Napoli - a diary

The flight from Johannesburg was pretty uneventful, apart from our being unable to sleep - couldn't get comfortable, crying babies and a man in front of me watching telly all night! Interesting landing, thanks to Captain Kangaroo, who touched down so hard Nina broke a nail!

We arrived in Naples on Monday, and found our hotel eventually, the Italians not being very hot on giving directions. It is not a very prepossessing town from our location, near the docks, with construction sites where we were told to "cross the piazza", enforcing our roundabout route, so we were somewhat hot, bothered and dishevelled by the time we reached our destination. We had a quick freshen-up and went in search of SIM cards for our phones, and then went exploring for a while, before deciding to find a Trattoria for an aperitif and some refreshment. The trattoria close to the hotel was staffed by very pushy waiters, who once we were seated proceeded to ignore us, and then had the absolute brass neck to demand "Tip is separate, tip is separate!" And "No tip?" Although we had been assured via numerous platforms that tipping is not generally done in Italy. 

We decided after our explorations that Naples didn't have much to offer us, so settled on taking a Beverello to Capri the next day. On arrival, we treated ourselves to a Limoncello crema gelato, which was refreshing and delicious! It was a really beautiful day, after a rather foggy start, and we took a boat ride around the island, visiting the various grotti along the way with a very friendly bunch of co-tourists, although we had first been accosted by a rather weather-beaten older man who wanted to take us on a personal trip to just the three smaller grotti in his small motor-boat - for about three times as much! Nina felt uncomfortable with the idea anyway, so we went with the crowds to buy tickets for one of the (not so very much) larger boats. We wondered how so many Italians were out on a Tuesday, and discovered the next day that this was because it was their national holiday. No wonder it was so busy! However, when we decided it was time for lunch the many restaurants all had tables available, with waiters trying to drum up business, accosting people as they walked past, in a very similar way to those at the Cape Town Waterfront. After lunch we took the funicolare to the town, foregoing the rather long uphill walk and the Phoenician steps, past the pebbly beaches, which we couldn't really appreciate, having neglected to pack swimsuits, eejits that we are. I gave up my seat to a rather nice older gentleman who then told us a bit about the town after striking up a conversation, reiterating that he was Swedish, 80 years old and lived in several different countries, having been a Professor of Economics. He took us to the Giardini Augusto, where he introduced us as his guests and then left us to wander, as we had declined any further services he might have offered. 

Capri is mostly comprised of vertiginous chalky-looking cliffs, formed when chunks sheared off and slid down the slope, taking the looser rocks with them into the sea, where many of them stand as welcoming beacons, one complete with a statue of a village boy waving a greeting. A series of three also stands, with the middle one having been worn away into a "Lovers' Arch". We were told that lovers who kissed under the arch would stay together forever. This wall of cliffs makes for little in the way of beaches, apart from the rather small, uncomfortably pebbly ones near the docks, so the people have made lidos of a series of decks built on various levels, from which they can dive into the deep sea.

On our return to Naples, we passed a rather interesting-looking taverna in a side alley and thought we'd try that for supper. There were a few tables out on the cobbles, and an accordionist playing the inevitable selection, but what made it seem more authentic was the presence inside of two loud tables of Italian families. The kids, bored with adult conversation, took a football into the alley and were playing kickabout, with the occasional help of one of the waiters when sent out to the storeroom, under the arch. This game was made slightly hazardous, as were the seating arrangements, by the face that the alley was a through road to the apartment blocks at its end, so every now and then a car would pass through, almost hitting the outermost chairs, an occasion that was met with surprisingly little animosity. It made for an entertaining evening.

Having decided that Naples had little to offer, we thought we needed a day at the beach, so on Wednesday, we took a different Molo Beverello to Sorrento (without first burying the cat, since it was only an afternoon trip 😉) We met a very chatty pair of ladies from the Philippines while waiting for the ferry, and when we docked, we were told there was a lift to the town, a fact we were rather grateful for, as Sorrento has even steeper cliffs than Capri!

