When in Roma
A week has appeased and anowa wea are ina the Italy.
Haven't had the coat out for the whole week. It is warm in airport cafes and waiting rooms. I spy the richos lurching up to the lounges, with antipathy. Fat bastards drinking cheap wine, with 3 day growths. Probably around their genitals.
But then the aeroplane caper is finished for a while. What a blessing. Buggering around in airports is about the least of humankind's height of endearvour. How did it all happen, have we expected too much out of the 21st century, and somehow it has turned around and bitten large masses of us on the proverb making department.
So, Rome - a week ago. 16th September 2017 via Dubai. I flew over the old Ceylon, and contemplated that in around about the year of my birth 1957, my father had visited Sri Lanka, as it then was, and was flogging apples to the natives, and he took some slide photographs on Ektachrome 64. A couple of years ago I transferred the photos from the slides, via a little machine, into digital copies. I very probably had a copy of them on my 'tablet' with me on the plane, if not, then in the cloud, and could access them there and then. I recall one of the photos was of a native animal like a rat, doing battle with a poisonous snake, and devouring the snake - courage, David and Goliath style.
My flight was in seat B between two Greeks sitting in A and C, they being married but choosing to 'live apart' for comfort reasons. In truth, they plan by booking like that, in the oft realised hope that the Middle seat won't be taken, and they get 3 for 2. Clever those wogs.
I enjoyed the trip, notwithstanding the airport reality. I realise that over many years, we have taken for granted the reality that people wish to blow up things (I used to light fires as a kid, just to see how far they would burn before I could manage to put them out - sometimes with the need to call the fire brigade).
The cup of coffee came with those little plastic milk containers, designed to be ripped open and the milk spilt into one's lap - both unfomfortable and smelly. Again, nostalgic recollection of travelling with Camille, and her fetishism for collecting those milk containers, so that anyone around her had to have black coffee. Ahh, those were the days. We thought they'd never end....Well they haven't yet.
Cinema on the aeroplane: lots of films, about 200. Nearly 1/4 foreign language: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian (divided into Ukraine, Uzbeck, Georgia, etc and other places where film making is right on top of the agenda). Then there are the Yankee imperialist stuff: love conquers all, the romantic comedies: and the Blah Blah 4 film with the bald geizer ramming his car into the bad buys or the other way round. That left a little eye mask and ear plugs for entertainment.
I did watch one film which included 'Arec' Baldwin, as he was known by Kim Jon Il in "Team America" - but in this a 'romantic comedy' which was neither romantic nor humorous. Funny how the commercial enterprises have contorted the language, stolen meaning, and deliver tripe with everything. Anyway, my point here is how some things, no matter how bad, trigger memory. As the piss weak actor in this film stooped to expose her breasts whilst she lit a candle in a church in Paris, with the Eiffel Tour in the background somehow magically superimposed into the church nave, my mind went to the tour I had with Sarah and Camille in 2007, and at Lyon, we poked our head into the church St Jean. Now, mispronounciation is just one of my talents. So ignoring the "John" but then contemplating my mother Jean Isabelle, who had at that time only recently died, I bent and lit a candle, recalling her fear of purgatory, and that such things would have helped her across her river Styx.
Gay Marriage: didn't come up. But treat this as authority from me to Sarah and Camille to exercise my straw poll on my behalf in any way they (jointly) may wish. Remember: we are just trustees the old folk, for the next generation, but they will have to 'claw the assets from my cold dead hand'. [Ben Hur - but more of that later from the Colosseum]
Image: from our Hotel Colinna, central Rome. Across the street, the Government building for the legislature.
I'm almost sad the holiday has started; because as it starts, it begins to come to an end. Life, the Universe. I'm reading Douglas Adams: Restaurant at the End of the Universe as holiday reading. I'm expecting some direct parallels between that restaurant and the many we will sample in Rome, Venice, Firenze Siena, Etcetera.
Haven't had the coat out for the whole week. It is warm in airport cafes and waiting rooms. I spy the richos lurching up to the lounges, with antipathy. Fat bastards drinking cheap wine, with 3 day growths. Probably around their genitals.
But then the aeroplane caper is finished for a while. What a blessing. Buggering around in airports is about the least of humankind's height of endearvour. How did it all happen, have we expected too much out of the 21st century, and somehow it has turned around and bitten large masses of us on the proverb making department.
