RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 16/10/05

Cousins changed beyond recognition after 15 years or so. One now a fat middle-aged man with a thick untrimmed moustache - looks like a character from an Edwardian parlour piece. Dressed in shambolic white suit, standing in the background of wedding photographs looking on at the brother who no longer speaks to him because he has never repaid money he borrowed.

Driving back from Lago Maggiore to Umbria, five hours on the A1 central motorway through Italy – passing: walled cemeteries; Milan industry and chrome flyovers; silhouetted trees Sunday afternoon with three farmhands still out there working hard at harvesting; roadside kiosks selling fruit and water, dark women standing there on the central reservation; lone prostitute out toward the slip roads in Rho; through Piedmont into Emiglia Romana into Tuscany into Umbria; through Florence pointing out Brunelleschi’s dome from afar; truckloads of pigs squeezed in around Mantua; cavalry horses transported all day long; nightingale piano outside Bologna; Johnny Cash & Bobby D all the way.