In the news today a 15 year old Syrian boy, an asylum seeker, was pushed to the ground and had water poured in his face. The 16 year old boy accused of doing it has appeared in court.

When I was 13 I started my first term at Haileybury and Imperial Services College, along with two other boys. It was January, and the previous term’s September intake to my house was 14 boys. They were senior to us, and substantially outnumbered us.

So we had to do as they told us — with the proviso that the command was prefixed with the word “Guvnor!” All new boys at Haileybury were called Guvnor, because it was expected we eventually would go out and govern some province of India.

The greatest crime for a guvnor was fag-ending: which was listening, noticing or paying attention to something that wasn’t prefixed with the word “Guvnor!” If a boy came up to me with a big smile on his face and a box of chocolates and said invitingly “Would you like a chocolate?” I had to stare stonily ahead. If I said “Oh yes, please! Thank you very much!” I would be smacked in the face and kicked on the shins for fag-ending. The word “Guvnor!” had not been used.

“Guvnors! Polish the dorm table!” We polished the huge dormitory common room (DC) table till we could see our faces on it. “Guvnors! Take your shoes off!” We took our shoes off. “Guvnors! Get up on the table and run round!” The three of us climbed onto the table top and tried to run on the slick, highly polished surface.

A broom handle was shoved among us as we ran. If we tried to jump it we were immediately accused of fag-ending because no one had cried “Guvnor!” and the broom handle was hacked at our shins. If we ignored it of course we tripped and fell off the table to shouts of merriment, and were made to get back up and carry on running.

Once that entertainment palled, it was time for table tennis. The table tennis tables were propped up against an alcove in the DC. ‘Table tennis’ meant that we three new guvnors had to climb into the alcove sealed off by the table tennis tables and crouch down so we couldn’t be seen, or heard, as we were not allowed to talk or cry out. There wasn’t enough room for the three of us so two were on the ground and one crouched on top. We used to take it in turns.

Then the older boys would throw things at the wall. Balls of paper, pens (ours), books (ours), whatever came to hand. The most fun for them was burning coals. They would pluck embers off the open fire and lob them at the alcove wall. If we were unlucky they would burn our heads and hair; if we were lucky they would just singe our thick tweed jackets — the school uniform was grey trousers and a tweed jacket from Gorringes.

If something in our demeanour annoyed a DP (dormitory prefect) we would be frogmarched to the White City, the single toilet block for the entire school, which was over 300 yards away outside the quadrangle, upended with the head shoved down the lavatory pan and the loo flushed. A primitive form of waterboarding, I suppose. Just hearty young lads enjoying a bit of banter.

Hawker and Jeffs were a whole year above us, and they took particular delight in imposing themselves on the younger boys. Names have not been changed. Hawker would come up behind me and pin my arms to my sides while the grinning Jeffs would saunter round in front of me and fiddle with my little cock. I was totally impotent. There was nothing I could do except burn with humiliation. I wasn’t even supposed to notice, because I hadn’t been addressed as “Guvnor!”

None of this was recorded on social media. None of this was reported to masters. None of this was mentioned to parents. Whale, who came the same term at me but was in a different house, took refuge in the sanatorium until the matron accused him of malingering and kicked him out. He died shortly afterwards. Couch blew himself up with weedkiller in the summer hols.

The rest of us made it through OK, although the last I heard of Warden, one of my fellow students from the January intake, he was living in Antarctica.

None of our tormentors faced a court. What we went through was nothing compared with what that poor Syrian kid had to cope with in his home country. No one tried to shoot us or bomb us, although I have a suspicion that Couch might have had bigger plans.

But no one was punished or even reprimanded for the two terms of sustained abuse that we suffered. If a master happened to come into the DC while we were being table tennised, we were as silent as we were supposed to be. We were never discovered. Explaining the burns on my jacket to my mother was almost harder than the actual ordeal; of course I could never tell her what was actually going on. And my new jacket for the summer never got singed, because fires weren’t allowed in the summer.

There are gradations of cruelty. And there are levels of punishment appropriate to each one of them. But our society has become so layered and inflexible that an offence which should have resulted in a clip round the ear and a public dressing-down and humiliation is going to trudge its leaden way through our legal system.

The young bully will probably be lectured and sentenced by a shocked and disapproving Judge Hawker or Judge Jeffs QC.

Friends, rellies and the Social Services know that I am not averse to a glass of wine. After reading this story in the Daily Telegraph I now wish I’d kept some instead of just drinking it.