Apparently, Sorrento is a very popular place for weddings: there were two lots taking after-the-fact photos, so they must have finalised the deed before lunch on a Wednesday? They did all appear to be talking with very English accents, so we thought perhaps this was a reasonable option for a semi exotic wedding. We found a nice restaurant for a cocktail and then strolled, possibly somewhat squiffily, down the ziggurat path to the seaside where we met a couple of Swedish girls negotiating with the maitre d' of the "beach" - a series of wooden decks with loungers, a restaurant and snack bar, and a couple of ladders down into the sea. The beach was not much more than sixty square metres of black volcanic sand populated by a couple of voluptuous women in bikinis with their rather noisy small offspring. Considering there were no waves and no perceptible current, they seemed pretty safe. The sea was cordoned off with barricades of rocks surmounted by some of the decks (for which one paid a premium), and accessed by the aforementioned ladders, to the side of which were much-appreciated showers to rid oneself of the salt after a refreshing dip.

Unfortunately, we could only stay for a few hours, but they were nevertheless very relaxing and enjoyable. The last ferry back was at 16:25, and we reconnected the Philippine ladies and a Canadian couple who had just got engaged. They were very edifying as they had found a very unprepossessing BnB through AirBnB, close to the "happening" area of Napoli. We thought we should see the Castel Nuovi, and then headed out for their quartier, which reminded me of the square near the University in Montpellier, which Pia and I found two years ago. It was such fun, we decided to wander around in our couple of free hours before heading for the train to Rome the next morning.

And there went May!

Well,  here we are at the end of May and once again I have been starved of ideas. Instead I am filled with trepidatious excitement at the prospect of almost an entire month travelling around Italy. This, despite the MONTHS  of planning that have gone into this trip. Although to tell the truth, I get nervous if I have to go to a new area in my own town when I'm not entirely sure of the route I will have to take, so perhaps it's to be expected that I approach a foreign  (ad)venture with similar anxiety. Flying always gives me butterflies, anyway.

This time, it's partly because I'm the one in charge, rather than relying on my husband  (dare I say it?) so I can just relax and tag along. However, he says he has had enough of travel, and in any case wouldn't manage the walking, or tolerate the exploring  (and shopping) we intend  doing, so once again I am sharing the experience with one of my daughters.

We are also sharing the irritation as we pack, of said husband and father repeatedly airing his  views on travelling "light, like Jack Reacher, with only a toothbrush"...

A haiku

A dozen doves dozing
In the green grass growing
By the rocky pool

Fridge Poetry

Does this count as writing?

A search for inspiration

I wish I could change the font on this thing to something more appealing...

A friend (who shall remain nameless to avoid accusations of incitement to purple prose) gave me a set of magnetic letters for writing notes on the fridge. I had previously thought that randomly extracting words from the box of Fridge Poetry and assembling questionable descriptions with them would ignite a spark of inspiration, but all that happened was the words slowly mounted and were abandoned, so my OCD kicked in and I arranged them in groups according to possible grammatical function. This ploy didn't work either, as thus arranged they still stubbornly refused to yield any sort of sense. However, the individual letters, as they were randomly released from the confines of their magnetic slab prison (a laborious task, as the letters, being in traditional typewriter font, have serifs that make it more time-consuming than one would at first have imagined) to form into words as the inclination struck each member of the family, were gradually rearranged so that eventually they almost made a sensible sentence and I was struck by a shaft of Snoopy inspiration. Snoopy never seems to manage to get beyond Edward Bulwer-Lytton's infamous opening line, but I thought perhaps I could use it as a jumping-off point for my own description of a storm, or perhaps compare his description with Sir Terry Pratchett's more erudite and fun contributions such as his anthropomorphised storm in Wyrd Sisters, which I have now, of course, just had to re-read... (And then I had to try and stick some of the loose pages back - maybe I should find a new copy.)

  

 

Then I decided to read a bit more of Edward Bulwer-Lytton's story, which started with the storm. I downloaded the ebook of Paul Clifford from Project Gutenberg. Apart from the text's being slightly annoying, (through no fault of the writer's, however, but the proofreader's) because of the odd grammatical and spelling error, I don't see why it has the reputation for purple prose. It is,  admittedly, full of clichés, but I actually find the writing to be fairly entertaining so far, albeit a bit florid, which I rather expected from a Victorian Penny Dreadful.

Another idea that has been in the back of my mind for years was to follow the variations on the story of Merlin and Arthur... But apparently I am extremely behind the times (and also incredibly naïve to think this was an original idea!), and will just have to make do with re-reading Stephen Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle, and maybe even Mary Stewart's series, while watching the 2008 BBC series which seriously changes the story around, even having Uther bewitched into marrying a troll!

There's even a wiki about it...  

