Travel Biography - Week 29.

As I write, it's New Year's Eve, and the start of 2023 is just a few hours away. After a year of seeing three different Prime Ministers sitting in Parlament, one after the other, the Russians starting a war in Ukraine, the cost of living rising, the threat of higher taxation, and still waiting for any tangible Brexit benefits, I say - there, by the grace of God, go I.

Penniless in Florence.

And I could have said exactly that to myself back in 1981, just over 41 years ago, as I made my way to Fort Belvedere on a Sunday morning in August of that year. Who would anyone have known that I was a victim of a professional thief who slyly lifted my Traveller's Chequebook out of my trouser pocket whilst standing in a crowded train on a branch line from Pisa Central to Florence Santa Maria terminus? With a small amount of cash, just enough to buy a sandwich, borrowed from the hotelier whose pensione I was staying whilst in Florence, I crossed the River Arno on the Ponte Vecchio, the only known road bridge lined with shops on both sides, and made my way to the summit of a hill from where I enjoyed a magnificent view of the city, with the Duomo dominating the skyline. Whilst I was there, I felt somewhat sad. I was meant to meet a friend I made on Friday after arriving at the station. Instead, I had to go to the police station. I imagined him standing here, waiting and waiting before concluding that I stood him up.

The Ponte Vecchio, Florence.

The next day was a Monday morning. Whilst the other guests were checking out, with the all-important police document, I made my way to the bank I was told by them to visit. I was rather surprised how the counter staff prepared a fresh book of cheques without a single question asked and without a fuss - as if they were expecting me. I felt jubilant as I walked out after cashing the first cheque. By then, I was ready to settle up with the hotelier, check out, and move on.

I had a map of Italy on me which I had recently bought. By checking the northwestern coastline, I noticed a parasol symbol with the name Viareggio. That means a holiday resort in a parallel setting as Loano. This time, I decided to take the bus to Viareggio rather than risk standing on a crowded train.

Upon arrival, I took a liking to the resort straight away. In one of the blocks making up the symmetrical grid layout lining the beach, I came across what looked to be a suitable hotel. Not a pension this time, but a family-owned hotel proper, where I was assigned a room of my own. The weather was good, the sunshine giving the English expression Sunny Italy, hence, enhancing the beauty of the resort. I then wished that I had arrived earlier in the holiday. 

The beach was a long, sandy strip which ended at the harbour molo on the southern end. The grid layout was backed by the Apennine, the range of mountains running much of the whole length of Italy. These mountains also provided the background for both Florence and Pisa alike.

While I was swimming in the Mediterranean, I had to keep an eye out for the occasional jellyfish whose territory I had invaded. This particular species seemed to be solitary, hence still making the sea reasonably safe for bathing. However, I was taken aback by the size of its bell, probably up to 10 inches, 25 cm across. By respecting their territory, I stayed out of harm's way.

Discovering the Cinque Terre.

It was one of these days at the beach when I found myself talking to an elderly gentleman, definitely a local. He asked me if I ever visited the Cinque Terre (Five Lands) which is a train ride further up the coastline. When I made known to him that I wasn't familiar with the location, he explained the dramatic coast, backed by mountains and accessible by a local train stopping at Monterosso al Mare Station. By boarding the mainline train to La Spezia and alighting there, a local train would drop me off at Monterosso al Mare, from where I would be able to see two of the five small villages with their harbours dotted along the rocky coastline.

Excited by this, in the morning of the next day, I boarded the fast train to the next stop, La Spezia, a busy port north of Viareggio. At the station cafe, I sat over a coffee whilst waiting for the local service to convey me to my destination.

Monterosso station is on the mainline from Turin to Rome, with Genoa, Rapallo, Pisa, La Spezia, Viareggio, Livorno, and Civitavecchia being the principal stations called by all express trains during that time before any modern high-speed lines were laid. In turn, mainline trains fly through Monterosso whilst racing either south to La Spezia or north to Pisa.

Viareggio.

