21. Fringed

Yeah yeah, I know, I know. But, I have actually been going to places, I have the pictures all stored up, I still have hopes of getting them all done while we're still in August. I've got a week. Come onnnnnnnn.

OK so today I popped my Fringe cherry. Not watching: performing. I'm in Edinburgh for a couple of days for the book festival. (Speaking tomorrow at 10.15am about The Lessons and 5pm about computer games, come along if you're around!) The book world is pretty sedate. One might even say: civilized. There are no heckles at book events. There tend to be hotels, restaurants and sentences like "I saw Joan Bakewell in the yurt but I was too shy to say hello". (I really did, and I was, even though I've actually done an event with her before. Crazy I know.)

But the wonderful Rachel Rose Reid invited me to take part in her fringe event, The Crow's Nest at the Pleasance. I read a story to an audience of about 20 in a venue with a dripping ceiling and snacks of hula hoops being passed around. We don't get that in the book world. Or men taking their shirts off to sing pirate songs.

It was lovely, actually. Even with the dripping ceiling. The bit of writing that's like this - the bit where you're starting out, or trying out new ideas, all happens by yourself on a page. Not among sweet, interesting charismatic people - unlike authors, performers are charismatic - being patient with each other's false starts because we all understand that you can't start off at the London Palladium. I read a story from my email on my mobile phone and no one seemed to mind. Oh, and I've never been to the Pleasance before so, job done.

9. A turning off the main road*

Sometimes, oh best beloveds, you have a bit of a day, at the end of what became a bit of a month, in the midst of what's turning into a bit of a year. And sometimes it turns out, at the end of that day, that you have inadvertently booked yourself for the night into a hotel in a rather dingy seaside town which, despite the name, you doubt the painter Rembrandt would actually have approved of.

(What can I say? The photographs of the swimming pool were deceptive and I forgot to check Trip Advisor.)

And on those occasions, sometimes you remember that the one thing a seaside town might have going for it is that it's right next to something which, despite their very best efforts, people have not yet succeeded in making entirely ugly. And then you might go down to the seashore. And watch the waves for an hour. And feel a little better.

And then you might stare at the hills surrounding the bay, dappled straw and ochre and olive and emerald. And you might wonder to yourself how a person could get up onto those sun-and-cloud-patterned slopes.

And then, if you were pursuing a project of this nature, you could find yourself thinking that if you just get into the car and try to drive up as many useful-seeming roads as you could, maybe you'd get at least closer to them.

Although all you find is a network of cul-de-sacs, lined with houses facing towards the bay like the monumental heads of Easter Island, you might feel that even an attempt to pursue the journey was worthwhile.

 

And then you might spot a pathway cut through the long grass at the edge of the road.

And you might follow it up the hill, as it twists around.

And you might find yourself suddenly in a place of surpassing loveliness, quiet but for the birdsong, on top of a hill, looking out at the Dorset countryside.

I find these days that I can tell I'm where I'm supposed to be if there are rabbits.

*Yes, I know I have missed out 6, 7 and 8. But I have been to 6, 7 and 8 places. There will be write-ups. It's post-modern to tell stories out of order.

5. Waterlogged

 

Today I stood in a gazebo made of old tin cans, listened to folk music in a yurt, saw a sand snake (pictured), touched a live snake (not pictured) and spanked a man on the bottom with a 100-year-old truncheon. However, none of those things count, because they are new things, and, since I was at the Secret Garden Party yesterday too, not a new place. 

Instead, today's new place was the swimming pool of the LA Fitness gym in Huntingdon which I used this morning in one of those free one-day trials because the idea of going several days without a swim is largely intolerable to me.

I once heard Stella Duffy say (possibly attributed to someone else) that there are two kinds of people: those who look at a body of water and want to sail on it, and those who look at a body of water and want to swim in it. I'm definitely in the latter camp. Where other writers have their sacred 'writer's walk' (actually I do too, walks are good - look how many of these pieces of advice feature walking) I have swimming. I love how swimming clarifies, how the repetitiveness soothes, how thoughts become crystalized, how you find out how long you can *really* hold your breath for.

So, in Huntingdon, with all of the Secret Garden Party to play in, I sneaked off this morning for a swim. And in Bologna, I went to the most gorgeous underground swimming pool (literally underground, not, like, a secret swimming pool which is in hiding from the authorities and needs to keep a low profile) - it was marble-floored and U-shaped. I feel almost like mentioning a swimming pool is cheating really, because all water is in a way the same place, that's what good about it. It feels like coming home.