And 

An entire site for the clan MacArthur

Never mind the Encyclopaedia of Arthurian Legend and several books about it in film, including this one:

Writer's Block

Actually, that title is misleading - I have no write (sorry, couldn't resist) to call myself a writer with nothing to show for it. Blame... Eskom, maybe? (Autocorrect thinks that should be Eskimo - very non-PC, this Mac) Although that doesn't work either, since I didn't even get round to putting pen to paper (sorry, Kim.)

Creativity by Bill Watterson 

I have been thinking about writing and decided that the inside of my head is far too visual a place, and where a picture paints a thousand words, according to Bread, I am finding my words inadequate to paint the picture that forms in my mind. This is my excuse, and I'm only excusing myself to my inner Jiminy. Were it not for this complete lack, my dreams would have been made into epic movies by now. 

There was a group of players searching for a stage on which to perform their play. I think there may have been five of them, two boys and three girls. Somewhere, they came across a dilapidated old house, reminiscent of the Boo Radley house, set in a large garden behind (naturally) a peeling iron palisade with a padlocked wrought-iron gate and tatty overgrown hedge. The gate was, however, easily scaled by these intrepid adventurers. Large, unkempt old bare trees surrounded the house which was most unpromising from the outside, almost hidden under drifts of dead leaves, with peeling paint and badly weathered clapboard siding, but once they managed to get the door open (with a very satisfactory creak)and venture inside the vast space, while dusty, dingy and cobwebby, looked promising. They found their way onto the roof, where there was another weathered structure, which on closer examination proved an exact scaled-down replica of the space below, still large enough to serve as a smaller theatre. This completely disintegrated, falling apart in flakes and chunks when they tried to enter it and stand on the stage, having been made of painted chipboard and plywood, so they pulled it apart and threw the debris down among the autumn leaves from the bare trees surrounding the building. This exposed several skylights in the roof of the space below, which they set to work cleaning with some energy. When they re-entered the building, it was as if several floodlights had been kindled, illuminating the wonderful space thus revealed... 
and then I woke up.

something like this...

The Season of SAD?

There is not as much aerial activity in the garden as there was the previous evening, when the flying ants provided a sky buffet for bulbuls and thrushes, while higher up bats flitted hither and yon and the swallows caught the insects that escaped the lower predators in the pecking order.

The equinox has been and gone and already there are intimations of Autumn. From a promising start the day turned gloomy and grey, and while most of the trees are still green, the foliage has darkened in some, losing the freshness of spring and summer, while other leaves fade to yellow, dropping to carpet the lawn, dappling the shade that was hitherto dense and cool. 

This drooping of the sky and falling leaves brings a general damp dreariness to the atmosphere with an accompanying lack of productivity in the humans affected by it.

The equinox is believed to bring a balance to the world - all should be in equilibrium before tipping towards summer in the North and winter in the South. One would hope that rather than gloom and depression, the mood should be one of tranquillity, serenity and reflection. Perhaps it is simply a moment to pause in order to maintain the equilibrium in a moment of quiet contemplation.

No Hwel

Ja well no fine, as we Seffricans say...

Apparently I am not up to the challenge of writing every day. I either get interrupted and lose whatever I was busy with or have a singular lack of inspiration, unlike Hwel in Sir Terry Pratchett's Wyrd Sisters, who has the inspiration for every movie, stage or TV show sleeting through the atmosphere into his brain, and can hardly manage to fit all the bits into his scripts, much like his creator. 

It was a very sad day for the literary world when the great man was visited by another of his creations, Death, the Grim Reaper.

We have a new world in which we have no more PTerry books to look forward to! In the words of Death: OH BUGGER!

I shall have to adapt my own challenge to fit my lack of discipline, since merely writing appears to be enough of a challenge for me. As long as it happens occasionally. More than once a week... However forgiving and slap-dash this may sound, the original challenge was not intended to become a chore, since chore rhymes with bore, like homework when one hates the subject. 

I have now started using the blogger app on my iPad, rather than online on the PC, in the hopes that I don't get side-tracked by links to interesting bits on the Web, as is another bad habit of mine 😁. Actually, it's debatable whether that is a bad or a good habit, since my tendency to follow branch lines in my train of thought or online reading led to my researching further education far enough to get my Masters - an example of what happens to homework when one is interested in the subject matter. Fifteen pages of references attests to this!

Of blackouts and candles...

Ooh, look! Power! As we emerge from 12 hours of darkness. Eskom and City Power are conspiring to turn South Africans into raving lunatics. They publish "loadshedding" schedules and at the top of the page in large red letters write "we are NOT currently load-shedding", and then all goes black when you're in the middle of doing something on the computer. Last time that happened our fridge died.