After arriving at Monterosso, I alighted to check out the town. I was struck by its originality. That is, away from the tourist spots and, in the early 1980s, still free from any tourist tat. This was real Italy! A remnant of the country before tourism was ever heard about. The town looked rather grubby, but its population seemed to be happy with that, as convenience looked to be more practical to daily living rather than aesthetics. However, according to Google images, the arrival of tourism during the nineties gave some motive to spruce up the town.

No wonder the gentleman in Viareggio recommended a visit. Cinque Terre had its own beauty in its dramatic scenery. Yet, I was surprised that this part of Italy hadn't (so far) made it into the tourist brochures. And I was glad about that too. This was the real, original Italy, and I would have preferred it to remain that way. 

Monterosso al Mare.

Throughout the day, I walked along the coast and picked up a coastal trail heading southeast. As I left Monterosso, I climbed up to a certain height as the trail gave a splendid view of the sea with the rugged coastline on one side and the mountains on the other. As I walked along the trail, eventually the village of  Vernazza came into view. To reach the settlement, I would need to descend. The trail made its way to the coastal village with its quaint harbour and buildings huddling tightly together, glinting in the afternoon sunshine, after more than 4 km of scenic walking.

As I was unacquainted with the area, the thought of hiking all the way to La Spezia from Monterosso had never crossed my mind. (For the record, according to Google Maps, the coastal path would have been 29.7 km or 18.3 miles long, and it would have taken me over seven hours to complete the hike. In 1981, such a hike would have been plausible for a 28-year-old.) Instead, after spending some time at Vernazza, I hiked back to Monterossa in readiness to board a local train to La Spezia (where the service terminated) and change for the mainline train back to Viareggio. Hence, the round trip from Monterossa to Vernazza and back totalled 8 km or 5 miles - a doddle when compared to the Grand Canyon hike in 1978. Yet, Italy has its own dramatic beauty.

On to Milan.

Of the 1981 trip to Italy, for me, Viareggio with the nearby Cinque Terre were the highlights, although I enjoyed the sights of both Pisa and Florence. However, there was a close friend from what was then Bracknell Baptist Church, living in Milan due to a work contract. His name was Derek. And arrangements had already been made to spend a few days with him before boarding a train for London from Milan. Hence, the return ticket to the UK was valid from Milan rather than from Turin.

There was a direct train from Viareggio to Milan Central terminus via Genoa, and having phoned Derek when I was expected to arrive in Milan, he was already there and waiting for me as the train pulled in. It must have been a Sunday when I arrived in Milan, for after arriving, he took me on the Metro to his home. After settling in, we made our way to a small, independent church meeting held, I believe, in the cellar of a secular building. This was quite something in an Italian city where catholicism held all the cards. It had given me an impression of an underground, persecuted church. Indeed, the group was a charismatic, Gospel-based meeting very similar to Bracknell or Ascot Baptist churches, where worship and the order of service were free from any liturgical channel. 

After the service was over, a group of us climbed into our cars (in my case, Derek's) and came across a pizzeria restaurant where we all sat around a large table and ordered our meals. The group was apparently all singles, a common phenomenon after the evening service when unmarried adults either go out on a social or meet in a private home, often at the pastor's house or that of one of the elders.

That was the only time I ever visited that particular fellowship. I had never been since. Whether it folded up due to its participants returning to their home countries, or whether Derek simply didn't go anymore, I will never know. All I recall was that three or four days after arrival, I was put on a train bound for Lille, then onward to the cross Channel ferry.

And then the Police called...

Although I put my all into the 1981 trip to Italy, compared to America, especially in 1978, the whole trip to Northern Italy was spoiled by falling victim to a professional thief. And the idea that this was a sophisticated gang out to rob unsuspecting tourists was endorsed a few weeks later when two police constables knocked on my apartment door. After confirming my identity and verifying to them my recent trip to Italy, they then asked me if I knew, or heard of a particular Italian accountant. I confessed that I had never heard of the fellow. Then they showed me a signature in my name and asked whether this was my particular signature.

I looked at it and kept on looking as I studied it. Indeed, it could be from my own hand. Unsure, I took a piece of paper and a pen, and signed it. When held side by side, the other version of my signature did not properly match, despite using my initial.

