tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-210037922024-03-07T09:56:06.729+01:00Tuscany TravellerTuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.comBlogger283125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-53912736947107906072012-10-01T14:49:00.002+02:002012-10-01T14:49:39.087+02:00A good walk ruinedExpressions not to be believed: the people who ring while you’re having dinner and say they’re not going to try to sell you anything. (I always put in an extra space between “who” and “ring” to avoid any risk of misinterpretation - especially during dinner.) Another credulity challenge is, “our software is now even more user-friendly and will save you eons of time”, which has about the same level of credibility as, “Of course I’ll respect you in the morning”. I used to have a rather nice header to this blog, but I tried to update it with the miraculous new software – and now look at it. Can anyone tell me how to unshrink my blog heading so that it goes right across the page? Tried the new software - even tried those e-mails that claim to stretch anything - but to no avail.
I see myself as a sports fan, but I always make an exception of golf, which I see as about as sportive as synchronised swimming, darts or tiddlywinks. It’s just snooker on grass. But, having stayed up until 2.30 this morning to watch the Ryder Cup on TV, I may have to reconsider: we were totally rapt, and although we could have got the result online immediately, refused, preferring the nail-biting tension. But was it sport? Or was it nationalism: plucky Brits brave Chicago cyclones and humble golf Goliaths – a sort of Boston Tea Party in reverse? We’re taking on the French at pétanque next – in Marseilles.
Staying with a relative in West Texas once, he suggested a game of golf; “a bit of exercise”, he said. At the golf course he had someone place two bags of clubs onto an electric cart and off we went. Half-way round, he asked if I would like to drive, and I said yes, so we returned to the clubhouse and he had someone change the bags of clubs over so that our respective bags were immediately behind us. “No point in walking any further than necessary”, he said.
Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com39tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-64747280658725826782012-09-24T16:21:00.001+02:002012-09-26T12:12:34.960+02:00Hey diddle-dee-dee: a writer’s life for me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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ON November 17 last year – was it really that long ago? –
I blogged about the mixed joys of finishing another book. Today, ten months later, you would be justified in expecting to see it at your friendly local independent bookshop. But it isn’t. I don't mean the bookshop's not friendly, I mean the book isn’t even at the printers yet.
I’ve been having trouble with the publisher. Nearly all writers have the same: Dostoevsky, Hemingway, Fitzgerald and possibly every writer ever, except perhaps Barbara Cartland and J. K. Rowling.
I shouldn’t really complain about the crassness of the leather-elbowed academics called upon to review the book: there’s always a gem or two hidden among their fatuities – and I have to agree that the book will be all the better for the fact that I now know the correct plural of <i>gellateria</i>. But I can’t help being reminded of Saul Bellow’s bellow: “Where were you when all I had was a sheet of paper?”
I have been censored – and censured – for saying that Tony Blair is known in Tuscany as <i>Il Scroccone</i> – the scrounger – because of his alleged penchant for squatting, with his family, (I don’t know the plural) in the castles of wealthy Italian aristocrats and politicians, and for selecting RAF Transport Command as his carrier of choice.
Some reviewers, on the other hand, have shown impeccable taste. The great authority on Tuscany, Frances Mayes, who knows the region better than anyone since Cosmo I de Medici, was kind enough to say “This book enriches my own journeys in this fabled land.” One <i>cognicento</i> even said it “out-Bryson’s Bryson”.
We’ve battled over text, title, pictures – and now it’s the cover, which I thought funereal. They say you can’t judge a book by its cover. But you <i>can</i>.
Have a look:<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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But now it really is over: the whole caboodle has gone to Sweden to be printed and soon you’ll be buying it in your trillions and I'll be working on something else.
<b>Lucky you.
</b>Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-39270912817277445832012-08-03T16:07:00.000+02:002012-08-03T16:10:45.086+02:00What's in a Name?My secret ambition is to have my name in <i>The Oxford English Dictionary</i>: it’s the literary equivalent of being nominated for the Booker Prize. The trouble is my name. Imagine someone saying ‘I got a jones for Christmas’. It doesn’t have the same air of authority as ‘I’ll wear my stetson today’. So I guess I’ll never be an eponym. Verbs are slightly easier: imagine how proud Mr and Mrs Bowdler must have been when little Tommy got his name in the OED. But the problem remains: ‘bowdlerized’ smacks of modest power, but no writer would say ‘my book’s been jonesed’. Even characters can get you into the OED: Micawbers, say, or Walter Mittys - but never Joneses.
I thought of trying an abstract noun - like ‘serendipity’, but Horace Walpole’s got the copyright: he wrote a story, <i>The Three Princes of Serendip</i>. Now he’s in the OED for having invented a word for a chance discovery.
It was serendipity that brought me to the village of Certaldo. I’d been looking for it all over Tuscany but without success: it wasn’t in the Michelin guide or on my maps. Then one day, when I was absent-mindedly looking out of the window of a train that I thought was taking me to Poggibonsi - when I saw the sign: Certaldo! Fortunately, the train stopped and I clambered out – my papers billowing in the wind. Poggibonsi would have to wait.
Certaldo was the town in which Giovanni Boccaccio was born. He was one of the distinguished trio of fourteenth century Florentine poets, the other two being Dante and Petrarch. But Boccaccio was my favourite: his best-known work was inspired by the onset of the dreaded plague, the Black Death. After Mass one day in 1348, a group of seven ladies and three gentlemen retreat to a country house just outside Florence, hoping to avoid infection, and the ten friends – the <i>decamarone</i> - pass the time in telling each other stories, each trying to outdo the other in levels of impropriety and bawdiness - a kind of Italian <i>Canterbury Tales</i>.
When English poet Geoffrey Chaucer visited Tuscany in 1373, he hoped to meet the poet whose work he had admired – and borrowed, these being the times before copyright law existed, but sadly, Boccaccio was already too ill for them to meet. He died in the family home in 1375, a late victim of the plague which had inspired his greatest work.
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Stepping from the funicular cable car that takes you up to the old village is a step into another era. Buildings and roadways are laid in narrow red bricks, herringbone-pattern, like Roman roads. In the vast Piazza Boccaccio stands a statue of a giant medieval hoodie on a pedestal that bears the inscription: Giovanni Boccaccio (1313–1375). Halfway up the main street – the Via Boccaccio of course - is the Casa Boccaccio. During the Second World War it was almost destroyed by American B-26 bombers, but it has now been faithfully restored and looks as good as old. The view from its roof terrace is a 360-degree panorama of fields, vineyards and olive groves. But there is a surprise: eight miles to the south-west stands a cluster of medieval towers that can only be San Gimignano.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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That’s serendipity.
Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-66377662980016893272012-07-25T12:38:00.001+02:002012-07-25T12:38:46.203+02:00Faulty Tower<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5G5tB8_YlxVvaISpm_doBZncnEJFMY9jLsn5gDRDKsKz31OJIULKEm8HuP5vRbn20K7eVKlQt4Xo56_2VPm2oOmjXilWCFkj6DBnVENiv5IHbZFYiZeMSI7my6k2EIZ-Iicbr/s1600/Pisa+Tower+Intrepid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" sda="true" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5G5tB8_YlxVvaISpm_doBZncnEJFMY9jLsn5gDRDKsKz31OJIULKEm8HuP5vRbn20K7eVKlQt4Xo56_2VPm2oOmjXilWCFkj6DBnVENiv5IHbZFYiZeMSI7my6k2EIZ-Iicbr/s320/Pisa+Tower+Intrepid.jpg" width="211" /></a>When researching the current work, Pisa seemed the obvious hub to access northern and coastal Tuscany: its railway station is on direct lines to Livorno, La Spezia, Viareggio, Lucca and Florence, and its international airport is 1 kilometre from the station. We had decided to use public transport in order to meet some Italians and get a bit of local colour, and as the rail fares were cheap, we went first class. That was a mistake: we soon discovered that the first class compartments were full of American or Australian tourists with ‘Rover’ passes – which meant they were carrying three months’ luggage, which blocked the corridors and left nowhere to put your feet. If you want to meet Italians, we discovered, you travel second class.</div>
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Pisa’s literary credentials are impeccable: the Shelleys, the Brownings, Byron, Smollett, Dickens, Henry James, Mark Twain and many more literary exiles lived there. Not only has the city a Mussolini-esque railway station: it also has a Campo dei Miracoli – the Field of Miracles – with a magnificent cathedral, baptistery, and a well-known bell tower. As we walk up the Via Nicola Pisano, (named after the prolific Pisan sculptor whose work can be seen as far south as Sicily), the domes and pinnacles of the Field of Miracles appear and disappear like a mirage. Eventually, a cluster of 11th- to 14th-century buildings set in green lawns comes into full view: Cathedral, Baptistery and the most visited tilted tower in the world. The three buildings are a mix of Romanesque and Gothic - with a touch of Moorish: yet the whole harmonises as if planned that way. <br />
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But Pisa’s pride and joy - the magnet that pulls in the crowds - is the Torre Pendente, not for its inherent beauty, although it is beautiful, but because its top leans almost 4 metres to the south-east. Whilst the revenue it produces in admission fees and the sale of plaster replicas must delight its managers, (the Opera Primaziale Pisana), it must surely be frustrating for lovers of architecture to watch the hordes queueing up to pay €15 for the disorienting experience of climbing its 296 steps – or 294, depending which side you climb – while, barely 100 metres away, one of the world’s most magnificent cathedrals stands gleaming in the sunshine, relatively ignored. It is now generally accepted that the white marble bell tower, the building of which began in 1173, was already leaning when its construction was less than half finished. Tobias Smollett, who climbed it in 1765, almost six hundred years after it was built, goes so far as to say, not only that the tower was built aslant from the vertical, but intentionally so. ‘I should never have dreamed’, he wrote, ‘that it was done on purpose by the architect’.<br />
<br />The tower had a narrow escape in 1945, during the last weeks of the war in Europe, when a group of soldiers from the US Army passed through the town and found themselves under fire from German snipers, who they thought were hiding in the tower. The Americans’ group commander, deciding that the appropriate retaliation would be to destroy the tower, ordered up the necessary heavy artillery, but, either by chance or thanks to some sense of history on the part of his superiors, , he was ordered to another position before his plan could be carried out and the tower survived undamaged – as did the commander. The only war injury suffered by the tower was to have one of its marble columns destroyed by Italian anti-aircraft fire. No aircraft were damaged during this process.<br />
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It was not until the 1970s that experts began to worry that, with the tower moving a millimetre or two every year, unless something were done it would fall flat on its south-eastern face, and that, while a tower with a tilt of 5 degrees may be one of the world’s wonders, a horizontal one would prove to be a fairly resistible tourist attraction.<br />
So a worldwide call was made for solutions to the problem, eliciting hundreds of proposals, ranging from the inspired to the bizarre, and in 1990 the tower was closed while the alternatives were considered. After three years’ deliberation, the authorities chose the most mundane and least aesthetic solution: to attach huge lead weights to the north-west side of the tower, with the objective of lowering its centre of gravity. It did not take the Opera Primaziale Pisana long to notice that several tonnes of lead stuck parenthetically along the side of the tower detracted from its Renaissance beauty. It was then decided that the only acceptable solution had to be below ground, and the tower reopened for business in 2001, unleaded.<br />
The tower is now more popular than ever in all its oblique splendour, apparently held securely at 4.8 degrees from the vertical by those thousands of public-spirited people who standin profile beside it with their hands raised, palms outwards, while their friends take their photograph. <br />
<br />Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-26294049517676779742011-11-17T19:48:00.004+01:002011-11-18T18:42:16.813+01:00Here Today and Here Tomorrow<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgfSRBEXfgebuPYbZHt13_Rw2jb5ddw3nxcLnr_XN0D3v1tUGpmFlVtM8mXcGPv-UN5EVwHYDWZytxgA9Y8-eALamFsI1yOm9gzmgk6moCNZSPxGlQ7YBtya32GppmJO0TQ1Ip/s1600/Signoris+2.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 276px; height: 350px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgfSRBEXfgebuPYbZHt13_Rw2jb5ddw3nxcLnr_XN0D3v1tUGpmFlVtM8mXcGPv-UN5EVwHYDWZytxgA9Y8-eALamFsI1yOm9gzmgk6moCNZSPxGlQ7YBtya32GppmJO0TQ1Ip/s400/Signoris+2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5676040042652015938" /></a> You must have noticed, (he said presumptuously), that I’ve been less than diligent in my blogging this year. This is my excuse: it’s the likely cover of the masterpiece I’ve been working on for the past year or more, and which, to my indescribable relief, just went off to the anxiously awaiting publisher. It will be another in a series being published by I.B. Tauris that features interesting places like Tuscany, the French Riviera, Morocco and such, as seen through the eyes of the writers who lived and wrote there. <br />One summer evening in 1787, in the conservatory of his garden in Lausanne, Edward Gibbon put down his pen having finished writing The <em>History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire</em>. He wrote later that he experienced two conflicting sensations: relief - at what he called “the recovery of my freedom”. But then, “a sober melancholy was spread over my mind by the idea that I had taken everlasting leave of an old and agreeable companion…”. As I handed my manuscript over the counter in Windsor Post Office, I understood, on an infinitely smaller scale, just how he must have felt. Relief, yes, and freedom - but also loss. My own “old and agreeable companion” will be called something like <em>Florence and Tuscany: A Literary Guide</em>. But while Gibbon’s magnificent work had taken him 23 years, my humble effort has been my constant companion for fewer than 23 months – but long enough for me to miss it now it's gone. <br />We thought, the DG and I, after visiting Florence and Tuscany for more than 15 years, that we knew something about the region, but our research over these past months has shown us only how much there is yet to know about this wonderful place. Writing books about writers is both absorbing and exciting: it links them unforgettably with places you know and love, but there’s a bonus: the writers that you know introduce you to new and different writers, and together they lead you to places that you only <em>thought</em> you knew. I hope the book will do the same for its readers, whether exploring for themselves or armchair travelling. It’s been a fascinating journey for us, trekking in the footsteps of seven centuries of writers, from Dante and Chaucer to Sinclair Lewis and Muriel Spark - and a hundred others, and we’re sorry it’s over – especially as the next jobs are boring but necessary stuff like galley-proofing and the Index, but while I can’t wait to see it in the shops, it’s the great satisfaction of writing that, contrary to Gibbon’s “everlasting leave”, it’s not at all like pictorial art: because when the book goes out of the door, you still have it. For ever. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTnCs-35uaTrtPEh4uqdfi7Q5UIPrKd-UVEIRfEgP9QfoobGVJCVf7Ybh0HBTgKnzCSn7UjlVNAXX0q29R6AXcSKSlPF0M1q7mZNy5pI_ekVnxsUk8YWranuAbxCRhYYLrbH8j/s1600/Florence+P.+Vecchio19a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 247px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTnCs-35uaTrtPEh4uqdfi7Q5UIPrKd-UVEIRfEgP9QfoobGVJCVf7Ybh0HBTgKnzCSn7UjlVNAXX0q29R6AXcSKSlPF0M1q7mZNy5pI_ekVnxsUk8YWranuAbxCRhYYLrbH8j/s400/Florence+P.+Vecchio19a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5676044290563475602" /></a>Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-49738466651693119762011-08-17T15:53:00.003+02:002011-08-21T18:10:57.560+02:00Mr. Butterfly<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3URzaAtbhmtU9dfCH1H2JA09yadVvvEVKJDLpBWx7Pwt642KakjNtRTLdBvIyQP3D-HalIbgjZxmj3PC2prbbHhzvcit0kmfWSFXtL6U3APqmAho7zJ3T5LzDN2r7YbF6yYIV/s1600/Lucca+Puccini+016.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3URzaAtbhmtU9dfCH1H2JA09yadVvvEVKJDLpBWx7Pwt642KakjNtRTLdBvIyQP3D-HalIbgjZxmj3PC2prbbHhzvcit0kmfWSFXtL6U3APqmAho7zJ3T5LzDN2r7YbF6yYIV/s320/Lucca+Puccini+016.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641808566960878178" /></a>
<br />Watched a TV programme the other night in which Rick Stein talked about food in the context of Italian opera – just when you thought they’d run out of hooks on which to hang cookery programmes. Still, the music was good. Stein disclosed to awe-struck viewers the favourite foods of assorted operatic composers, so I know - or I did the other night - the culinary preferences of people like Verdi, Rossini and Puccini.