At least it provides us with another topic of conversation apart from the weather, and a common cause of complaint apart from the government... Although maybe not that far apart. At least I hadn't decided to bake for last night's book club.

Sudden power cuts do have their positive sides as well. While extremely irritating, the lack of man-made noise makes one more able to appreciate the sounds of nature. Right up until the idiot over the road starts revving up his noisy car again and one yearns for the white noise of the waterfall in the fishpond. 

Another positive is the lack of Internet access, as even the cell companies are affected so mobile data is unavailable, so one must perforce read a book or write with pen and paper,  perhaps even get the creative juices flowing with some drawing.

At least the power tools next door are silenced, and when the traffic noise dies down, it's lovely to sit in the garden...

Summer

Oh dear! Doggie dramas, noisy neighbours renovating and weekends of socializing mean I don't actually get down to writing, never mind have any inspiration.

I love summer. I love the heat, and the feel of the sun on my skin. Unfortunately, my skin doesn't appreciate that, but that's another story. I also love to sit around a fire, gazing into the mesmerizing flames, either in winter in someone's fireplace (we don't have one) or in the bush, around a sociable braai fire or in a boma in the bush. I was very glad, though, to have left the Cape before their latest heatwave. When I say heat, I mean up to 35 degrees at the most, and the Cape has been experiencing temperatures in the late forties. These high temperatures, exacerbated by hot winds, fanned the fires which devastated the Peninsula last week. But Nature is clever. Fire is important to the proliferation and regeneration of the fynbos, although small animals and human infrastructure get caught in the crossfire. Humans came to the rescue, and this fire brought out the best in people, who suddenly found their humanity in the common cause of protecting homes and animals displaced by the fire.


Cape Fire fought by heroic South Africans

The scenes of devastation gave rise to hundreds of awe-inspiringly powerful images, of both Man (and Superman, as the firefighters have been dubbed) and Nature.

and community scenes such as this:

An inspiring music teacher

This should have been yesterday's post...

I didn't get round to writing a blog yesterday. I did write a quick note with a pen, though. Then the day ran away from me - and my dog died...

What I wrote:

Last night I was musing on how music is so evocative of people and places, scenes and happenings.
I had gone into the kitchen to fill up my wine glass, and happened to glance at the clock and notice that it was an hour since I'd been in there cooking, with my first glass next to me. "Each glass lasts an hour," I thought, which started me singing "Streets of London" and I was immediately transported back over 30 years to an incident in Borscht and Tears in Knightsbridge. We had gone there for dinner with Vanessa and were having such a wonderful time with a great bunch of people that when the waiters started clearing tables and even putting chairs on them, we all simply decamped to the balcony, and one of the girls started singing "Streets of London". She had a beautiful voice and we all joined in...

http://www.londontown.com/LondonInformation/Restaurant/Borscht__Tears/a245/


Today, we went to Ark Animal Shelter and brought home a little Yorkie, who is unused to people, having been brought up as a breeding bitch in a cage, so is very skittish and tends to run away and hide under bushes or furniture. I hope this situation improves...

But I really don't want this to be about journalling.

A challenge for myself

I have got out of the way of writing, either longhand or on the screen. I have fallen into the modern trap of writing bite-size snippets appropriate to social media. I hardly even write in decent English any more; it's all very informal. So I decided to challenge myself to write something - anything - every day. (Properly. Mostly in full sentences.) Upon deciding this, I was bombarded (by my brain, suddenly starting to fire, wonder of wonders!) by several questions: 

Firstly, should I allow myself a particular length of time for each day's writing?

Secondly, should I write in longhand, since I am evidently very out of practice at letter-writing altogether, or should I write a blog? I contemplated this and came to the conclusion that there are advantages to both media. In longhand, I have a scratch-pad, scratch-brain thinking process, with pen in hand forming a direct link to my thought processes. (Hmm, good thinking, Batman!) 

However, knowing my lack of self-discipline and willpower, perhaps blogging would be advantageous in that I might conceivably have feedback. And nagging (otherwise knowing as being called on my lack of output.) Perhaps I should try both. See how that goes.

Thirdly, would my writing result in a spectacular dribble of drivel, or cause me to say "Hey! You can still write!"? 

The first and third questions shall remain unanswered for the moment. The first step is taken: I have started a blog, and opened one of my hitherto pristine notebooks, which I have now defaced with my unfortunately unpractised scrawl. I can only hope this state of affairs improves.