This is my signature. I said, showing them my natural but distorted version and holding the two together. No, the one you have is too neat, too tidy. As the two constables rose to leave, they reassured me that I was a victim of theft and apologised for the trouble. After they left, I suddenly realised that they were ready to accept my innocence if proven. However, the purpose of the call was to watch my reaction when shown the fake signature. Had I suddenly said, No, that's not mine! - their suspicions that I was involved in some fraud might have been aroused, pending further investigation. Instead, my readiness to admit that the fake could have been mine until put to the test proved my innocence.

Another issue that spoiled my 1981 trip was the photography, basically a repeat of the 1978 Grand Canyon hike. But this time, whilst I was hiking the Cinque Terre, a speck of dirt lodged between the delicate mechanism of the shutter, causing a part of several pictures to fog. The camera I had was a far better one than the Instamatic 110, but the shutter was vulnerable to any foreign body that might get lodged between the blades. Like at the Canyon, these too were slides rather than photo prints (hence, all the pics shown here are stock photos.) However, this failure hadn't aroused my desire to return to that particular location - unlike the Grand Canyon.

Approaching Vernazza on the hiking trail.

Back home, I returned to my self-employment and normal day-to-day. One lesson learned whilst running my own business is not to be a "travel snob" - insisting that only long-haul is what I should go for. Instead, I'm learning to be thankful for any form of travel, whether it's long-haul or just around the corner. Returning to Italy after going far enough to see the Pacific Ocean may seem like a setback. But that's far from the case. If anything, Europe is richer in history than America and has just as much natural beauty.

Therefore, with the budget I have, I was grateful for another trip to Italy, this time, done differently. And my dream was beginning to be realised when I met Derek by chance one lunchtime right here in Bracknell, as he was on leave for a couple of weeks.

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I wish all my readers a happy and prosperous New Year.

Next Week: The Start of the 1982 backpacking trip to Southern Italy - the best of the 80s.

Travel Biography - Week 28.

First, let me say Merry Christmas to you all. As this is Christmas eve, I wanted to know whether to detour from the weekly travel biography to write something to do with Christmas or to continue like any other weekend. Having given some thought, I decided to carry on with the memoir.

About Turin.

And so, after visiting Israel in 1976 and North America in 1977 and 1978, here in 1981, I was back in Italy for the first time since 1975. Furthermore, I made Turin my first stop to spend a couple of hours with my maternal grandparents, who lived in one of the residential estates near the huge car factory Fiat Mirafiori, where my grandad worked during his younger days. During my visit, he booked a hotel in Loano, on the Ligurian Coast, over the phone, and then drove me to Porta Nuova (New Gate) terminus station to board a train to the popular seaside resort.

Although Turin, or Torino in Italian, is a handsome city where the streets of the town centre are laid out in a symmetrical grid pattern, it wasn't classified as a tourist city in the same way as Rome, for example. But for those interested in the city's history, the Palazzo Madama is a civic museum of art, open to the public, but although I was aware of its presence, I was never taken there by my family during adolescence, nor had I ever made an effort to visit as an adult. Indeed, I have always been more interested in either ancient Roman or pre-Roman structures, along with natural features, rather than former aristocratic homes.

However, the Mole Antonelliana, originally a synagogue designed by the architect Alessandro Antonelli, stands 167.5 metres high, making it the city's icon. It was in 1971, whilst staying with my parents at my grandparent's home that I made my own way to the city centre to ascend to the viewing gallery, a mere 85 metres high. 

Mole Antonelliana, Turin.

The River Po flows east of downtown Turin on a 405-mile, 652 km route from the Alps mountain range to its delta on the Adriatic Sea, south of Venice. On a couple of occasions in 1971, I stood on its west bank, looking across the river towards Superga and Monte Aman. The church at Superga is famed for the airline crash which occurred on May 4th, 1949, when an Italian Airline Fiat G.212, containing the entire Torino football team, crashed into the church's retaining wall, killing all 31 people on board.