<br />Puccini was born in Lucca. It is one of my favourite cities in Tuscany, and not only because my wife and I got engaged there. A bronze figure of Puccini sits, bronze cigar in hand, outside his natal home. The town honours him with a festival of his music every summer. A plaque on a wall nearby reads: “Love and poetry tormented the genius but the musical city gave his magical violin the wings of glory.”
<br />A century later, another tormented genius lived in Lucca: the great jazz trumpeter, Chet Baker. The funny valentine who thought he could live undisturbed in sleepy Lucca spent a year there as a guest of the <em>Carcere di San Giorgio</em>, the town’s ancient prison, for possessing heroin. Every evening, while his red Ferrari gathered dust outside, the pie-eyed piper drew fans old and new to gather on the city walls outside the prison to listen to him practise. Local jazz musicians would join in to entertain what was truly a captive audience. Chet’s appeal against his 22-month sentence was eventually successful and he was released in time for Christmas - as was his album, <em>Chet is Back</em>, on which he sang some Italian songs he wrote in Lucca jail.
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<br />A few years later I saw him in a small jazz club in Nice, but I didn’t hear him play. He arrived on stage two hours late, someone led him by the arm towards a chair; he sat and put his trumpet to his lips, but no sound came out. No one moved, and the few people who started to murmur were immediately shushed by their neighbours. He tried again, several times, but produced no more than a few squawks and some mumbled words about new false teeth. I never saw him again: the last weeks in the life of one of the world’s greatest jazz trumpeters - the musician who played alongside the likes of Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie - were spent in the back streets of Amsterdam, the city to which he had always returned in search of his needs. His twisted body was found in the street beneath the hotel window at which he used to play.<a href="http://www.planningatour.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/index.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 150px; height: 180px;" src="http://www.planningatour.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/index.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>
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<br /> In Lucca, no bronze statue sits outside Chet Baker’s custodial home; no annual festival celebrates his music, and no commemorative plaque records his passing. But there is a plaque in a cobbled street in Amsterdam. It reads: “Chet Baker died here on May 13, 1988. He will live on in his music for everyone willing to listen and feel”.
<br />Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-85416768822504479732011-08-16T17:13:00.007+02:002011-08-16T18:11:15.261+02:00Serendipity<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_jiSxE_BXiPMdK7rGTeRubbKHJ_3HYBzIf8nnZLTBNTtMEjowC7PbnDrUi9dd0WlGImeJyNntozaHVk2orKip2u7h5XkhMl8FBHaU9KtyjWfinS2gd7bDc8g1wHklTS07i4C7/s1600/San+Terenzo+061.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_jiSxE_BXiPMdK7rGTeRubbKHJ_3HYBzIf8nnZLTBNTtMEjowC7PbnDrUi9dd0WlGImeJyNntozaHVk2orKip2u7h5XkhMl8FBHaU9KtyjWfinS2gd7bDc8g1wHklTS07i4C7/s400/San+Terenzo+061.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641474663744679554" /></a>
<br />This is the Casa Magni, the beachside house in the Italian coastal village of Lerici, on the beautiful Gulf of La Spezia, to which the English poet Shelley was sailing when his boat capsized and he drowned, just days before his 30th birthday. Writing about writers is an endless process of discovery: you set off seeking traces of a writer and discover places that you weren't looking for. The converse is equally true: while looking for unknown places, you find writers you didn’t know. While researching the last days of Shelley I found Lerici and the magnificent Cinque Terre – the five crepuscular “countries” to the west of the Gulf. In turn, researching Shelley led me to another writer that I didn’t know: his biographer, Richard Holmes, of whom I’ve been a fan ever since. Not the moustachioed historian seen on BBC TV, but the self-styled “Romantic Biographer” whose <em>Footsteps</em> is the sort of book I wanted this one to be. (It isn’t.)
<br />Places can also introduce you to writers you <em>thought</em> you knew, but didn’t. I thought I knew English author E. M. Forster - but that was before I discovered the medieval towered city of San Gimignano (below) and read <em>Where Angels Fear to Tread</em>, which is set there. It was his first novel, begun on his first visit to Tuscany with his mother in 1900 at the age of 21 - eight years before <em>A Room with a View</em> and 21 years before <em>A Passage to India</em>. One critic of the book complained that “The picturesqueness of his diction is invariably marred by his superficiality of thought” – the very words I would like to hear said about me. But, superficial or not, there is youthful wisdom there. Forster on Italian so-called “bad taste”: “it is not the bad taste of a country which knows no better; it is not the nervous vulgarity of England, or the blinded vulgarity of Germany. It observes beauty, and chooses to pass it by”. And on parenthood: “a wonderful physical tie binds the parents to the children; and – by some strange irony – it does not bind us children to our parents”. Fair enough - parental love is essential to the survival of the race, but not the filial variety.
<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeMWVpmdvW76-rNJr2MDF4EHocE3BSqxvH7mlq1EdH8LunhW_t6mTxfSeI2KIV2s1MpKOzhz5nQzZ-h_yhNq_EXb4OB2Eypjocsz9kyuxJObwDqzBlTnKw_2z7-qhg9fELIdNK/s1600/San+Gim+032.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeMWVpmdvW76-rNJr2MDF4EHocE3BSqxvH7mlq1EdH8LunhW_t6mTxfSeI2KIV2s1MpKOzhz5nQzZ-h_yhNq_EXb4OB2Eypjocsz9kyuxJObwDqzBlTnKw_2z7-qhg9fELIdNK/s320/San+Gim+032.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5641475303981389090" /></a>
<br />Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-28112340536923303012011-08-12T20:01:00.005+02:002011-08-15T11:45:45.366+02:00Almost there<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy88ZUnZPzEA-THyurEJMqkLFOk6HRRpfpDC-C_rFsDFsyyIw9V6U5ODzwvYOvGfMrTn2Ecgjczo-nA3IwXElyPeuacqFNKSY0ehWwXhGuqQtLRqY4nm-WEbBU3WCYMIAaDrpO/s1600/Florence+Sasso+Dante+026.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy88ZUnZPzEA-THyurEJMqkLFOk6HRRpfpDC-C_rFsDFsyyIw9V6U5ODzwvYOvGfMrTn2Ecgjczo-nA3IwXElyPeuacqFNKSY0ehWwXhGuqQtLRqY4nm-WEbBU3WCYMIAaDrpO/s400/Florence+Sasso+Dante+026.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5640033055314432498" /></a>
<br />Taking a rest after four trips to Tuscany in ten months. We tried to get some sympathy but no one wept, so might as well admit that it was tremendous fun. It was like that song in <em>Kiss Me Kate</em>: We Open in Venice, except that we opened in Pisa last September, and then Florence, Livorno and Florence again, with side trips to Pisa, Siena, Lucca, Volterra, Arezzo, La Spezia, Montepulciano and San Gimignano, plus some writing and more research in between. Now that the research and writing on the <em>Literary Guide to Tuscany</em> is just about complete and the draft is almost ready for submission, I guess I should feel relieved, but can’t get rid of the feeling that there’s so much more of Tuscany waiting to be seen and that we just ran out of time.