Not everything about a person is set, ever. People can always change. But it occurs to me that right now it's almost exactly 10 years since I moved to Manhattan where, when I was looking for somewhere to live, I had two stipulations: nearish to a library and a swimming pool. Some things remain the same.

2: è differente essere Ebrea

That is a peach. It is gorgeous. You can't smell it, but I could and it's the kind of food that makes you think "if I eat this, it will become part of me, that's just fantastic." Bologna is famous for its food. Obviously they invented Bolognese sauce (served here over golden yellow buttery melt-in-the-mouth tagliatelle, not spaghetti), but also apparently lasagne. And just down the road is Parma. As in Parma ham and Parmesan cheese. Basically everything here is amazing; the tomatoes are specially incredible this time of year, just so sweet.

So, I've had a lovely day wandering around - not just sampling the food - until the heat overcame me. Walking back to my hotel I spotted this:

OK, were you a geeky child? It will not surprise you to learn that I was. Did your parents take you on holidays to historic English towns and to museums and exhibits called things like "The Museum of the Wool Industry" or "The bubonic plague hits Cirencester" or "Medieval Hereford"? Mine, naturally, did. And did you find yourself thinking something like "wow, if I'd been here in Medieval times, I wonder what I would have been doing, would I have had to card wool like in that educational diorama?" Maybe you did: we're sort of encouraged to do that in GCSE History. Imagine that you are a street urchin; write 200 words about your daily life.

The thing is, my dad's an historian and knows a thing or two about what actually went on. So when I said to him "dad, if we'd lived in Victorian Bath/Medieval Worcester/Elizabethan Aberdeen, what would we have been doing? Would you still have been a professor? Would we I have had to get a job cleaning chimneys?", he'd generally reply "well, we'd have been Jewish, so it would have been different."

And it is. Everywhere, and everywhen, pretty much, except here and now it's been different. A parallel history. Here in Medieval and Renaissance Bologna there are people inventing lasagne and building towers and founding the world's first university and all sorts. And there are the Jews, in the ghetto.

I had a little explore of the ghetto - I might go back properly tomorrow. My guidebook had said it was "quiet" and they're not kidding. It's like the minute you step off the main streets and into the ghetto the sound is deadened. Presumably the walls are thicker - perhaps Jewish people wanted to protect themselves from attack, or the Bolognese built thicker to cut themselves off more firmly - but also there aren't so many shops. The buildings are closer together. The few people seem to speak more softly. The walls are high and the streets are narrow.

What is one to do with a history like this? To forget it seems an insult to those who lived it. To insist upon it seems churlish to a world which now says "no no, we're all the same, please accept our apologies and come and join in the fun. We have Parmesan cheese!" It is a big and unanswerable question. What to do with history?

Shall we do it again?

Yes, I think we shall.

I've had that feeling creeping over me for a few weeks now. Staring at places I pass by but have never been into, remembering places I've been recommended. The other day, driving back home from central London I almost drove straight past Regent's Park and then I thought "I have literally never ever been to sit in Regent's Park." So I pulled over the car and sat under a tree for 20 minutes, watching the kids play football and the couples flirting. And thought, as I often think "why haven't I ever done this before?" And yes, I think it's time to start another Visiting New Places project.

Now, last time I did 31 places every day in August. However, I know that I'll be incommunicado for a lot of the first week of August. So. Let's start now, and I'll do 31 by the end of August. OK? As before:

- it doesn't have to be a long visit, five minutes will do

- I have to write something about the place

- it has to be somewhere I've never been before. but could be, eg, the gardens which I've never visited of a house I have visited. clear? 

- a new place not a new activity

I'm sort of cheating, because currently I'm in foreign - a city I've never been to before - so the first few days will be a bit easy. Should I make it harder? I don't think so. Part of the joy of this last year was the 'found' visits; places I happened to be anyway, but related to differently because I was doing this. So, OK, off we go!

The rabbit above, btw, was photographed by me at the University of East Anglia. There are rabbits everywhere and if you sit very very still they will come right up to you. But it has to be very still. Like, not even turning the pages of a book. One of them hopped over my foot, another nibbled a page of the book I was (not) reading. It's here also to remind me of a post I must write entitled "the wisdom of Michele Roberts". Intriguing, eh?

OK, let's go.