So, Rome - a week ago. 16th September 2017 via Dubai. I flew over the old Ceylon, and contemplated that in around about the year of my birth 1957, my father had visited Sri Lanka, as it then was, and was flogging apples to the natives, and he took some slide photographs on Ektachrome 64. A couple of years ago I transferred the photos from the slides, via a little machine, into digital copies. I very probably had a copy of them on my 'tablet' with me on the plane, if not, then in the cloud, and could access them there and then. I recall one of the photos was of a native animal like a rat, doing battle with a poisonous snake, and devouring the snake - courage, David and Goliath style.
My flight was in seat B between two Greeks sitting in A and C, they being married but choosing to 'live apart' for comfort reasons. In truth, they plan by booking like that, in the oft realised hope that the Middle seat won't be taken, and they get 3 for 2. Clever those wogs.
I enjoyed the trip, notwithstanding the airport reality. I realise that over many years, we have taken for granted the reality that people wish to blow up things (I used to light fires as a kid, just to see how far they would burn before I could manage to put them out - sometimes with the need to call the fire brigade).
The cup of coffee came with those little plastic milk containers, designed to be ripped open and the milk spilt into one's lap - both unfomfortable and smelly. Again, nostalgic recollection of travelling with Camille, and her fetishism for collecting those milk containers, so that anyone around her had to have black coffee. Ahh, those were the days. We thought they'd never end....Well they haven't yet.
Cinema on the aeroplane: lots of films, about 200. Nearly 1/4 foreign language: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Russian (divided into Ukraine, Uzbeck, Georgia, etc and other places where film making is right on top of the agenda). Then there are the Yankee imperialist stuff: love conquers all, the romantic comedies: and the Blah Blah 4 film with the bald geizer ramming his car into the bad buys or the other way round. That left a little eye mask and ear plugs for entertainment.
I did watch one film which included 'Arec' Baldwin, as he was known by Kim Jon Il in "Team America" - but in this a 'romantic comedy' which was neither romantic nor humorous. Funny how the commercial enterprises have contorted the language, stolen meaning, and deliver tripe with everything. Anyway, my point here is how some things, no matter how bad, trigger memory. As the piss weak actor in this film stooped to expose her breasts whilst she lit a candle in a church in Paris, with the Eiffel Tour in the background somehow magically superimposed into the church nave, my mind went to the tour I had with Sarah and Camille in 2007, and at Lyon, we poked our head into the church St Jean. Now, mispronounciation is just one of my talents. So ignoring the "John" but then contemplating my mother Jean Isabelle, who had at that time only recently died, I bent and lit a candle, recalling her fear of purgatory, and that such things would have helped her across her river Styx.
Gay Marriage: didn't come up. But treat this as authority from me to Sarah and Camille to exercise my straw poll on my behalf in any way they (jointly) may wish. Remember: we are just trustees the old folk, for the next generation, but they will have to 'claw the assets from my cold dead hand'. [Ben Hur - but more of that later from the Colosseum]
I'm almost sad the holiday has started; because as it starts, it begins to come to an end. Life, the Universe. I'm reading Douglas Adams: Restaurant at the End of the Universe as holiday reading. I'm expecting some direct parallels between that restaurant and the many we will sample in Rome, Venice, Firenze Siena, Etcetera.
Image: a bar into which I wandered, as fresh as a daisy and departed via the Heart of Gold and the improbability drive, into another universe. Happens sometimes. Better that than finding yourself as a whale falling from the sky.
The big walking gig was through the Forum, Senate, Palantine, and the Colosseum. A hot sunny day in the Rome and a good story told by the guide, coming through crappy earphones into even crappier mind - but what a story that vestal virgin thing! What the Romans did for us!
Again, I recall the last trip with Camille and Sarah around the Colosseum - the platform or floor of which seems so small, maybe 100m long, but the whole of the stadium, enable 80,000 punters to watch the lions and Christians play with the Gladiators.
Now, back the the gay scene - what is going on with the AFL? The Gay FL? What do you think of the debate that they have lost their soul and just attach to any contemporary issue and use it indirectly to promote themselves out of anonymity?
Meanwhile, whilst Australia dies a death of a thousand cuts debating with half the mind detached and no quality of debating ability, the Brits have sent their emissary Theresa May to the heart of the Renaissance, Firenze, to negotiation continuation of trade with the European Community. She wanted to stay at our hotel in Florence, but all the rooms were taken.
Image: where Russell Crowed
Anyway, today, is Venice, and after a blast on the waterways yesterday over to Murano, and Burano (Islands about 2 and 8km away, and very entertaining small and different) it is time to tour the streets and meet the people.
By for now.
Andre Gromyko II Sept 23rd 2017
Comments
Perhaps a book is in the making, you could change the names to protect the innocent, and I am sure it would make a great read.You can quote me on Le Labbra. Look forward to the next instalment.
Not Nathaniel