When Panasonic and Hitachi are your toilet manufacturers, then you are definitely in Japan, and your toiletting is always going to be high tech. There you enjoy the complexities of adjustable seat warmth, choice of background music and options around the loudness of the flush. I can choose between ‘Bamboo forest’ or ‘Mountain stream’ as surround sound to conceal the more earthy tones that may be projected during my visits to the bathroom. In Rosewood we had an outhouse until I was 15, the choice was between editions of newspapers, and any sounds were masked by our neighbour’s dog barking furiously whenever anyone went to the dunny. However the smell, although bad, didn’t match the smell of the person beside me on one of our Milan to Tokyo legs. I suspect his recent diet had involved copious quantites of roadkill or wolverine.

This man weighed approximately 0.75 Zm (Zm is a unit of measurement of body mass. One Zm is the heaviest weight an ex-colleague of mine attained in any calendar year- although variable it was usually in the 200-220kg range.) My seat-mate was young, Nordic and gagworthy. There is nothing you can do when trapped in the middle seat by a young, obese stenchbucket – except hope that there is deodorant served with the meal. There wasn’t. Or hope that your wife has pity for you and offers to change seats. She didn’t.

Tokyo has been a great stopover. We are staying in a familiar neighbourhood, we have eaten at our favourite restaurant and we have coffee each morning at a nearby coffee shop that we love. And we have used the time to go back over this set of travel adventures. Some awards;

Best place visited– Pietrasanta

Best moment – seeing the clouds lift over Barga

Best time – Seeing Nat arrive safely in Lucca on Christmas Eve (a homing pigeon she is not).

Best Meal – Linda’s meatballs in Lucca or pork tonkatsu at a restaurant found sulubriously within the Roppongi Metro station.

Best reunion – Seeing the excitement of the crew at Bluebottle Coffee, Tokyo

Best purchase – 5 rice bowls.

We have already started looking at next Christmas. Any time we go online the possibilities seem to grow. The Baltics and the Balkans have been mentioned. Portugal and Morrocco would fit the bill. We’ve never spent time in France outside Paris. We have Irish and Scottish ancestors that call to us. And the list grows

So much to see Remington, so much to see. I guess we’ll just have to keep planning and travelling for some years yet!

F C-S

In 1969 all my friends in year 8 at Rosewood High had done their primary schooling at the local convent. I was the odd one out. Most Thursday afternoons we would head over to the Catholic church where Father Brown would hand out air-rifles to my friends to shoot the pigeons that nested under the eaves of his church. But not to me. Finally one afternoon he said ‘You’re Ted’s son?’ I nodded. Then he handed me a slug gun and said ‘Just shoot the Protestant pigeons son.’ It was wonderful for a 12yr old. But he never asked me to paint the church.

Louis asked Leo to do a bit of work on his churches in Milan, our last stop ’til Japan. In 1482 Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, invited a young Leonardo da Vinci to Milan from his home town of Florence in response to a shower of letters sent by Leonardo to the Duke. The Duke invited him to decorate a convent and to help with the design of his cathedral. One became ‘The Last Supper’, the other became one of the most recognisable buildings in the world.

Being the great polymath that he was, he went on to work on a huge range of other projects for his sponsor in Milan. There were weapon designs, new, improved, water-powered wool looms, drawings, glorious art works, writings about flying machines and submarines. There were scientific and mathematical insights. There were sculptures and letters; all of these are now part of our precious Western heritage. Milan was special for Leonardo indeed.

We have only ever used this city as an airport, as a pause before heading elsewhere, but at each visit we feel a little more intrigued by its food, its people, and the unexpected (and expected) moments of beauty. Milan – we, like Leonardo did before us, feel a growing affinity towards you – an urge to design a church, a castle, or the like …. though nothing as grand as Rosewood’s Catholic Church of course. After all, some things are simply not able to be replicated – ever.

We have only one more day here to explore this city and its museums and art galleries before we head to Tokyo and the land of high tech toilets…..that is unless I’m offerred a slug gun to shoot pigeons at the cathedral. Only the Protestant pigeons of course!

F C-S

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The Duke’s front gate.

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If ever a deli had my name written all over it, this is it.

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Milan’s version of Harrods or KaDeWe

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Of course every capital city in the world (except Lima) has an Inca playing Andean tunes on a wooden flute beside a stuffed llama.

Goodbye Farquar of the Hinterland

Our dear friend Farquar left us today for his next destination and we accompanied him as far as the city of Pistoia where we took our leave. He took the fast train from Florence to Venice, later we took the world’s slowest train back home to Lucca.

Pistoia where we spent the day is a gentle city, one that shows off some of the traits of Italy and Italians that we have come to love. The restaurant where we had lunch has a sign that says:

“We have WiFi, but wouldn’t you rather just eat with you friends?”

The place was filled with families sharing a meal and the sign seemed to sum up this place and our day.