Indeed, 1971 was quite an eye-opener. The 1949 airline disaster was something I was told about back then, after telling the rest of my family where I had been. However, in 1981, all I did in Turin was pay a brief visit to my elderly maternal grandparents before continuing the journey to Loano.

From Loano to Pisa.

After three nights spent at Loano, I boarded a train to Genoa. I spent just a few hours at the port, gazing at the Italian Navy ships, reminding me that one of my uncles, Mum's younger brother, who was rebuked by his father in front of us all in 1971, had served on one of those ships before he married. In Genoa, I wasn't that interested in finding a hotel, instead, I decided to proceed further south to Pisa, famous for its Leaning Tower. Therefore, before long, I boarded another train for the journey to Pisa Central, a through station on the line from Torino Porta Nuova to Roma Termini. Once I arrived there, the first thing I did was to look for a hotel, as I was planning to spend a few days here. In next to no time, I came across what the Italians call a pensione, a European basic hotel where guests share a dormitory rather than being assigned an individual room. Unlike the more expensive Italian hotel, the pension hotel doesn't serve breakfast. As I see it, a pension is somewhere between a hotel and a hostel, and like in America, I had to see to my own breakfast, along with all other meals.

Although there was another single bed in the dormitory where I spent the following couple of nights, the other bed remained unoccupied, therefore having the room to myself throughout my stay.

The next day I spent at the Duomo, with the Leaning Tower just to the rear of the church. I paid my fee to ascend the spiral stairs winding inside the edifice. There was a strange sensation in both going up and back down the stairs, and I was wondering whether this was the day the tower would finally collapse. When I arrived at the roof viewing platform, the view all around was breathtaking, especially of the cathedral.

As I walked around the rooftop platform, leaning 5.5 degrees off vertical at the time, indeed the sensation I felt was unique. On one side I felt myself going up the curved slope, on the other side, I was walking downhill, and the floor remained slanted throughout. Yet it's this unique feature of this 56.26-metre-tall bell tower that has placed Pisa on the tourist map. Yet, the Basilica itself, with a separate baptizing font building in front of it, is an attraction in itself. When I entered, there was one piece of detailed artwork which caught my attention, and I found myself gasping with amazement and with a sense of horror.

Leaning Tower of Pisa.

As the Catholic laity living in a fully catholic country doesn't normally have any access to a Bible, the Catholic Church uses illustrations in their places of worship to portray the Gospel. These paintings are found in most Italian cathedrals, or il Duomo as it's called in Italian, and they were meant to present the Gospel to anyone who walks into the church when the Bible itself remains non-existent to the average Catholic layman.

The painting portrayed the two sides of the afterlife, with the Virgin Mary dominating the centre as if enthroned. On one side is the beauty of Paradise, with joyful souls enjoying the bliss of eternal life in Heaven. However, on the other side of the throne, Mary is painted staring mercilessly at the lost souls in Hell. The painting includes three people standing in a row, two men and one woman, all harassed by a demon as both men have their bellies ripped open and their intestines hanging out. The woman, in turn, has both her breasts misshapen as she cries out. Further on, Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king who exiled the Jews when he razed Jerusalem to the ground in 586 BC, was seen here tormented by the gleeful gaze of Satan. The souls of other people were depicted in their different stages of torment.

Indeed, the large wall mural was shocking, just as I have described it. Yet there it was, so brazen, so crass and flamboyant. It was meant to warn anyone who gazes at it to remain loyal and obedient to the Church. And I far as I remember, there was no restrictions in place to stop children from entering that part of the cathedral.

A Shock in Florence.

The next day, I took a train from Pisa Central to Firenze Santa Maria terminus. After arriving at the station, I was surprised at one issue, which is the multitude of voices of casual conversation filling the air within the typical U-shaped terminus, quite unlike the stiff atmosphere in a typical British station such as London Victoria or Waterloo. It was whilst I was at the station that I befriended another traveller, and we eventually agreed to meet at the Forte di Belvedere, up on the hill giving a fantastic panorama of Florence with its prominent Duomo.