<br />Florence especially always has more to see. The great Sinclair Lewis – first American to win the Nobel Prize for Literature - in his <em>World So Wide</em> called it “a city of ancient reticences and modern energy” – meaning it’s not just one city but several: Florence, the birthplace of banking, the city whose name became the first international unit of currency – eight centuries before the Euro; Florence the museum, existing thousands of years before the Romans arrived; Florence, cradle of the Renaissance; and of course Florence, the birthplace of Dante, Galileo, Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci. All this genius from a city the size of Blackburn. Question: How many geniuses can you name from Blackburn? Answer: Nat Lofthouse.
<br />There’s a large rock in the square by the cathedral, on which Dante is reputed to have sat in the 14th century while waiting for inspiration. It’s called <em>Il Sasso di Dante</em> – Dante’s seat - and it has since inspired many a poetic posterior: Browning, Wordsworth, Dickens - and me. (Well at least it worked for them.) A new marble <em>Sasso di Dante</em> appeared in the piazza recently, reputed to be a PR event promoting an adjacent bar, the name of which is, of course, Il Sasso di Dante. Now, to avoid confusion, the signage on Dante’s original granite seat has been changed. It is now labelled <em>Il <em>Vero</em> Sasso di Dante</em> - “The <em>true</em> stone of Dante”.
<br />Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-71710412646443856932011-03-19T10:24:00.003+01:002011-03-19T10:40:01.537+01:00A Room with a ViewIn 1901, the English novelist E. M. Forster and his mother stayed in the Pensione Simi on the right bank of the River Arno in Florence – a typical Florentine boarding house of the type frequented by Victorian tourists. “It had a cockney landlady”, said the snooty Forster, “who scatters Hs like morsels”. It gave him the idea for a novel, <em>A Room with a View</em>, published six years later.<br /><br />In the opening scene of <em>A Room with a View</em>, a group of equally snooty mature English spinsters staying in the Pensione Bertolini are having a collective moan: one of them complaining loudly that she asked for a room with a view of the river, but did not get one. As she drones on, a male guest – not of their party – says that his room has a view, and that he would be glad to exchange rooms with her. The snobby complainer lowers her voice, content with something else to moan about: bad enough that, as the man’s accent and attire clearly reveal, he is from a social stratum lower than that of her or her friends, but he has addressed her without being spoken to. <br /><br />There is still a riverside pensione at 2, Lungarno delle Grazie - not now called Pensione Simi - but we didn’t stay there: we rented an apartment nearby. It was in an ancient building - on the third floor - and the shutters were closed when we went in. We knew from the map that when we opened them we would not see the Arno. Instead, a bible-throw away, was this: Brunelleschi’s dome, waiting there since 1461. Who got the room with the view?<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqFYJjATOSL3NrtJYVC96GAtZnJ3uq8RiX5x6CnK670VyIPOpxKWpm26lMNRZGaoEo9gXFP55KZCVQN3JxgmJ1A3YF75QglRSs6jUR4JamDig9dEr69MI6mEhl2BUpYE2_n3CN/s1600/Florence+Duomo+002a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 280px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqFYJjATOSL3NrtJYVC96GAtZnJ3uq8RiX5x6CnK670VyIPOpxKWpm26lMNRZGaoEo9gXFP55KZCVQN3JxgmJ1A3YF75QglRSs6jUR4JamDig9dEr69MI6mEhl2BUpYE2_n3CN/s400/Florence+Duomo+002a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585721687570895442" /></a>Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-62286155307889850812011-03-09T10:46:00.005+01:002011-03-09T11:27:51.928+01:00Space InvadersA new record: the spam percentage of my incoming mail yesterday was 100% - up from 95%. Usual stuff – Viagra, aggrandizement of genitalia and such. (How did they know?) I now even get spam comments on the blog, but fortunately they only reach me as e-mails and don’t get onto the blog. You’d think the spam filter that can keep them out of the blog could suppress them – but that’s way too technical for me.<br /><br />Cautionary tale: this week I got a mailed invoice from a catalogue sales company. I had not heard of the company and had not purchased a Blackberry - I wasn’t even in the country when I was supposed to have ordered it, so I ignored the invoice. My Beloved, not being equipped with an “Ignore” button, calls the company. They say, ah yes, we thought it was suspicious when they gave us a delivery address different from the billing address, so we didn’t supply it. Then why, you may ask, if they didn’t supply it, did they bill me? Only one answer comes to my suspicious mind: because it was worth a try.<br /><br /><br />I had to go to Arezzo: having visited the natal homes of Dante and Boccaccio, I had to see that of the last of Italy’s immortal literary trio, Francesco Petrarca, known in English as Petrarch. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwK866flYzgtXh8SDeDOSYvUb1XP7AE5nTI_Ers4gTaIRshQj0ekpnpruE08OcCSukKiVaoQUO86xoxyEXcwqqHYgWiHtTge4x9krfMY6ltimMYFUF9aTTp1ot53_M07n7T1cl/s1600/Arezzo+Casa+Petra+004a.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 230px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwK866flYzgtXh8SDeDOSYvUb1XP7AE5nTI_Ers4gTaIRshQj0ekpnpruE08OcCSukKiVaoQUO86xoxyEXcwqqHYgWiHtTge4x9krfMY6ltimMYFUF9aTTp1ot53_M07n7T1cl/s320/Arezzo+Casa+Petra+004a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582017310987245330" /></a><br />In keeping with his lifestyle, this little dwelling in the Via dell’ Orto was the most humble of the three.<br />Arezzo is Tuscany’s Tuscany: it lies in the region’s south-eastern corner so is close to the heart of Italy. It ticks all the boxes, starting around four millennia BC: Etruscan heritage, Roman amphitheatre, medieval ramparts, Gothic churches and Renaissance palazzi. The Piazza Grande (below) looks like a confused film set - and has been, e.g. <em>The English Patient</em>.<br />Chaucer was a Petrarch groupie, and came to Florence in 1373 hoping to see him, but I must admit I always found him the most difficult and least joyful of the three: Dante is thought-provoking and Boccaccio funny, but Petrarch is doleful. He was born in Arezzo in 1304 and left with his parents at the age of nine to follow the Papacy to Avignon, as good Catholics did. He studied law in Montpellier and entered the church, but was more interested in writing. The family retired to Florence, but Petrarch returned to Avignon in 1326, and the following year, at the age of 23, fell in love on sight with the beautiful Laura as she left a church in Avignon. He gave up religion and wanted to marry her, but she refused him on the very reasonable grounds that she was already married. While most men have a Laura or two in their lives, then move on, she became Petrarch’s passion and inspiration and he made rejection his life’s work, immortalising her in well over 300 poems.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRb4bdhkaSJ02UMS_6VeFy9EwaTSAiULTYd8cAyuOfyl1MwKDIw5CbTpVF0-MLZUcTuk5WudUYMtkBzCwzrsoiRdkd1ZXAGu5Ty30uhFee8TPMhfcgz7NfK4f83y5ZAkAtXaJU/s1600/Arezzo+P.+Grande+009.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 267px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRb4bdhkaSJ02UMS_6VeFy9EwaTSAiULTYd8cAyuOfyl1MwKDIw5CbTpVF0-MLZUcTuk5WudUYMtkBzCwzrsoiRdkd1ZXAGu5Ty30uhFee8TPMhfcgz7NfK4f83y5ZAkAtXaJU/s400/Arezzo+P.+Grande+009.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582019476141142626" /></a>Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com21tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-44038106268129092642011-03-07T11:24:00.004+01:002011-03-07T12:00:24.602+01:00Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqR5Sb7zZwdMVunTstFyA7TTTKUYEMf3CK7AZ1Y8f1Yr000krXqHe3nihz2kIdlCQrEkv9NYGqUMvwmYEjGM2V0T_Hrfz0tHEwOgdr-T7fOzdprsnfipshavRORCbJtPw5e1e4/s1600/FlorenceDuomo10.2010+028a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 235px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqR5Sb7zZwdMVunTstFyA7TTTKUYEMf3CK7AZ1Y8f1Yr000krXqHe3nihz2kIdlCQrEkv9NYGqUMvwmYEjGM2V0T_Hrfz0tHEwOgdr-T7fOzdprsnfipshavRORCbJtPw5e1e4/s400/FlorenceDuomo10.2010+028a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581285082599378434" /></a><br />Just back from a windy whirl in Tuscany – not intentionally so, but we chose the wrong time of the year. Florence has almost exactly the same latitude as Nice, but that is where the similarity ends. Nice is sheltered from the northern wind by the Alpes Maritimes, while Florence nurtures it and even gives it a special term of affection, the <em>tramontana</em> (across the mountains). And it is <strong>cold</strong>: the Florentinos are dressed like Eskimos and we like Lear; every other shop is a <em>gelateria</em> – for which I swear they don’t need refrigeration. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1H2Lt0XpBLAu-lfd_1nRvHsjDEoT6eg21KbYDqt_P8FUhclii1lCTvwjRzmRo-0B_jMECiDibxTpsbVpTSq_1zArQRoRlPMdJpKXVaUQabRIDHi3J7LeXngPjvnjlX-K53kg/s1600/FlorenceVecchio10.2010+022a.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgy1H2Lt0XpBLAu-lfd_1nRvHsjDEoT6eg21KbYDqt_P8FUhclii1lCTvwjRzmRo-0B_jMECiDibxTpsbVpTSq_1zArQRoRlPMdJpKXVaUQabRIDHi3J7LeXngPjvnjlX-K53kg/s320/FlorenceVecchio10.2010+022a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5581290366691766866" /></a><br />On the plus side, the cities – Florence, Siena and Arezzo - are relatively crowd-free: the “tribe of wretches”, as Lord Byron called them, are a throng but not yet a multitude. But in the end, survival took priority over research, and that for southern Tuscany has been postponed until the temperature improves.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-54550923460957063692011-02-20T16:44:00.005+01:002011-02-20T16:59:34.246+01:00Saint David<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidOsaVBUqTyjSNj5k34rII93LC17uTi_TuM7UZPddFSBytm9eXTweYT22vHLyrWiomR749TSQvQ8OeIqy_SRF0gkZEUVP91dHNRxci8nx-mHWLVkjoxcx8LqU2LN1v4pMHH59l/s1600/FlorenceDavid10.2010+011a.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 249px; height: 400px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidOsaVBUqTyjSNj5k34rII93LC17uTi_TuM7UZPddFSBytm9eXTweYT22vHLyrWiomR749TSQvQ8OeIqy_SRF0gkZEUVP91dHNRxci8nx-mHWLVkjoxcx8LqU2LN1v4pMHH59l/s400/FlorenceDavid10.2010+011a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5575799329333126146" /></a><br />What about those Blues! (No, not Chelsea, Everton.) It’s the 119th minute –the last minute of extra time – and up steps Leighton Baines to take a free kick from outside the box. He curls it into the corner to take it to penalties. Dare I watch? (We don’t do well at penalty shoot-outs.) Then Phil hits the winner. A great team – and manager - performance against the west London billionaires who (a) are the FA Cup holders; (b) spent over £70 million on players last month; and (c), haven’t lost a cup game in three years. I thought I wasn’t into triumphalism in football – but please allow me this one: I don’t often get the chance. (We find out later that manager David Moyes had already decided that, should the game go to penalties, he would put Phil Neville in as taker of the fifth penalty - because he was sure Tim Howard would save one, so the fifth would be the most crucial one and he knew Phil could handle it.)<br />Reading next, at Goodison Park on March 1 - St. David’s Day.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-78335064061380877472011-01-27T16:19:00.002+01:002011-01-27T16:45:41.071+01:00Lord of the LiesWe were walking in the street the other day when we saw a bunch of gendarmes arresting a kid. When I say “bunch”, I mean there were even more of them than the usual phalanx: roughly six or seven cops and one docile teenager, handcuffed behind his back. As we watched this rather one-sided encounter – which looked a bit like Manchester United versus the Dagenham Girl Pipers at Old Trafford with Howard Webb refereeing - up screeched a van-load of reinforcements. As the spectators on the pavement gave ironic cheers and someone suggested they send for the US Cavalry, one of the cops broke away from the crime scene and ran over to confront us, shouting, “We’re not cowboys!” and miming the drawing of a pistol. I took it to mean that he thought overwhelming numerical superiority was better than shooting first and asking questions afterwards.<br />Then last night I saw Lord Blair of Boughton on TV, labelled as "Consultant on Strategic Policing". <em>Wasn’t he the Prime Minister who said he had been advised by the Lord Chancellor that he could legally start a war?</em> No, that was another Blair – he hasn’t been ennobled just yet. This was the police commissioner in charge when that guy was shot by Met police on the Underground. <em>OK, you mean the Blair who said that de Menezes had been warned before he was shot?</em> <br />Perhaps the gendarme got it right after all. <br /><br /><br />Ricky Swannell has trouble with her vowels. She’s the woman who reports on the Australian Open Tennis every morning from “Milbourne”: “Fidera wan the furst sit sucks throy…”. She has no problem with the “the”.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-70030963965779349792011-01-23T17:16:00.007+01:002011-01-28T14:22:46.974+01:00Côte de Blues<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJ_1zoKqTkvaZC6hk7MxS85f_9NAia3C7mEi4XahbN18P9nEsjqhEKzq1ASr7VMFEfUKyaymjibRTvYM89gffge1G5ruaUtlqIUXPcvC_tr7wmxYtWkgze6qL1uxBoWdoWXdH/s1600/Nice+in+snowa03.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 256px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHJ_1zoKqTkvaZC6hk7MxS85f_9NAia3C7mEi4XahbN18P9nEsjqhEKzq1ASr7VMFEfUKyaymjibRTvYM89gffge1G5ruaUtlqIUXPcvC_tr7wmxYtWkgze6qL1uxBoWdoWXdH/s320/Nice+in+snowa03.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565417307362843330" /></a><br />Lest I ever give the impression that Nice is a city of perpetual sunshine, let me come clean and show our street a couple of weeks ago. (If you never see my blog again it will mean that the Tourism Police have figured out where I am and zapped my PC.) Today, I hasten to add, it’s not like that: we will soon take our walk along the Promenade des Anglais in our shirtsleeves and find a sunny terrace on which to have lunch. (I think that’s what they told me to say.) <br /><br />Stop me if you’ve heard this, but, disregarding the occasional blizzard, Nice is nice. It is the birthplace and capital city of the French Riviera. For a few centuries BC it was a trading centre for Phoenician merchantmen, who called it <em>Nikaïa</em>, after the Greek god of victory. When the Romans crossed the Alps in the first century BC, they established a hilltop city here whose ruins can still be seen in what is now the elegant residential suburb of Cimiez. The streets of Roman Cimiez still bear the traces of chariot wheels, but they have hip names (is hip still hip?), like Duke Ellington Alley, Dizzy Gillespie Way and Miles Davis Street – for today it is the home of the Nice Jazz Festival.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhggZoSUZYX0SqZDxZeE5m10qdTGyrzvWJ0cYfK7ju2iWV8Qh-FvGSiXxKGzRXoKXS8omluE_kVcxY5g3AQR73kvv7mScudB9EWH_cWPxeQRVE0wCPlG2roBT7ZvbBj6EfEKqQi/s1600/Mangione.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 215px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhggZoSUZYX0SqZDxZeE5m10qdTGyrzvWJ0cYfK7ju2iWV8Qh-FvGSiXxKGzRXoKXS8omluE_kVcxY5g3AQR73kvv7mScudB9EWH_cWPxeQRVE0wCPlG2roBT7ZvbBj6EfEKqQi/s320/Mangione.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5567226012016766034" /></a><br /> Matisse lived next door, and I used to wonder if he moved away for those ten torrid days in July. <br /> <br />France’s – and the Riviera’s - love affair with jazz is as old as jazz itself. While paddle steamers were carrying the new music up the Mississippi to the great eastern cities, GIs on their belated way to World War I carried in their knapsacks the first scratchy products of the burgeoning recording industry. New French words were coined or adopted - "rag-time" became <em>"le temps de chiffon"</em>, and <em>swinguer</em> and <em>le big band</em> entered French dictionaries.