In September 1972 two friends and I (Jorge Potier and Colin McGill — where are they now?) had lunch at La Pyramide restaurant in Vienne, Isère. To wash it down I chose (overriding Jorge & Colin’s strenuous objections) a bottle of pre-phylloxera 1944 Romanée Conti. It was very good, as I recall, although the ‘44 was no match for the ‘45, one of the vintages of the century. They objected because it was so expensive — £14. The ‘45 was a staggering £24.

I bore the bottle home in triumph and placed it on my mantelpiece where it stood until one weekend I was away my Parisienne friend Claudine Fontanon and her sister Odile borrowed the flat. Claudine swears it was Odile who broke the bottle. All I have left is a happy memory and this murky photograph.

I see I’d also just scarfed a Château Lafite-Rothschild and a Château Latour. Hard times.

There’s no way we can make comparisons between then and now. That £14 would be worth £180 today, a massive amount to spend on a bottle of wine. The 1945 vintage would have cost £310. In a restaurant. Unthinkable. And now it’s been sold for £424,000.

Yet seven years later I spent the price of a terraced house in Hoxton on a computer far, far less powerful than the mobile phone in your pocket. So this is an If I Knew Then What I Know Now sort of posting.

Newspaper sales are heading one way. People don’t / can’t read any more. But as I’m an old fashioned git, I still buy a paper every day. It gives me a chance to walk round the block with my dog.

I’ve noticed that if you only read the Telegraph you start fulminating at the slightest alteration of the status quo, and if you only read the Guardian you go on demonstrations and think the world is plotting against you.

So I buy a different paper every day. It used to be

Sunday: Sunday Times
Monday: Daily Telegraph
Tuesday: The Guardian
Wednesday: The Times
Thursday: The i Newspaper
Friday: The Daily Telegraph
Saturday: The Guardian

Then I noticed that Monday’s Telegraph was simply a rehash of the previous day’s Sunday Times, apart from the columnists, and as the Monday columnists are Charles Moore, Boris Johnson and Jane Shilling, I can probably live without them.

Charles Moore has a charming brother named Rowan, who writes intelligently about architecture. But he is such a blinkered conservative a shiver runs down my spine when I read him.

Boris Johnson is an educated fool with an ego the size of a planet. His is dog whistle journalism, a call to rally his troops around him as he tilts for the Tory leadership. I hope he doesn’t get it.

When I was an estate agent with Pavilions of Splendour I showed Jane Shilling a converted chapel in Penge. She loved it, and I hoped I might have made a sale. But then the owner rang me up and said ‘You know that nice lady journalist you brought round the other day? She came back and offered me a sum just below the asking price to do a deal direct so she didn’t have to pay your fee.’ So I don’t have a high opinion of Ms Shilling.

So now my daily buy goes like this:

Sunday: Sunday Times
Monday: The i Newspaper
Tuesday: The Guardian
Wednesday: The Times
Thursday: Daily Telegraph
Friday: The Times
Saturday: The Guardian

What other columnists shall I get enraged about?

Tracking the Wimbledon singles results is something I enjoy doing every year. My interest is best expressed by an old Peanuts cartoon where Linus ecstatically reports the result of a game — the crowd was sobbing, the coach was laughing, the team were rolling on the pitch — and Charlie Brown asks “How did the other side feel?”

Being London Welsh I am genetically predisposed to root for the underdog (except when they’re playing Wales or the Scarlets).

So as people chart the progress of their favourite player to the Championship, I have to track it in reverse. Who is the biggest loser?

This year my Wimbledum Champion is Y NISHIOKA of Japan. He lost to Marin Cilic, who lost to G Pella, who lost to M McDonald, who lost to Milos Raonic, who lost to John Isner, who lost to Kevin Anderson, who lost to Novak Djokovic.

And the Wimbledee Champion is I-C BEGU of Romania, who lost to Katy Swan, who lost to M Buzarnescu, who lost to Ka Pliskova, who lost to K Bertens, who lost to J Görges, who lost to Serena Williams, who lost to Angelique Kerber.

Nishioka and Begu still managed to walk away with £39,000 each, just for getting into the first round.

I really must take up this tennis lark one day.

The first duty of a text typeface is to be legible. The first duty of a display face is to attract attention. Once the attention has been grabbed, it helps if you can read what it says.