Like in Pisa, here in Florence, I came across another pension hotel and checked in. Like in Pisa, this too had a dormitory where I was assigned a bed. But this time, I shared the room with several other guests, hostel-style. As I was preparing to meet my new friend at the Belvedere, I checked my pockets in readiness to cash another traveller's cheque, as I was about to run out of available cash. I searched - and searched. Indeed, I had my return train ticket to London, and I also had my passport, but as for the cheques, I couldn't find them anywhere, no matter I much effort I put into searching for them. Then the dawn of shocking realisation began to hit me. I gasped in panic! Forget meeting my new friend at Belvedere, instead, I had to report my loss to the city police dept.

As I tried to find the police station, I tried hard to think back to where and when I have lost my cheques. Furthermore, how much I lost. I can only give a rough estimate, for although I knew exactly how much I carried before I cashed any of them, no record was kept whenever I cashed a cheque. I had to depend on my memory of cheques already cashed.

The reception waiting room was bleak and with a melancholic atmosphere when compared with the liveliness and bustle of the city. I sat and waited for a long time, perhaps for more than an hour, before I was attended to. At last, I reported the crime to the police receptionist, who asked me several questions, including where I lost my cheques, when, how much in value I had, and in which currency. Eventually, the police took me at my word, and he prepared a document, a copy of that document he gave to me to present to the bank for reimbursement.

The snag was it was Friday evening and the banks had already closed for the weekend. I tried to work out just when and how the cheques were lost. Oh, I was foolish, so foolish! I had all my documents - passport, tickets, and the book of cheques all in my trouser pocket. And the train journey from Pisa to Florence was so packed that I had to stand on a crowded train. It was dead easy for a pickpocket to rifle through my documents without me being aware of what was going on. These thieves weren't mere opportunists. Rather, they were experienced to the level of professionals. They can steal without the victim sensing the slightest awareness. 

At the pension, I explained to the hotelier about my lost traveller's cheques, and I showed the police document to her, a true-to-image Italian lady in her thirties or older, charismatic and not unkind. Yet I was so embarrassed. As I was considering myself an experienced traveller by then, how could I be so flippant and stupid? Yet she understood. Who knows. It was likely that I was by no means the first tourist she had to deal with who was in the same predicament. She agreed to give me breakfast over the weekend and some cash to live on until I was reimbursed. Then she will bill me. I agreed and began to settle down to check out the city.

View of the Duomo, Florence, from the Fort of Belvedere.

I was amazed at the lively buzz of the city's nightlife. There were crowds on the sidewalks, and there were many restaurants and other shops open and trading late in the evening, whilst in the UK, by this time of the day all the shops would have been shut and the street deserted except for the occasional pubgoer. Here in Florence, the city was bustling with life, creating an energy which seem to electrify the atmosphere with a buzz of excitement.

At the hotel, I slept in an all-male dormitory. Unlike in Pisa, all the beds were taken. Although I was unaware at the time, this was a precursor to future travel, where I will be staying at backpacker's hostels continually until I marry Alex. But from that moment, that was a long way into the future!

The next morning, after I washed, shaved and dressed, the hotelier then took me into the small kitchen where I had breakfast. I was alone with her, no other guest joined me. It was a strange experience as if I was treated like an invalid. And in a sense I was. After I had eaten, she gave me some money so I can eat during the day, and even pay to visit one or two amenities. She also noted everything in her notebook, so she can bill me appropriately before I checked out.

And the loan covered a visit to the Duomo, the principal cathedral of Florence. This included a climb to the cupola above the dome, which is slightly higher than the accompanying bell tower, which is also accessible to tourists.

The next day, Sunday, included a stroll to the Forte de Belvedere, passing over the River Arno along the Ponte Vecchio, the only bridge that has apartments fronted with shops on both sides. Crossing the river in the morning is in itself interesting. Here, I watched as the proprietors scrubbed the sidewalk directly outside their own shopfronts without crossing in front of the neighbouring property.

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I wish all my readers a very merry Christmas and a prosperous year ahead. Stay safe and well.

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Next Week: A hike along the Cinque Terre trail.

Travel Biography - Week 27.

Feeling Nostalgic but with Plenty of Sighs.