All our meals today were so, so simple. Slow cooked pork in tomato and fennel sauce and a spinach and ricotta ravioli for lunch in a Pistoian market trattoria. Later back in Lucca we had a meat and cheese platter served with local wines. Bread with olive oil, a simple pastry or biscuit with your coffee, fruit on the table to have with cheese. All of our meals today were relaxed, simple and all of the ingredients so very good. Even the train journey home was unhurried.

Trenno Regionale actually translates as ” Shit, this is the slowest train I have ever been on.” The journey from Pistoia to Lucca wound its way past vineyards, flower farms, little railway sidings where no-one got on or off – but the driver waited anyway. Linda had a very long, very deep sleep at one stage on the homeward journey- and woke up much later at the next station 10km up the road.

There are some who said the railmotor from Ipswich to Rosewood went 15 miles forwards in distance and 50 years backwards in time. Today we travelled (slowly) through Tuscany’s Wulkarakka, Walloon and Thagoona. There were vineyards and vegetable farms rather than the cattle and piggeries of my childhood. In the distance were small hill-top villages and snow-capped peaks rather than the Marburg Range. But whilst the names and the geographical features were unfamiliar, I did feel that I had some deeper understanding of what it would be like to grow up in these places – surrounded by relatives but suffocated by safety.

I have a deep love for Italy as you know. I suspect Myrl may have actually been Sicillian but pretended she was born in Ipswich just to snare Ted – this might explain my seemingly innate affection for this place. The food, the wine the scenery, but above all the people keep bringing me back – and I always do feel so much at home.

But I couldn’t help but wonder if today, on a train between Ipswich and Rosewood, I had a doppelganger. I wonder if a travelling Rossini leaned over to his wife Lindetta and said “You know dear, living in Rosewood would be just like living in back home in Castello-Montibello, except here they have pigs and beef cattle rather than olive trees and flower farms.”

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if this happened. After all the wonders of travel, Remington, must be experienced to be fully understood. They cannot ever be explained with mere words!

Farley

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Happy New Year to all my devoted followers.

I think I was awake when it was midnight in Mumbai, and I was certainly woken at midnight by the church bells and fireworks here in Lucca.

I hope the new year brings calmness, perspective and even more to love about your lives.

Farley Cunnington-Smythe

ps

(Because some fool introduced the cactoblastis moth to Australia we are unable to decorate our houses, sporting fields and paddocks with prickly pear. Unbelievable! Not in Lucca though. The Italians have an eye for beauty, that’s for sure!)

‘You can’t go home again.’ (Tom Wolfe)

I don’t know if any of my reading public have shared an experience similar to mine a day ago. Yesterday we decided to visit an old friend. I know her quite well, in fact we spent a month together when M’lady was writing her doctorate, and I was so excited to be catching up with her again after a number of years apart. The whole day was such a profound disappointment. The Florence we went to yesterday was not the Florence I remember.

Florence is still as beautiful as ever- I can only name Paris as a city that might shade her for sheer beauty. Around almost every turn in the old town centre holds the potential for another heart-stopping, absolutely breathtaking scene. Every corner brings anticipation. It is my favourite city in the world by far – when there are fewer tourists.

It was a struggle to walk there at times, such were the crowds. The Ponte Vecchio was shoulder to shoulder, the Duomo the same. The queue for the Uffuzi was probably 500 metres long and growing. Yes I do understand the hypocrisy because I too am a tourist. But yesterday wasn’t spent with the Florence I remember. It has changed, or I have changed. I can’t see myself visiting her again, and that made me inordinately sad.

Today, perhaps in an attempt to remedy that sense of loss, we went an hour by train in the completely opposite direction – not to a city but to a small town called Pietrasanta (St Petersburg would be the Russian equivalent). It is a medieval hillside town that looks out over the Mediterranean. There are remnants of its walls and watchtowers that still fill that role as protectors – not of people but of the olive groves that dot the western slopes. And more importantly there were no tour guides, no horse-drawn carriages, no ticket touts – no crowds at all.

There wasn’t a Santa Claus to be found and very few Christmas trees, but instead tastefully decorated streets and witch costumes for sale. (It is a witch, la Bafana, who brings gifts to the children on the 12th day after Christmas – the Epiphany is the day the Wise Men arrived in Bethlehem with their gifts.) The magnificent church that featured priceless artwork by Florentine masters was free to enter, and the few people inside appeared to be mainly locals. Our delicious lunch was shared with extended families enjoying the day out together. It was indeed a much needed day, one to refresh the soul.

I hope my three readers do get to Florence on a day when you have at least part of the city to yourself – but sadly now I won’t be your guide. No doubt you are aware I have been resisting the relentless pressure to lead pilgrimages to the very special sites around Rosewood and Tallegalla – a task for which I am uniquely qualified. The open-cut mine, the piggery, the bridge over the Seven-Mile are all attractions that must be seen with a guide to be fully comprehended. However our recent trip to Florence makes that journey with me as your host even less likely to happen now.

You just can’t go home again Remington because it won’t be the same and you won’t be the same. You can’t ever go home again.

F C-S

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