The sportswear company Adidas produced a font for the Russia 2018 World Cup, due to end this afternoon (Allez France!). This is it:

and I personally think it’s ugly and uninspired, unlike Dusha, the rather splendid font Russia chose for its World Cup graphics (and which was designed in Portugal).

The Adidas font is not particularly legible; the ‘H’, the ‘K’ and the ‘X’ are not easily distinguished. But look at the ‘2’ and the ‘Z’. They are different. But this proved too hard for the German team. One of their leading players Mesut Özil took to the field wearing the name Ö2IL, using a ‘2‘ instead of a ‘Z‘. Not surprisingly they got knocked out — what’s happened to the famed German attention to detail? (They also chose the ‘I’ from some other font).

OK, more than ten. And a couple of reasons not to. But ignore those, and go anyway. You will never regret it.

THE MISSION
THE ROUTE
THE WILDLIFE
THE TEMPLES
THE CATHEDRALS
THE SHACKS
THE FOOD & DRINK
THE ART
THE ARCHITECTURE
THE HISTORY
THE TREES
THE CAR
THE THIEVES
THE BREAKFASTS
THE WORST
THE COFFEE
THE SLEBS
THE WEATHER
THE FOLLIES
THE WELSH CONNECTION
THE WEDDINGS
THE PUDDING
THE HEALTH
THE HOMECOMING

THE MISSION
We’ve always wanted to see the Greek temples at Agrigento. So we finally went.

THE ROUTE
Palermo, Monreale, Poggioreale, Gibellina, Sciacca, Agrigento, Modica, Ragusa, Noto, Siracusa, Catania, Taormina, Randazzo, Troina, Castel di Tusa, Cefalù, Caccamo, Bagheria, Palermo. 1,680 km.

Click on the blog title if this looks distorted

THE WILDLIFE
Apart from swifts, thousands and thousands of them, and many sparrows, we were disappointed. We saw two bee-eaters. Some hooded crows. Lots of magpies. And a dead rat. Oh — we saw a Golden Oriole, but it was stuffed in a museum.

THE TEMPLES
Agrigento was the driving reason for coming, and the Valley of the Temples did not let these tourists down. There’s not much I can add to the volume of writings about this line of temples along a ridge (not in a valley; it should be called the Ridge of the Temples, not the Valley of the Temples) except to say they exceeded even my expectations. If Greek temples are your thing, this is a peerless site. I still think the temples at Paestum might be bigger, but Agrigento has a far finer location overlooking the deep blue sea. The first one, the Temple of Juno, is on the highest mound and then the ridge stretches away in the distance. The wide, easy Via Sacra connects them all. There were the anticipated crowds of tourists but somehow they didn’t impinge; it never felt overcrowded or brash and touristy. The temples remained remote and, dare I say it, almost sacred. Of course they are now fenced off so we can’t wander round them at will, but that doesn’t really detract. Better to view them as entities. The fences are elegantly designed and do not intrude.

Hard to tell which is older

The Temple of Concord is the jewel. Because the builders constructed it on a substratum of what seems to have been jelly, it has resisted all earthquakes. For want of a better name it is called the Temple of Concord (or Concordia) because after 2,448 years we have forgotten in which god’s honour this beautiful building was erected, and by whom.

THE CATHEDRALS
Well, temples by another name. The stone they use in Noto makes Cotswold stone look drab and grey by comparison. It is positively golden in the sun; such a beautiful colour, and it wears well — the carvings are as sharp and clear today as they were when they were created fifty years after the 1693 earthquake.

The Cathedral at Noto

We saw or visited cathedrals in Palermo, Monreale, Agrigento, Modica, Ragusa, Noto, Siracusa, Catania, Acireale, Randozzo and Cefalù.

The Cathedral at Monreale

In Syracuse we walk into the cathedral and we are stunned to find it’s an original Greek Doric temple dating from the 5th century before Christ, dedicated to Athena, with a Christian church inserted into it.

The Doric columns form the basic structure of the cathedral — that’s what it is, visible from inside and out. Look at them:

In addition, a large inscription on the walls in Latin claims that this is the first Christian church in the world. A lot to take in. I leave baffled, uncertain and confused.

THE SHACKS
Von excelled herself in her choices, but then she always does. First requirements were for a pool and parking, except in Palermo and Agrigento. The best by a country mile was the huge Villa Rassabbia in Frigintini, near Modica.