After arriving home from the second trip across the Atlantic Ocean, there is a feeling of having achieved much, especially outside Europe. First, a three-week visit to the Holy Land and my familiarisation with Middle East culture. Then follows what was before unthinkable, the affordability of flying across to North America - twice and all!

During the 1970s, despite my poor standing at work during the first five years after leaving school in 1968, I was quite well off financially. There may have been several reasons for this. First of all, I was earning what you might call a decent income. Secondly, I was single, and therefore, I remained free from the costs involved with married responsibilities. And that was despite seeing and hearing about former classmates with their spouses and pushing a pram. Thirdly, I had never owned or driven a car, although I did pay for several driving lessons "trying to keep up with the Joneses" - as I saw that more and more people of my age group progressed from two wheels to four. But I never gained enough confidence behind the steering wheel and decided to remain on two bicycle wheels for life.

As narrated in Week 1 of this Diary, my interest in Travel began with Mum sending me out on errands to buy groceries. During the turn of the 1960s, it was normal for children to be out on their own or with mates without adult supervision. Road safety was drilled into us from a very early age, and so, together with a much lighter density of motorised traffic, parents were more confident in their children's safety. Ok, from time to time, I arrived home from the playground with a grazed knee, and a dab with cotton wool soaked in antiseptic aggravated the pain into a sharp sting, but all became well thereafter. The word compensation was virtually unknown, unlike today's woke society, where one can sue at a drop of a hat.

And so, from the first time I browsed through a world atlas to the moment I first set out to buy a can of peeled tomatoes or a loaf of bread around 1960, to the moment I boarded an aeroplane at Gatwick bound for Toronto in 1977, the travel evolution reached its final explosive stage. Only to leave a strand of dissatisfaction as I looked through the photo slides of the 1978 hike into the Grand Canyon. The very best of the photos, those taken at the bankside of the Colorado River flowing through the bottom of the deep natural crevice, were spoilt. I suppose I should have known better than to attempt to photograph scenery at around 5.00 am, blue skies nevertheless. Nope, no newspaper or travel magazine would have been impressed.

Therefore, whatever I did in the following 17 years, there will always be a hidden desire to re-hike the Canyon with a better camera and on a different schedule. And I might have had a chance as early as 1979, when I was seriously considering a third trip to the USA specifically to re-hike the Canyon to fulfil my crushing desire to build a photo album of the experience. It wasn't that far short of an obsession. 

But any ideas I might have had were dramatically cut short when I lost my job at British Aircraft Corporation in June 1979, ten months after returning home from the States. To be truthful, I was sacked due to first messing up a job, and then having a massive row with the foreman over the misleading image on the drawing board. It was this contest with my boss that I was dismissed for, and not so much the wrong machine setting. The dismissal was to affect both my working life and travel alike. It was the closing of a major life chapter. 

British Aircraft Corporation in its heyday.

I covered up the shameful incident by saying to people that I was made redundant. Incidentally, had all gone more smoothly and worked at the aircraft company for another two or three years, I would have been made redundant, as the whole corporation was earmarked for closedown during the 1980s.

1980 was one of the worst years of my life. No longer prosperous, instead, I was living off a meagre state benefit. I was too proud to visit the Bank of Mum and Dad, and besides, although Mum was willing to help out, Dad was less willing. Instead, on one occasion, when the electricity bill arrived through the post, I laid it flat in front of me and prayed over it, remembering that around 700 BC, the Judaean King Hezekiah did exactly that when his Assyrian enemy King Sennacherib sent him a letter ordering him to surrender. After King Hezekiah prayed, his enemy withdrew his forces, and King Sennacherib was slain in his homeland by his own sons. By contrast, in my apartment the following morning, some money was posted through my front door. The sum, sent anonymously, equalled the amount owed. Such as living by faith, as I hadn't told anyone about the electricity bill.