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSDqV0tJPp-VHkAIEkzP-nLxqpMbbX8LUgBmPlOripwmmYqAakKSPHjHTgY45BtTmuBj06PnHKDzZl3r7hVh5AcNANiCkslG1Vhiu9rwCArfv35fC751GvCvQTes-aIXoHtsc5/s1600/Basie+a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 218px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSDqV0tJPp-VHkAIEkzP-nLxqpMbbX8LUgBmPlOripwmmYqAakKSPHjHTgY45BtTmuBj06PnHKDzZl3r7hVh5AcNANiCkslG1Vhiu9rwCArfv35fC751GvCvQTes-aIXoHtsc5/s400/Basie+a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565709846676068258" /></a><br />I wasn’t there at the time - I’m a relative rookie who’s been attending the Nice Jazz Festival for a mere 29 years. These days we sometimes walk up to Cimiez: the DG likes its <em>fin de siècle</em> architecture but not its exclusivity. But as we pass the Roman ruins I swear I hear music coming from the ancient stones: Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Woody Herman, Charlie Mingus, Kenton…. Those were the days before <em>Artistes’ Villages</em> and neanderthal security guards: then, the musicians used to eat with the fans. My kids and I would sit and chat with the likes of Michel Petrucciani and Lionel Hampton. Now they and Satchmo are just statues; the rest are street names.<br /><br /><br />Divided loyalties: Everton played West Ham yesterday, the beleaguered team at the bottom of the table and in need of the points, and supported by one of our dearest friends. Whom do you support, knowing he was going all the way to Liverpool to support them? “Let the better team win”, I prayed, “so long as it’s not the Hammers”. God in his wisdom gave the right result – two-all.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-69671908554104339452011-01-21T10:29:00.005+01:002011-01-23T10:03:04.158+01:00In for a PennyHe was born in Hailey, Idaho in 1885 and raised in Philadelphia. He moved to London in 1908, aged 23, where he lived for sixteen years, and in 1924, he and his English painter wife, Dorothy, moved to Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera.<br /><br />He was Ezra Loomis Pound, a leading figure in the modernist literature movement, who edited and promoted the work of many of his contemporaries: W.B.Yeats, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, T.S. Eliot… His astute but ruthless editing - and enthusiastic patronage - were key to the success of Eliot’s <em>The Wasteland</em>. In beautiful Rapallo, writing and producing plays and concerts, he became a much-loved but slightly nutty local character, even as an enemy alien during the Second Word War.<br /><br />On May 3, 1945, two days before the end of the war in Europe, he was visited by two armed local ex-partisans, who, saying that the Americans had offered a reward of half a million lire for his capture, arrested him. On May 24, two weeks after Germany had surrendered unconditionally, Pound was taken, under heavy military police guard and handcuffed to a burly military policeman, to the U.S. Army Disciplinary Training Centre near the village of Metato, a few miles north of Pisa. The word “Training” in its title is a euphemism: the DTC was a punishment camp. Ezra Pound had had no trial, he had been given access to a lawyer, but the lawyer failed to mention that he was working for the US Army. The instructions from Washington were concise: “Afford no preferential treatment” – and they were carried out to the letter. Pound’s “cell” was one of those reserved for the most dangerous criminals or those under sentence of death by execution. It was a six-feet-by-six wire cage with a concrete floor, open to the elements on all sides - an early rehearsal for Guantanamo Bay. He was the only civilian out of almost 4,000 military prisoners; he had no bed and was allowed no exercise or verbal communication; he was fully exposed to the Tuscan sun by day, and by night watched under floodlights. <br /><br />Pound’s crime was that he had criticised his own government: not only that, but he had done so on Italian State Radio. The content of his talks, which were monitored by the FBI, was both anti-war and anti-Semitic, and the fact that he had agreed to talk solely on condition that each broadcast would be preceded by a statement that he would not say anything “contrary to his own conscience or his duties as an American citizen” was not taken in mitigation.<br /><br />After more than two weeks under these harsh conditions, he finally cracked: “the raft broke and the waters came over me”, as he later wrote. He was taken to Washington to be tried for treason, the penalty for which was execution. Pound’s breakdown was probably a blessing, because psychiatrists decided he was mentally unfit to stand trial and he was transferred to a medical compound and given a bed, table and writing materials, and allowed exercise. Five months later, before being committed to a Washington insane asylum, he was allowed a visit from his wife and daughter. He languished there for the next twelve years, during which time he completed his famous <em>Pisan Cantos</em>.<br /><br />He was released in 1958, following a vigorous campaign by his fellow-writers, including Eliot and Hemingway – who, in accepting his Nobel Prize for Literature, asked why Pound was still a prisoner. Pound returned to his beloved Rapallo, and later to Venice, where he died in 1972.<br /><br />You might say that for speaking on a Fascist radio station, he should have been executed for treason. William (Lord Haw Haw) Joyce was. But try replacing Pound’s name with that of Gary McKinnon, the Asberger’s sufferer who hacked into the Pentagon computers from his bedroom just to see if he could; or that of Julian Assange, an Australian internet activist who thought Governments were too secretive. They and their ilk now face the self-righteous wrath of the land of the Free, but for what - eccentricity? During the same war, P. G. Wodehouse went to Berlin several times to speak on Fascist radio. He was knighted by the Queen.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-17964682059035004632011-01-19T18:09:00.002+01:002011-01-19T18:13:26.897+01:00Happy ReturnTaxing times: 15.23 GMT today, to be precise. That’s when Her Majesty’s Inspector of Taxes acknowledged receipt of my Tax Return. I can now direct my creative talents elsewhere. So – good news – I won’t be spending my birthday in the Tower. Not only that, but he has promised me a substantial refund. Good news? Well, partly –because the HMIT, being more optimistic about my earning power than I was, had taxed me accordingly - in advance of course. In other words, he will be refunding a minuscule proportion of my own money. But at least the nightmare is all over until next January – made slightly more nightmarish than usual because my least favourite financial software vendor, Quicken, pulled the plug on my accounting package, and, since Microsoft already pulled the plug on theirs last year, I had to learn another one. So welcome to Bank Tree – a quarter the price of Quicken and much nicer people. <br /><br />Now the bad news: according to the BBC, Everton’s Steven Pienaar is to join Tottenham for a fee of about £2.5m. Sorry, how much was that? “He's certainly not dear is he?" said Harry. I know Harry’s a pretty slick deal-maker, and I know midfielders come cheaper than strikers, even those who don’t strike very often and have earlier use-by dates, but 2.5million… Makes you wonder what ‘arry would have paid for Darren Bent – certainly not ten times that, as the former French teacher at my old school just did. But, like the HMIT and Bank Tree, much nicer people.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-52145638735801464502011-01-17T23:06:00.003+01:002011-01-17T23:12:12.288+01:00The Umpire Strikes BackLiverpool lost their match against Manchester United last week. They were the worse team, agreed, but they should not have lost the match. They lost it through a dubious penalty awarded to the home team (the referee having been the only spectator bamboozled by an obvious Berbatov dive), and the fact that Liverpool had only had ten men for most of the game. The referee who awarded the dubious penalty and reduced Liverpool to ten men, causing their captain to be suspended for the next three games, was the man who refereed the World Cup Final, Howard Webb. <br />Nothing new there: Rule 20.5 in the referees’ handbook decrees that bigger teams must get more penalties than smaller teams, especially on their home grounds. (Liverpool have “won” more penalties that any other Premiership team: Everton have been awarded one penalty against Liverpool in the last 73 years. Wolves haven’t had a single one this season.) Liverpool drew 2-all at home to Everton yesterday - one of their goals was a penalty.