This was a small country estate at the end of a kilometre-long drive. Wow. And wow again. We had five days here, mainly because of the location and the pool — but it was too cold for swimming most of the time. The weather was a continuing disappointment.

THE FOOD & DRINK
Almost always good, occasionally excellent, only one let-down: a tourist trap lunchtime restaurant in Palermo. The Inzolia grape makes for a very drinkable white wine. My best meal was a pork fest at Chiaramonte Gulfi, up in the mountains. The seafood was uniformly good. I never really understood swordfish and tuna before now — for me tuna always came in flakes from a round tin — but they are insanely good, especially when eaten grilled in the middle of a fish market in Catania. Here is the missing link between fish and meat. And in the Mandralisca museum in Cefalù we saw a krater, or Greek vase. Now I’ve seen a thousand of these in my time, and I can assure you that when you’ve seen one, you’ve see them all. Except for this one. Instead of fighting men or dancing girls, this Greek vase has a depiction of a fishmonger slicing up a tuna for a customer. We had seen the exact same scene in the Catania fish market two days earlier. Nothing has changed in 2,400 years. It is fascinating.

The great majority of Sicilian tourist restaurants, apart from those which have pretensions of grandeur, run basically the same menu. This is what you’ll find:
Pasta alla Sarde
Pasta Tarantina
Spaghetti con verace vongole
Spaghetti Scoglio
Ravioli alla ricotta
Risotto ai Frutti di Mare
Zuppa di Cozze
Caponata
Spada alla griglia
Tonno alla griglia
Fritto di mare misto
Involtini alla Siciliana
It’s all good. You hardly ever seen chicken on a Sicilian menu, then again I hardly ever order it. You won’t see liver, or kidneys, or ris de veau. Inland they do fabulous pork. All the meals will cost between €40 and €60, depending upon your wine.

THE ART
We were blown away. Antonello da Messina’s Annunciate has to be the most beautiful painting in the world. It leaves the Mona Lisa in the dust.

The Triumph of Death in its tattered glory is both horrifying and gripping.

The golden mosaics in the Capella Palatina, the Materana and the cathedrals at Monreale and Cefalù made us weep in wonder. Christ as rock star.

Christ Pantocrator at Cefalù

And I would fly back to Palermo just to see the stucco work by Giacomo Serpotta in the Oratorio Del Rosario di Santa Cita again.

The Battle of Lepanto — in stucco plasterwork!

THE ARCHITECTURE
From Norman through Mannerism to Baroque — the design and workmanship is exquisite. Then they just seemed to stop. We didn’t see any interesting modern buildings — except if you look under Follies. The Sicilian Baroque came as the result of the 1693 earthquake which destroyed Ragusa, Modica, Noto, Catania, Siracusa, Augusta and killed 60,000 people.

THE HISTORY
There was a library in our shack in Frigintini, where I found John Julius Norwich’s Sicily, the most wonderful history of the island. I was thinking of stealing it but read it quickly in four days instead. The island has never been independent. For three centuries until 1713 it was Spanish.

THE TREES
What we knew as the Gwyn Tree, later found to be the Norfolk Island Pine, an invasive species, is everywhere.
In the courtyard of the Oratorio Del Rosario di Santa Cita was a Kapok tree. I have never seen anything like it.

The trunk of a Kapok tree

THE CAR
A brand-new (17km on the clock) orange Citroën C3. Wonders of modern science — the sat nav showed petrol stations with the current price per litre at each one.

The Citroën C3. Great little car!

THE THIEVES
We decided to get the free bus that tours the centro storico of Palermo. Being free, it’s packed with dewy-eyed tourists, parsimonious locals and thieves. Von and I boarded with eager anticipation, but when I say packed I mean the bus was rammed. Standing room only, and a tight press at that. After a couple of stops Von managed to squeeze into a seat, where she found her handbag had been unzipped. Simultaneously I felt two fingers in my back pocket and I turned round to confront a large young man who had been standing behind me. “Hey!” I shouted in English. “What are you doing with your hands in my pocket?” I checked my 20 euro note. It was still there. “You were trying to nick my money! Thief!” He shrugged. “No comprende.” The bus suddenly became as silent as a London Transport double-decker, apart from a young man in a blue striped shirt at the front who was sniggering. A seat became available and I swung into it. The young man was standing right next to me. “You. Are. A. Thief.” I said to him slowly. He was good at shrugging, I’ll give him that. There was no other reaction from anyone on the bus except redoubled sniggering from Mr Stripey Shirt. “Ladro!” I cried. Now everyone appeared to look puzzled, because as Von later pointed out, Ladro is Spanish, not Italian*. Some more people got on the packed bus, and an elderly British man was now standing next to me. He said to his wife “I can feel someone’s fingers in my back pocket.” I said “That’s because the bloke behind you is robbing you.” “Lucky I haven’t got any money there then,” he said, and got off the bus. The incompetent pickpocket and his stripey pal — they were working together, perhaps tutor and pupil — got off at Teatro Massimo and stood giggling on the pavement. I was bloody annoyed, but unrobbed, as was Yvonne. I can’t recommend the Free Bus to anyone.

