RANDOM ECHOES - ITALY 27/10/05

Up on the estate a man is duped by the previous tenant of an old farmhouse into believing that a stone artifact in the shape of a Doric pillar head and now cemented into a recess on the front wall, is a genuine Etruscan relic. Of course it isn’t. The previous tenant was a clever fraudster who was good with his hands and this feature added and additional £10k to the asking price.

24 HOURS TO GO
Last night I slept better thanks to brandy
A small confrontation in the day
Broken backed
Coffee on the stove bubbled through
The tart smell of applewood in the grate
Papa in carpal tunnel bandage sat with arm raised
Paint-stained clothes stank of ammonia
A man didn’t know the meaning of siblings
Twenty-four hours of duty left
Voices of conscience barked at night
My prize: a bundle of kindling heavier than a head.

The loudest noises at night come from the trains in the gully below, about half a mile away. You hear them a long way off at first, their hectic whisper contained and pushed ahead by the hills on either side of the tracks. Then they charge through close by, some of tremendous trans-European length, with their oddly UFO-like sets of three-pointed headlights, two below one above floating in the dark and taking the curves at high speed.