<br />We know that Captain Webb is way down the list of a pretty dire bunch, but right now, let’s not get into whether he was justified – except that his body language at the time indicated what politicians call a “U-turn”. Let’s not even get into whether a referee who, simply because he was a native of a neutral country, once refereed a World Cup Final - handing out a record 14 yellow cards in the process - should suddenly become all-seeing if not saintly. Surely a medal from the Queen would suffice? <br />No, this is about a Liverpool player called Ryan Babel, who saw a Photoshop mock-up of aforementioned Webb wearing a Manchester United shirt, thought it funny, and tweeted it. He has been subjected to the full venom of blazerdom and will be summoned to Lancaster Gate, placed in stocks in Hyde Park and pelted with fruit by buffoons called Platter or Blatini. The club has yet to decide his punishment – they are waiting for the Blazers to tell them what it is.<br />This just in: Babel was fined £10,000 today. Blazers do not do humour.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-81143921103018548892011-01-12T11:27:00.005+01:002011-01-16T15:50:49.430+01:00Too many cooks...The two-year blog sabbatical has passed: as, we hope, has the English winter – and so, I guess, have the loyal readers. I was tempted to post today on England’s decisive cricket victory, but everyone else is posting it, so I’ll just note a coincidence: my last post before the hiatus was about cricket and Alistair Cooke. So is this: in the final game of the recent Test Cricket series, the man of the match - and of the whole series - was Alistair Cook. <br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwAGwPFTU4gUvrObTo_0k7E4aRdtXDFT74Xw9bkI0473aKd4GyOaNDuyamutSI7FwydQTHxTJrp-fjsvL4eBcWNMPQFbjJkJxk609uaG_vrm4qKbHSynfDyci3d1hVhL3zj_L/s1600/Dubouchage+ext.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguwAGwPFTU4gUvrObTo_0k7E4aRdtXDFT74Xw9bkI0473aKd4GyOaNDuyamutSI7FwydQTHxTJrp-fjsvL4eBcWNMPQFbjJkJxk609uaG_vrm4qKbHSynfDyci3d1hVhL3zj_L/s320/Dubouchage+ext.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561247873585546818" /></a><br />No turgid history of the last two years’ events, I promise – they were a great couple of years, but recounting them would resemble a Windows update: shut down when finished if not before. Briefly then, did some writing – articles, Memoir of my first 25 years, and Foreword to a new edition of Tobias Smollett’s (1766) <em>Travels in France and Italy</em>. Moved house to downtown Nice, (more about Nice later)had a stroke but recovered – thanks to TLC by the DG. We don’t have a panoramic sea view any more, but one more conducive to writing – a library. And started another book, this time <em>Florence and Tuscany: A Literary Guide for Travellers </em> – hence the photo of the Arno.<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM80NkqG-DT-frIzGT5vF8yXm1Xr2iqJo2TPQlm3-H5f2Z4mUBkW7IVnzogQS0ifwdlPQl36Oh3QQroW9O6QT3TnbDg1z1hDBTbSp-9eNcCsAErl0lf-xm-ljmNv046IQK7qKv/s1600/FlorenceArno10.2010+040a.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 304px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgM80NkqG-DT-frIzGT5vF8yXm1Xr2iqJo2TPQlm3-H5f2Z4mUBkW7IVnzogQS0ifwdlPQl36Oh3QQroW9O6QT3TnbDg1z1hDBTbSp-9eNcCsAErl0lf-xm-ljmNv046IQK7qKv/s400/FlorenceArno10.2010+040a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5561248872106337186" /></a><br />About to start the most creatively challenging activity of them all: the Tax Return, which has to be submitted by end January.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-4232624106230040092011-01-05T13:18:00.003+01:002011-01-05T14:04:38.036+01:00It's not CricketBleary-eyed again this morning, but happy - my two bottles of Meursault are safe. The Sydney Telegraph front page of a couple of weeks ago carried a full page headline across a picture of Peter Siddle, the Aussie fast bowler, which read, in huge caps: <strong>“OUR POM DISPOSAL EXPERT”.</strong><br /> <br />I love it when they do that – it seems to bring out the normally dormant jolly-old English fighting spirit. What does Henry V say? “In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility – but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger…” Another Oz journo gem was the “controversial no-ball” that kept Cook in the game. Why “controversial” when 50 million people around the world saw Beer bowl a no-ball – replayed many times over? The same 50 million, plus 40,000 at the SCG, saw that ball hit the ground on its way to Hughes which he tried to claim as a catch. Alistair looked at him disdainfully but didn't move. When it was replayed on the big screen, 10,000 cheered - the Barmy Army. 30,000 were in silent contrition. <br />Siddle’s contribution: 1 wicket for 98 runs; runs scored: O <br />Cook's contribution; runs scored: 189. <br />Hope we finish it off tonight – I can’t stay awake much longer.<br />Once more unto the breach, once more...Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-32862122840539289182011-01-03T22:43:00.005+01:002011-01-03T23:08:38.445+01:00Nice is nice<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw7wRhJGQs_3emRTC2_cq5bIq2OqZGT5BvDKTxei-wdR2GIKjEnMeFvHXUNABAdyOq3hKMHMH3jasEEkNopVZSN4fTvSKwjOoySW5_EK_fqul-RcjEdGKEY7sRsk57zMx7GcI7/s1600/Villefranche320.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 168px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw7wRhJGQs_3emRTC2_cq5bIq2OqZGT5BvDKTxei-wdR2GIKjEnMeFvHXUNABAdyOq3hKMHMH3jasEEkNopVZSN4fTvSKwjOoySW5_EK_fqul-RcjEdGKEY7sRsk57zMx7GcI7/s200/Villefranche320.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558079139822768194" /></a><br />This is where we used to live - Villefranche-sur-Mer, but we don't live there any more. We decided we would like to try some city living. <br />Forgive the baggy eyes, but play starts in Sydney each morning at 11.30 am in the England v. Oz “Ashes” series, which is 11.30pm at night here – and I have wagered two bottles of Meursault on the result. (By an amazing coincidence, cricket and Alistair Cooke were the topics subjects of the previous post, two years ago – and England’s leading batsman in the present series is called Alistair Cook - strange?) <br />We now live five miles eastwards <br />along the coast, which is nice.<br />Every good wish for 2011. <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6g1CpHQA0iDPZdv3PTwcLU3wf7OsAAiVMU2Rkh7rOmAjocfq_y3linEJcOq12nAyx_z3PMKj5wgN75KxuInmkVa8LXmsmO_5BHxy5DAO23-hqgnHA0Cn7dqa6LCxw0Pkog-Sv/s1600/VF+Pan222.JPG"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6g1CpHQA0iDPZdv3PTwcLU3wf7OsAAiVMU2Rkh7rOmAjocfq_y3linEJcOq12nAyx_z3PMKj5wgN75KxuInmkVa8LXmsmO_5BHxy5DAO23-hqgnHA0Cn7dqa6LCxw0Pkog-Sv/s320/VF+Pan222.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5558081746978895218" /></a>Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-47400952009581402472009-01-06T18:20:00.004+01:002009-01-06T19:02:25.232+01:00Last PostNeville Cardus – later Sir – was the greatest of cricket commentators and writers, and equally famous as a music critic. He worked in these two fields for most of his 87 years. In his soft west-country burr, Cardus would often correlate these two interests in his commentaries. (Of W. G. Grace: “He orchestrated the folk music of cricket”.) On retirement, he closed his final cricket commentary without a dramatic farewell. He said, as he always did, “I’m now handing over the commentary to…”<br /><br />A fellow-writer with Cardus at the Manchester Guardian was a young Lancastrian named Alistair Cooke – later Honorary Sir - whose goodbye to broadcasting was equally unpretentious. In his 95th year, he closed the longest-running series in broadcasting history as he had done for the previous 58 years: he said, in his gentle mid-Atlantic voice, “Goodnight”. His 3,000 scripts, totalling some seven million words, will soon be available on-line.<br /><br />As an admirer of both journalists, but with a mere three years of bloggery and only 117,717 words (including these) on the clock, you will appreciate that I would have to emulate their lack of sentimentality.<br /><br />Last post by Riviera writer on Tuesday, January 06, 2009.