling underneath me and biding its time until bade sing, by the gods, and bade blow and overflow, quash the lives below. There are people who live right up on the sunny side, and the dark side too. But it's active. And all of Napoli is right there. Pompei is still populated - modern Pompei. It's due an eruption. The original one only actually killed a few thousand, displaced 20,000, or thereabouts, I forget my figures. But the point is that this ancient city, cultural aorta of southern Italy, veritable cornerstone, only had as many people as live in two and a half Totneses, or a section of Kingsland Road. Now there are probably one, two, three million people living in its basin, waiting for the giant rain to fall, hoping against time. But time is the all powerful, all singing all dancing. What they gonna do then?

The view changed with the light. There are a bunch of bars / events places dotted up the road to the National Park bit of Vesuvius, and in the late evening, from where I was surreptitiously camped, the sounds of a right hoe-down knees-up jounced over the rocky outcrops and filled me with strange wonder. It started with the YMCA and ended in a trance. There was lots of singing along, lots of Chic, and I'm sure there was lots of moving around unabashedly on the dance floor.

Next day I went to that place they sing about, and saw a hunky dory cache of potted goods. That is, goods of pot. And shelved. They liked them, did the Romans. It's pretty swell, walking around pretending like you own the place. What you up to tonight, Antonio? Dunno Octavio, was thinking about going down to the amph, they got that new play on. Oh yeah? What's it about? Kid who falls in love with his mum or some shit. I dunno. It's got good reviews. Sounds weird. Yeah, but you know, it's the way of the times. It's the Zeitgeist. Safe, all right, get Euripides to come along, and Eumenides. Can't have one without the other. 

Along the Amalfi coast from Napoli and Pompei is Sorrento, and then Salermo. 

I find huge container ship ports to be beguiling and overwhelming places. Like hideous but beautiful, gross in a weird way. I think about civilisation and history, and Age of Empires III, and the Ottomans, and the Silk Road and galleons and slaughter and riches and the naivety of a species hell bent on destroying itself in the name of progress. Then in town and city squares I think about it all all over again and it lifts my spirits, but also sets them off kilter. 

So much in one view! I find it weird.

Watch out or it will get you. Is it a monster? 

When the whitewash white washes over your earwaves for long enough for the sound wobbles to become actual reminiscences and real life auditory hallucinations you know you have hit the right spot and have reached a destination, which is a means.

The Grapes of Wrath is ace.

Stonking hills of southern central Italy struck with the vengeance of a dozen kings and Queens, denizens of the green almighty. Oh!

I forgot. The artichokes. Bustle of streets post-Pompei, suburban, hive of activity. Mechanics' oil mixed with spatters of rain so that you don't know what's hit you, exhaust haze, cars turning and people negotiating, everything happening all at once, and the intoxicating fumes of barbecue and rotisserie chicken, street vendors selling carciofi, or artichokes, fresh off the smoking bbq, wrapped in tin foil and stuffed full of garlic and salt and basil and a delicate spring floating onion, eaten with hands, taste lingering on lips and in chops and burps for miles, very memorable.

Downpours and cows tinkling. 

Essential bike maintenance by a stone igloo in the eastern plains. 1 2 3 4 punctures in a day and a half, thank you roads, new tyre, new inner, brand spanking, back on and even more better than before!

My foot turned into a repair kit, just in the nick of time.

And rolling into Bari! You beaut. The south of Italy is wilder and significantly more something than the north. Falafels and an ice cream the size of a small head. Preparing for an overnight ferry, Steinbeck forever the giver.

Here she is! It's 40 euros for the trip, sans cabin. There is a bar on board which I can only describe as Balkan. I don't know what that is exactly, but it's shiny and the music is too loud, the plush bench booths easily comfortable enough to sleep on, and the barista smartly dressed. What's the occasion? 

Albania! Bollocks to Brexit.

After national controversy and architects weighing in from all corners of the world, they have decided not to demolish but to refurbish the pyramid of Tirana. From the top you can see much of Tirana. Tirana is wonderful. Albania is great. 

Italy is the only European country to not have Starbucks. Albania is the only European country to end WWII with more Jews than it started with. 

It is hot and I have already eaten much baklava, much byrek, other sweet things, sugar buzzing in the kitchen, in a hostel with a roof terrace and a sunset, excitable folks from around the place. Peace and love to the family.

It's your big day in the north
It's your big day in the north, love
Sha-sher sha-shy pinapple
When you smile en coeur le Big Apple
Attention, get up charge your face
La ou mais ou mon ami

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The Cantankerous Mezzler that is Italy

I have a bone to pick with this one (Italy). Son of a gun. Presents me with such beauties and wonders which make my heart well up and spill over into puddles of joy and fancy and riding merriment, really it does, really it is, plump with the redness of ten tomatoes and streams of blood oranges and deep dark choc brown, and really the sun is often gorgeous, and the endless glutenous gluttony is not quite yet too much (though I would love some sourdough) but, Italy, one thing - sort out your damn roads! 