Thief One and Thief Two (photo © Y Seeley)

*Even later, we discovered that Ladro is also Italian, so I can only assume that everyone on the bus was complicit.

THE BREAKFASTS
We foraged for ourselves, and usually had yogurt and honey.

THE WORST
Ryanair, followed by the weather.

THE COFFEE
Delicious, as expected. But ask for a cappuccino and it’s a toss-up whether it’s made with fresh milk or UHT. They don’t seem to mind. We do. After 11:00 my café (espresso) was inevitably accompanied by un amaro. Yum. Then one of the big treats of the holiday — a visit to the Café Sicilia in Noto, recommended to us by Milo’s friend Namrata and featured in a Netflix documentary which we watched, salivating. No room outside; there are only about six tables and all the shady ones are taken. Inside is full as well, but it is air-conditioned and we’re not going to be back here for a while (it’s my first time in 71 years) so we just wait. It only took another ten minutes and it was our fault, because we arrived at 10:50 on a Saturday morning, probably their busiest time of the week.
The cannolo alla ricotta and the granita alla mandorla with brioche arrive and they are simply exquisite. If this isn’t the best in the world, then maybe the one next door is. I want to try another one, but I dare not even mention it. So, saddened, we pay and leave, but not before congratulating the patron Corrado Assenza. “We saw you on telly!” we gushed intelligently.

Some of the many, many buns at Café Sicilia, Noto

THE SLEBS
OK, Corrado Assenzo (see previous entry) and Montalbano. Yes! In Scicli the traffic was held up by two WPCs for 10 minutes. Finally a decrepit little blue Fiat came up the hill, and the driver was Montalbano himself. They were filming an episode at the cemetery. What a treat!

THE WEATHER
Extremely disappointing. We anticipated hot and sunny, but that was reserved for London and Harlech. In Sicily we had torrential rain (and I mean torrential) and the temperature down to 14°C (58°F). Most days were cloudy. Here’s an example: We head up the road to Noto Antica and the first spots of rain hit the windscreen (Von is driving). Within five minutes it is raining so hard that the road has disappeared under water. The noise of the rain on the car roof drowns out the radio. I haven’t experienced rain of this ferocity since I was three years old in West Africa. It is way beyond torrential. We slow to a crawl, the wipers hurling themselves uselessly from side to side. We have a bow wave; we are actually driving along a river. Thunder is crashing overhead, the only noise that’s louder than the rain on the roof. On the small, narrow, up-and-down side roads leading to Noto Antica we are alternately kayaking down a steep hill, then a brief lull through short flat flooded sections, then turning a corner to face a wall of water rushing down the next hill at us. It was unbelievable. The little Citroën coped well, but then it had a skilled driver. We encountered another small car through the blinding rain on the one-track road, and he courteously backed up about a hundred yards so we could squeeze past amid flashes of lightning. We crossed a bridge under about 18 inches of standing water, then drove into another waterfall coming down the road. We reached a large section of ruined wall and pulled over out of the way of the downhill river into a relatively unaffected parkplatz. We sat in the car, stunned by the ferocity of the rainstorm. After about ten minutes it abated sufficiently for me to get out of the car with Von’s trusty umbrella and wade through the river road to the gateway of Noto Antica. It is of course a huge and deserted site, and I only venture in a hundred yards before the rains come again and I scuttle back to the car.

