Big nose

Yesterday I booked flights to Italy. The Ryan Air experience. I don’t feel as excited about going as I normally do. I don’t think I am not going to have a good time; I suppose it is a little to do with work and the fact that there is a number of things that I need to ensure happen over the next few weeks.

I feel like I will just wait to be surprised by something nice happening when I get there. I imagine I will get a new pullover from Benetton in L’Aquila, I always do. L’Aquila is a very attractive place, on a hill it seems to have its own climate, sometimes it seems to be looking down on the clouds around it, perhaps that has something to do with it’s name, L’Aquila means the eagle, that is how someone can be said to have aquiline features, although I would be more inclined to say they had a big nose. In China a guide told me that the Mandarin colloquial for a westerner is Dai Beezer (obviously my own spelling) which means big nose.

Anyway, you have to drive a long way across the Abruzzo plains on roads that rarely turn corners to get to L’Aquila. You might be driving off the end of the planet. The town is ancient and walled, full of tiny little roads to explore. It is always a shame to leave. I would like to live there for a few months and find out what it is really like. There is a restaurant with vaulted ceilings that we have been to two or three times, top pizza. Last year Ralph and I had a few drinks in a tiny bar whilst the girls did something else. On one occasion I noticed that they have a velodrome there, I love the idea of a velodrome, somehow so civilised and a bit futuristic. Ralph asked me what sport I would go and see at the 2012 Olympics; put me down for a velodrome seat.


tiny bar

I have been to a few places in various countries that feel like home. They don't have to be conventionally beautiful. In the film La Haine (the hate) a group of kids get up to all sorts of shenanigans in a very rough, concrete suburb of Paris. Throughout the film the energy of the place really came though and I fancied having a go at living there. Apologies to anyone who has seen the film, it is quite shocking and I’m not trying to glamorise its harshness.

Saint Louis Obispo looked good. We had driven from San Francisco down the coast and stopped there. Some people walk their dogs on the beach of an evening in front of their houses on stilts (that would be the houses rather than the people or the dogs that are on stilts). Others are having a drink on their balconies; the Pacific really does feel like the edge of the world. Me, I checked into a hotel and feeling quite smug, bent down to test the temperature of the water in the pool, thereby snapping my credit card which was unusually located in my front jean pocket.