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com43tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-10855555431883290272008-12-31T19:22:00.003+01:002008-12-31T19:34:04.121+01:00Chain mailI just sent an e-mail to Mr P. at well-known publishers Archant. I got an automated reply saying “I’ll be out of the office until January 5. If the matter is urgent, please e-mail Mr S.” Deeming the matter reasonably urgent, I mailed Mr S. – and got an automated reply saying “I’ll be out of the office until January 5". Fortunately he did not say, "If the matter is urgent, please e-mail Mr P." or I'd still be at it next year.<br /><br />Speaking of which, I’d like to take this opportunity to wish that loyal but diminishing band of readers a very happy, healthy and prosperous new year, and may your comments continue to be as creative, lively and penetrating – but conspicuously more numerous – in 2009 than in 2008.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-40776495324086490042008-12-08T12:40:00.005+01:002008-12-08T13:07:05.512+01:00BA HumbugJust when I’d decided to retire from trying to be a consumer champion comes this credit-crunch-crushing offer from British Airways to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the One-World Alliance: reward, 10,000 BA miles!<br />All you have to do is this:<br />1. Fly First Class or Club long-haul.<br />2. Connect to another airline in the “Alliance”- American Airlines or one of nine others, including Finnair, Malév, Jordanian, LAN etc.<br />3. Complete the journey before December 19.<br />Not exactly an offer you can’t refuse – if you can afford to do all that, 10,000 BA miles (enough to take one person Economy Class to Glasgow) would be a highly resistible incentive. (You could buy them for £310.)<br /><br />Enough of the caped crusading; I’ve decided to emulate the DG and move into Human Interest. So now, lest you get the impression that life on the Côte d’Azur is a bowl of cherries, a pip: we have new neighbours downstairs, who I hope read this. They have a three-year-old child. So did we, once, six times between us, and it’s a precious age. But these people are so precious about theirs that every movement we make causes them to ring – or shout – up to ask us to be quiet because the child is asleep. It must sleep 23 hours a day. They complained that our cane chairs scraped on our terrace, so we carpeted the terrace. They complain when we use the vacuum cleaner. They complain to our guests. Yesterday we returned from a long walk, changed into slippers – and within five minutes they rang to ask us to stop stamping. <br />We’ve been here eight years, and no other neighbour has ever complained. We spend only about six months of the year here, we read or write – neither very noisily – and play Scrabble, keeping score with felt-tip pens. We never have parties, rarely use the TV, and we tip-toe about the apartment in soft slippers.<br />So, having decided that we had compromised as far as we could, we called on them to ask if they could try to be a little more reasonable. (The child slept through the discussions.) Whether or not they appreciated our problems we don’t know – but they haven’t complained since.<br />If they do, we’re thinking of renting our apartment out to Michael Flatley for a while - as a rehearsal studio for River Dance.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-48880485524614031922008-12-03T21:33:00.008+01:002008-12-03T22:36:40.316+01:00American ExcessDear American Express,<br />Your current advertising says that American Express cardholders “gain access to a more exclusive world”. I fear you may have carried exclusivity to a point of excess. I have spent many hours over recent weeks trying unsuccessfully to access my own account. <br />The problem is that when I click “My account” and key in my ID info, I am told it does not agree with your records. I obviously can’t see those records, but I know that my details have not changed in years. <br />I call “assistance” (from France), key in my card number as requested and a man immediately ask for my card number again, then goes through the security routine and says there is nothing wrong with the card and assures me that I will be able to log in. I go back to the beginning and go through this loop again. And again. And again. And I get locked out.<br />I can’t e-mail you because when I click “E-mail us” I get “Site unobtainable”. I can’t use Help or access FAQs because it requires my ID reference, which you say is wrong.<br />A nice man named Chris listens to my woes and tells me he’ll give me a temporary password that will get enable me to log in. It doesn’t. Back to the beginning and repeat. Again. And again. I am now locked out.<br />Can you possibly imagine how frustrating and time-consuming all this is? Since there seems to be no way of solving the problem, I suggest that you cancel this card and issue me with a new one.<br />Yours sincerely<br /><br />It's not just Amex is it? Security is the "Health and Safety" of the internet - the one-size-fits-all excuse. In fact, angry as I still am, I'd say AmEx are one of the better ones.<br /><br /><strong>Speaking of excess,</strong> a Mr John C. Thomason of Colorado has a letter in the current Riviera Reporter: “I love everything about the French, but…” [sound familiar?] “…why are you French people…” [this to an Anglo expat magazine] “…afraid of Moslems and Russians”?<br />Blah, blah, blah, then “One day you people will get the same as us and then what? Cry for help a third time?”<br />Editor: <em>Every issue we get at least one letter from a nutter. You’re the winner this time.</em>Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21003792.post-87490979102576149162008-11-28T17:18:00.007+01:002008-11-28T17:44:39.339+01:00The Write StuffWhat do you do when you discover that the book you’ve been working on for four years has just been published - by another writer who’d been researching it for twelve? <br /><br />It seems writing is as much a test of character as of creativity. When John Stuart Mill decided that he was would never finish writing his history of the French Revolution, on hearing that Thomas Carlyle was working on a similar project, he generously gave Carlyle his entire collection of books on the subject – there were no lending libraries in those days.<br /><br />So when Carlyle finished <em>The French Revolution</em> in 1835, he lent the one and only manuscript – there were no photocopiers either – to Mill to read. Mill’s housemaid, thinking it was scrap, burned it. What did Carlyle do? He sat down and wrote it again, and then – how's this for trust? – sent it to Mill to review. (Presumably he'd changed his housemaid by then.) It turned out to be Carlyle’s greatest work. Then he founded the London Library.<br /><br />When Charles Dickens wanted to write a novel set against the background of the Revolution, he relied heavily on Carlyle’s book and reading list, which by then he was able to borrow from the Library.<br /><br />It’s an interesting thought that if there’d been no Mill, Carlyle might not have written <em>The French Revolution</em>, without which there might not have been <em>A Tale of Two Cities</em> – and, worse, no London Library. Today, if you search the Library catalogue under “French Revolution” you get 575 responses.<br /><br />The Victorian painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, faced a different test. When Lizzie Siddall, his model, lover and, later, wife, overdosed on laudanum, he was distraught. Before she was buried in Highgate cemetery, he touchingly laid the manuscript of an unpublished book of his poems in the coffin beside her, implying that “Without you my poems are worthless”. But when, some years later, Rosetti decided he would like to publish the poems, rather than write all them out again, he had Lizzie’s coffin exhumed, took out his poems and buried her again, remarking that she was still as beautiful as he remembered. As always, Dorothy Parker put it succinctly: <br /><br />Dante Gabriel Rossetti<br />Buried all of his libretti,<br />Thought the matter over – then<br />Went and dug them up again.<br /><br />What am I going to do about the book? I wish I knew.Tuscan Travellerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02177925922962657896noreply@blogger.com1