rain

Now it really sets in, and follows us every inch of the way back down the hill on the main road to Noto. The drains can’t cope and are jetting water a foot into the air. We are travelling marginally faster than the water is flowing down the road, but new side rivers are joining at an increasing rate, walls of water coming in from left and right. This has been great fun, but now a shadow of doubt sets in; this is serious stuff, and we need to take care. It’s bad now, but it could get worse. We swim into Noto, downhill all the way, and Von neatly slots into a parkplatz between two rivers, formerly roads, to see what will develop. So an ice-cream is out of the question? The rain is unceasing. Exasperation is now overtaking trepidation. We decide that there’s no point in hanging around in Noto; it will never stop. We make a break for the coast — it’s bound to be sunnyish. So we head off and the storm follows us every inch of the way. It eases up as we splash into Marzamemi, a seaside resort which is under about 18 inches of water. Every road is flooded, the car parks are flooded, cars are driving aimlessly round with nowhere to stop and the shop and restaurant owners are peering glumly out watching their trade driving past. It’s hopeless. If we found a place we could stop at we’d have to take our shoes and socks off and wade through unspeakable waters — remember the drains have flooded too. We give up and drive uphill to Pochino, but that’s a drab little town with nothing visible going on so we settle on going back to Modica.

Under two brollies — dinner al fresco in Palermo

THE FOLLIES
Although we say we were drawn to Sicily because of Agrigento, the Florence Trevelyan gardens in Taormina were as big a draw for me, because of their follies, surprise surprise. They didn’t disappoint. Florence was an Englishwoman who moved to Taormina in the 1880s. She created this garden from 1890. Most photographs, including mine, do not begin to do justice to these structures. In brick, and stone, and wood, and cloth, and lava, they are much larger than they appear to be. The seven storey tower at the east end of the garden is simply massive, one of the larger follies I have seen anywhere. A plaque on the side reads ‘THE BEEHIVES. FECO COSTRUIRE L’ANNO 1899 FLORENCE T CACCIOLA TREVELYAN’ and I know the only translation you could possibly need is ‘BUILT 1899’.

One of Florence Trevelyan’s Beehives

But why The Beehives? What was this strange lady of leisure thinking when she built this array of odd, but similar buildings? They share a common identity, but as far as I can see there there is no precedent. There is nothing like these structures anywhere else. They are totally original, acknowledging no ancestry, no influences. Florence Trevelyan was a true original, blessed with money and an off the wall taste. She had arrived in Taormina as a wealthy spinster, but soon allied herself with Salvatore Cacciola, not a fortune hunter as a cynic might expect but a local Taorminan politician with his own palazzo, soon to marry Florence and become Mayor of Taormina for many years.
In Bagheria the bizarre and frightening Villa Palagonia was covered in monsters. I will be writing about this more fully elsewhere, but here’s a taster:

A very few of the Monsters at Villa Palagonia

The small town of Gibellina was totally destroyed in the 1968 earthquake and is now completely abandoned and uninhabited. The outskirts are the expected shattered ruins scattered along the hillside, but then we come across one of the greatest sights in Sicily — a mountainside covered five feet deep in concrete cut through with winding paths, covering virtually the entire town plan of ruined Gibellina, the cut paths marking the old roads and alleyways through the town. Had we not been watching the Giro d’Italia on Eurosport to get a preview of Sicily we would never have known of this. It is a work of art by Italian sculptor Alberto Burri, and I have to say it is intensely moving. It brought a tear to my eye, not a difficult thing to do if you’re me, but emotional nonetheless. Of course they ran out of money, and the project was left unfinished, then Burri died, and eventually more money was found and now fifty years after the event Il Grande Cretto di Burri is nearing completion.

Il Grande Cretto di Burri

There is a difference between Folly and a Folly. The new town of Gibellina Nuova was built for the inhabitants of old Gibellina but put up ten kilometres away. The chosen site is scorching hot in summer and freezing in winter. The surrounding countryside is nowhere near as pretty as at old Gibellina. Distinguished architects were called in to design the housing and the amenities, but what is ideal for a Piedmontese is not necessarily ideal for a Sicilian. We drove slowly around the town. The road system is deliberately obfuscatory, and there are buildings the purpose of which is completely baffling. In the centre of the town is a vast concrete structure with five arches, pierced with lenticular holes, purpose unimaginable. If pressed we might hazard it was a huge multistorey car park built for a shopping complex which never got built. I’ve done a cursory search on the web and it appears this is an unfinished theatre, begun in 1984 by abstract sculptor Pietro Consagra. A gigantic theatre for a town of some 4,ooo people, stunned by personal tragedy, and left unfinished for 34 years. This defines Folly. And it’s not amusing.

