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House of cards
Living in Florence, I feel isolated and cocooned from reality. In the urban metropolitan sense of the word I mean – delayed trains, surly commuters, immersive billboards, and existential terror...
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The promise of summer
I wake up to the sound of roosters at the break of dawn. It is my favourite sound of the day. Everybody hears them, but nobody knows where they live. Lying on the mattress floor, I await the roaring...
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Spring awakening
I miss the visual energy of running away. How the seasons shift from slate grey to rosy bloom, and that everyday my legs soared with matter. Beauty requires strength in Lisbon. You have to graft, pound...
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The Girl of Disquiet
Automat, Edward Hopper (1927) Earlier this year, I moved to Lisbon for a spring sojourn because I’m no longer bound by geography to earn a living. From living in the Tuscan hills to the Atlantic Ocean,...
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Zigzag to Berlin
On departing Dalston Junction last Saturday, I mismanaged my packing so badly I alighted the Eurostar on the station master’s whistle. My violent, sweating omnishambles of a departure saw my finest...
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Friedrichshain in Fall
Every night I see them howling like wolves underneath the railway bridge, forming cross-legged circles and wailing drunken invectives into the Spree. Their brutish chants always put me on edge after...
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Goodbye to Florence
Arriving in a misty haze at Pisa international, I took my coach seat and felt a renewed love for nature. With steam rolling off the fields, I remembered being driven around Aberdeenshire as a child,...
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Montefegatesi
We drove towards Montefegatesi in western Tuscany one spring morning. A lonely cyclist was struggling along the swirling gradients, and songbirds were in full voice. Meanwhile, in the woodland hills,...
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An orgy of swallows swarm over my pre-WWI courtyard. From the moment the sun breaks through my blinds, I love listening to them fight and feed. An unseasonable heatwave has seen temperatures reach the...
View ArticleDream across the water
“I don’t like Sliema, the roads are dirty, and the food isn’t so good”, my blonde Italian hairdresser told me. She had set up a salon with her Bologna-born sister here a few years ago. I popped in...
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