Worst I've seen. They make Elbe (the bike) cry not good tears and my butt hurt, sods. Other than that, you're a peach, dear Italy.

I left Bologna feeling like a cherry, and en route to Rome, stumbled into some quite magnificent architectures! Like this one (below), in Florence, where I was hosted by a go-get-'em, no-nonsense fun-haver, who took me out and plied me with delicious pizzas and birra and recoiled when I chose kiwi flavour ice cream (afraid of fruit), but smiled when I also chose pistachio. An evening with pleasant company! 

Then I stayed with shining stars, G&M, near Montefalco. I was given a verbal tour (a flavour paints a thousand pictures) of Perugia's winescape and woke up with one of those gentle hangovers which you don't regret because you learned a great deal on the way there. Vegetables roasted before being lasagned - terrific. Heck, these two shined so bright I landed myself back here, dog sitting, listening to Italian pop while I write. 

South of here there is a giant Roman aqueduct which sits all serene and elephantine bridging a chasm in the land. What an architecture! Old, too.

And look at this one. So many pillars. How did they make them? Maybe they grew. The Vatican is in fact not synonymous with the Holy See. C for yourselves. It is, however, according to this blog, etymologically derived from the words vatic and anus. 

'VATIC- "Characteristic of a prophet; oracular" From Latin: vts, seer -ANUS "The opening at the lower end of the alimentary canal through which solid waste is eliminated from the body" From Latin: nus, ring, anus'

True stuff. Believe us. 

It was here that I saw the Pope deliver his Sunday address. The square was chockablock with worshippers and the curious. Habits and white collars by the coachload. Sunglasses and DSLRs by the bus. I am no less convinced that he looks like Jonathan Pryce. 

Another architecture. Saw ads for Gladiator, the Musical. Russell Crowe rendered into a slick, shining baritone. Lord help us. 

Trying to think of a word which captures just how big this building is, but nothing springs to mind. Anyway, it's really big, and, yeah.

Look and here is a picture of the inside of an architecture, just to prove that they're not just pretty faces; they also have pretty innards. To be fair to the Catholics, they made some grandiose stuff (though this is baroque, a tour guide indirectly told me). The cathedral in Padova, which I visited last trip, is colossally cool. And this here basilica is right ornate.

Here's a big mother jutting out of the landscape, surrounded by onlookers. If I didn't like it I'd slur it by calling it the pantseon, but actually I do dig it. Old.

Obviously I can't resist grand emotional gestures captured in stone for all the world to see.

And belligerent marble babies, too. Aren't they cute and indignant! Someone's really ruffled their feathers, like, yeah OK mum, I'll carry this stupid thing if I HAVE to, but not before I TRIP UP TIMMY.

So that's outsides and insides. It's easy to get caught up with the ancient bits though, I felt. Rome has so much on so many pedestals, and the pedestals are so tall that they dwarf the 'regular' buildings. Maybe there's something we can all learn there, huh. Take a look around and what do you see? I see the kind of windows I'd like to look out of at eleven o'clock in the morning, coffee in one hand, wine in the other, smell of dolmades drifting off the sideboard, Buena Vista Social Club ringing through the floorboards.

And some windows I wouldn't much like to live behind, but which are thought-provoking anyway.

These are directly opposite the pantheon, where a street seller was having a bloody good time flogging shawls to diners - we exchanged eyes a number of times, I shared in his glory - but everyone was looking the other way, at the overstated. But I liked the understated, the unsung. 

The unsung of Rome danced between trees and collected itself in the morning dew, ready to shake off the heat of the day. It hovered just above the throng's eyeline, just below the stamp of feet, just around the corner out of sight. It was in a backstreet pizzeria, in the garlic oil splashed on a pizza rosso, and in the folds of an old man's newspaper, crinkling in the shade, nestled between cobbles. It was in the blink of an eye.

It was in the smile which played over the faces of the people in the downpour. The people who smile when sodden, those are the ones. It brings out the truth in people, a solid rain. Wet cheeks.

Well done, marathon runners of Rome. Well done to the English couple who accidentally left their bag of fruit, biscuits and Powerade after talking with me. And to the Italian dude who refused my banana after throwing up a deep wet watery post-run puke behind me, sat on the grass in front of the colossus. Sirs, dames, all, well done indeed. 

Whose tomatoes? Al's tomatoes. 

Much love to Margherita, host in Rome after a truly wet day, whose dream trip is just around the corner and whose welcome brought a wide smile. Ready to roll now, ready to flonk, down and out, south to Naples. Hoddle.