The uncompleted ‘theatre’ at Gibellina Nuova

THE HEALTH
Von had a cold. This means a sore throat, which is never complained about, and very occasional coughing. There’s no filling wastepaper baskets with tissues. That’s too unseemly. The cold is invisible, but it made her even quieter than usual. I didn’t have a serious hot flush since that first night at Agrigento, and my hay fever stopped the minute I stepped off the plane at Palermo. I only had two conniptions.

THE WELSH CONNECTION

THE PUDDING
Liliana brought round two puddings one evening, and we made a policy decision to eat them after our dinner. We got back to the shack and I took the two bowls out of the fridge. We both took about two spoonfuls before we looked at each other, our faces screwed up in disbelief. We have honestly never eaten anything so sweet. It was as if she’d poured honey over a kilo of sugar. All we could taste was Sugar. For light relief, she’d added candied orange peel. I think it was a deconstructed canola with added sugar. And sugar on top. With sweeteners. The answer was to haul out the disgusting ‘VIN LIQUOREUX’ I’d bought by mistake and glug it down. It tasted positively dry by comparison. I now know what a sugar buzz is, and how Americans react to caffeine. We couldn’t finish the puddings. The room was swinging around me, and I felt — well, not ill, but really unstable and uncomfortable. We went to bed and where we normally have a glass of fizzy water each we both drank three before we could settle down. In the morning my mouth tasted of sugar. We had sugarless tea followed by sugarless espressos, and we squeezed a couple of extra lemons into our orange juice. But how kind of her to think of us. And the curious Modica chocolate, made to the same recipe since chocolate first arrived in Sicily in the C16, probably doesn’t have to be as sweet as the bag Liliana made for us.

THE WEDDINGS
We only managed two, but they were elegant affairs indeed.

At Palermo

At Monreale

THE HOMECOMING
We expected to see our boys at about 02:00 in the morning. Instead at that time we were in a flea-pit in outer Palermo, an hour and a half from the airport. Ryanair had cancelled our flight without warning, and after two lots of check-in queuing (1h 40m) they condescended to fly us home at midday the following day. They put us up at the San Paolo Hotel, a tower block from the 1960s, like Astronaut House in Feltham, in the roughest area of Palermo. The windows hadn’t been cleaned in months, a sure sign that nobody cares. There were bullet holes in the bath tub, the beds were hard and my ankles were chewed all night; a week later I’m still slapping Eurax on them. Our wonderful neighbour Marilena came over and slept on the sofa to comfort Milo, as our housesitters Ev and Paul had left early on Thursday morning. All was well, except Bembo The Cat managed to run up a £160 vet bill. Happy days!

In today’s Times Matthew Parris writes “Last week I bought a new dressing gown online. I probably won’t need another for the rest of my life. This week my screen is invaded by advertising for dressing gowns. I don’t think that’s evil: I think it’s stupid. Unerringly, the “cookies” used in this kind of advertising have enabled retailers to target someone particularly unlikely to be looking for what they’re hoping to sell … it does illustrate the gullibility of those to whom social media magic is sold.”

There’s a word for this. Dumbgorithm. (OK, I just made it up).

Another publishing reminiscence: Horror novelist Thomas Tessier, a good friend of mine, was once Harlan Ellison’s UK publisher. Some 35 years ago we were in Los Angeles at the ABA Convention and went to lunch at Harlan’s house. He seemed a little edgy, but perfectly well mannered, given his volcanic reputation. Then I spotted he had a pair of Quad Electrostatic speakers, and I raved about them. He mellowed immediately and we chatted enthusiastically about British hi-fi units. Then he invited us into his den, leading the way.

Now I am 6’2″, and Harlan isn’t. To compensate for his lack of inches Harlan had deliberately had the doorway into his den built some 3 feet high. It was impossible for anyone of normal size to enter other than on hands and knees, and as Harlan had gone first he was already seated on a throne in the room as the ‘supplicant’ entered. A touch arrogant, wouldn’t you say? I saw Thom crawling in on hands and knees, and sussed what was going on. So I dropped to my hands and knees and entered the room backwards, with my great British bum waving in his face. To his credit, Harlan did laugh.

I’m writing a book for Historic England. Since Wim Meulenkamp and I last wrote a book that required extensive research and the consulting of ancient texts, Sir Tim Berners-Lee has kindly invented the World Wide Web and Google has scanned the contents of libraries around the world.

