As the UK situation has moved from Johnson’s advice to the nation to ‘take it on the chin’ and rely on ‘herd instinct’ to the PM being admitted into an intensive care unit under a ventilator, it’s for all of us to bury our political differences for the present time and wish him a full and speedy recovery so that he may happily see the birth of his fiancée’s new baby this year.
Meanwhile, I have frequent desires to cocoon myself as far as possible from further demoralizing news about the present UK government-exacerbated crisis. This mind-isolation can be helped by not having the wireless permanently tuned to Radio 4 but, rather, to often very palliative music of Radio 3.
Another way is to sift through one’s photographs. Sadly, my snaps taken before the digital picture explosion of this century are relatively few. Indeed, there are more photographs in one year now than there are from the whole period before 2000. I’ve mentioned my own change from analogue to digital at:
https://longoio.wordpress.com/2013/04/27/death-of-analogue/
I am also reminded of that fabulous 2011 exhibition by Keane of Barga news on the same theme at:
What would I give to have a few more photos of myself and my mates and girlfriends at school or university? I treasure the handful that I do have. Like this one taken on the roof of my Cambridge College’s chapel (King’s) during one of Fellow John Saltmarsh’s tours of his favorite building:
One of my rediscoveries during our present lock-down are the first photos taken in the spring of 2005 of the house we were to buy in Longoio, Bagni di Lucca when we were taken there by Luciana Gargiulo (wife of architect Francesco Rondina) of ‘Casa e Ville’, Ponte a Serraglio:
(The very first sighting of our Longoio house)
What strikes me about these ‘early’ photographs, apart from their continued novelty and freshness (we were younger then!), is how much we were able to see in the short time we had at our disposal. Some of the places I recognize well, others less so. Let’s always try to photograph road signs of where we are!
We later returned on our own to the house at Longoio. At that time (and until 2008, when we bought our first Italian car, a FIAT ‘Cinquina’), our main mode of transport was by scooter:
It’s both lovely and sad to see these photographs. Since the purchase of our Longoio house it’s clearly not been all plain sailing. To start to describe not only some of the good things but some of the bad ones that have occurred to us in Longoio would not be appropriate at this time when so many of us are suffering through no fault of our own. Let us look towards an Easter when the word ‘resurrection’ will seem to mean so much more…