Our lives therefore have been immeasurably eased. As the only books we need to consult were out of copyright by the end of the nineteenth century they should all be easily available. Many of them are.

But technology really is a word for something that doesn’t work yet. Here is the title page of a book on Derbyshire. It can’t be searched because the words one searches for don’t exist. ‘Derbyshire’ is transcribed as ‘Derbyshirjb’ or ‘ Derbyshiril’ or ‘Derbys’hii^e*’. ‘Fountain’ becomes ‘afountam’. It is unsearchable and unusable.

So it’s back to the libraries, chaps.

Here’s what Google has to say:

This is a digital copy of a book that was preserved for generations on library shelves before it was carefully scanned [sic] by Google as part of a project
to make the world’s books discoverable online.

Google is proud to partner with libraries to digitize public domain materials and make them widely accessible. Public domain books belong to the
public and we are merely their custodians.

; (
NEW / ^^^
HISTORICAL AND DBSCRIITIVE
VIEW
OP
DERBYSHIRJB,
* 9BOM THB
RBMOTBST PSBIOD TO THB PRBSBNT tlMB^
BY THE REV. D. P. DAFIES.
-V
EMBBLLISHSD WITH A MAP AND PLATES^
Antiquam ffiquirite Matiem— ^ixg.
9tlpnx
PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY AND FOB 8« MASONS
Sold also, bf Drorf, WiUdnt, Pritchard, and Stensoo, Derby i Bradlen
mod Fold, Chesterfield t Pirkes, Ashboumi Cotes, Wirkswortht
Dunn, Nottingham t Gale% Sheffield i Longn^n, Hurst, Keen
Ormcy and Browi^ Patemoster^Row, and B. Crosbf andCs*
•utioners-Coert, Lottdto.
1811.
YA/\
‘•’.’ •’

[Herewith part of a description of Chatsworth]

Ikeaarih «iid of them «re two S/iAmMt, mi
laj^baM»,.^»kbMaanMDteio good taMe, well
executed by Cibber; in this«€aaal is afountam
er jetdVeau^ wjbieh throws 4be water Mnetgr
feet high ; -and ip a basin near the hotMe, m$e
font Sea Horses and a TrtloM,.frDvi whcMie’iiteds
uDall streams issue. AH these works,- are su|i«

Too hard for me!

My father and I, just before …

We were warned to take a box of hankies when we went to see ‘Breathe’, and by golly we needed them. It’s the story of an energetic, newly married young man suddenly cut down by polio and condemned to spend the rest of his life hooked up to a breathing apparatus. Yet he achieved wondrous things. It’s a true story, something I didn’t fully comprehend till the end credits (despite it being announced at the start of the film).

Buckets of tears — and it could easily have happened to me. Because swimming at the Venice Lido in 1954, my friend Robin Boyd and I both caught polio. We were taken to hospital in Klagenfurt, Austria, where we lived at the time.

I don’t remember a lot about those months, and there’s no one to ask as my brother and sisters were away at school and my parents have long departed. It was a hot summer, and I remember the window to my room was open and a soldier in the barracks opposite kept on whistling the same tune over and over again, to which I mentally wrote words; something about mice, because at the time I had two pet mice I obsessed over.

Also I remember lying for days, it seemed, inside a device with very bright lights, which may have been an iron lung. I think I was in hospital for about three or four months. Robin died early on and his mother in her grief offered me his comic books — the Tiger Annual 1954! — and my mother, in her fear and anxiety, rejected them thinking they might be contaminated. What with, I’m not sure, but my mother was the sort of person who would never touch a mushroom unless it came in a tin with ‘Chesswoods’ on the label.

That tune has never left my head. When the time came for me to leave the hospital, I couldn’t walk very well and had to learn over again. I certainly couldn’t run at all. I remember the huge flight of steps down from the hospital, white in the hot sun, and wondering how I was going to tackle them.

I was given Thalassotherapy, which involved being taught to swim by an army sergeant who happened to be the Services Freestyle Champion. That helped me realise how vital a good teacher can be, as for years to come, despite my puny build, I thrashed much stronger boys in the pool simply through technique.

And that was it — my brush with polio. It’s left me with no ill effects, though Von claims I limp when over-excited. And I missed a term at school, and I’m still struggling to catch up.

The tune turned out to be ‘The Northern Lights of Old Aberdeen.’ It must have been whistled by a Scottish soldier, wandering far away.