Any thoughts on travel became a distant dream. But I didn't idle around. Instead, I visited the local Jobcentre often to see if any vacancies were going. I saw nothing suitable. Oh, how I wished I had done a lot better at school! I was wishing I had a degree, that passport to career glory held by a majority of male Christian friends of my generation. How I envied them! That dreadful mental illness, the feeling of an inferiority complex, began to intensify. And I also felt hungry too. And that became obvious one evening when I delivered a message to a Christian home inhabited by three unmarried graduates. The girlfriend of one of them was there, alone, and she invited me in. In the dining room was a table laid out with all sorts of sumptuous goodies, appetising fare awaiting the arrival of the three grads from work. The richness of the food items so neatly presented with abundance made me feel so impoverished and hungry. At first, my mouth watered. Then alone, and on my way home on foot, my eyes began to shed tears. 

It was at that time when one of our church elders assigned me a job, to emulsion his living room, that a route to self-employment was set. Under the recommendation of my housegroup leader, I began to post business cards through the door of every house in my area, along with an advert in a local bulletin. I didn't have to wait long before the phone began to ring.

Starting a business of my own as a painter and decorator was not easy, and there were times when I was worried about when the next payment arrive, so I could keep up with the rent, as well as eat and stay warm. I was okay with most of my completed work, satisfying the customer. However, one client threatened me with Court action after mistakingly using a sheepskin roller (made for applying emulsion) to apply oil-based gloss paint on an interior door. The result was a door covered with shed roller hairs. The whole door needed a total strip down to the wood.

On another occasion, I chose the wrong colour paint to coat a metal exterior drainpipe. The client ordered me to buy the right colour and repaint the whole job - at my own expense, as the homeowner refused to pay me any extra for the effort. With a complaint from another client at a different household for taking too long, it looked as if my potential career as a painter and decorator was doomed. It was.

A Sheepskin Paint Roller and its Tray.

But not all of a sudden. Jobs were still coming in, but they were slowly tapering. Soon, I'll be jobless again. That was when my housegroup leader suggested cleaning windows instead. So, I began to canvass, knocking on doors to ask the householder whether they would take on a window cleaner. At the time I was fortunate. With the manufacturing industry (where I tried for several jobs during my unemployed days) still thriving, I had the domestic market to myself, and in four different streets, I collected a small number of customers. Thus, for a while, window cleaning and painting ran side-by-side, with the window cleaning side of the business growing, and after several months, beginning to dominate the week. However, the painting side of the business continued, on and off, right up to the year 2000, whilst I was already married, and my wife's pregnancy was still in its first trimester. After then, the painting side of the business ceased altogether.

International Travel - It's back to the start.

The 1970s saw the evolution of Travel from train journeys to Italy in 1973, to a flight to New York in 1978. Therefore, after the loss of my full-time job as a precision machinist at the British Aircraft Corporation in 1979, the whole Travel sequence was similarly repeated throughout the 1980s and into the explosive climax in 1997, when I flew around the world.

1981 saw my first trip to Italy since 1975. This was the fruit of working hard and saving up as a self-employed handyman and window cleaner. However, I also wanted to say hello to my maternal grandparents in Turin, so, I booked a boat train from London to Turin, and back via Milan, as I had a friend from church working there on a contract. But what I didn't do, and should have done, was to buy a go-as-you-please national train ticket to travel around the country for a fixed period, in exactly the same way as the Greyhound Ameripass.

The boat train journey brought nostalgia from the 1970s. During the 1980s, it had changed little, with daily departures out of London Victoria to either Folkstone or Dover to Boulogne-Sur-Mer or Calais. On the French coast, a Ferrovie Dello Stato di Italiane train awaits as I sailed across the Channel. Once on board, it's a continuous ride across France, stopping at Amiens, Paris, Dijon, Chambery, and Modane, where I had my passport checked before entering the Mont Cenis Pass to emerge at the Italian town of Bardonecchia. The train pulled into Torino Porta Nuova terminus before pulling back out to continue with its long journey to Rome.

In Turin, I made my own way to Via Giacomo Dina, using the same tram service I remembered from 1971. By recognising the church opposite the tram stop, I was able to find my way to my grandparent's apartment. I was greeted warmly by them at the door, and a torrent of happy Italian words flew through the air in my direction. I tried to converse with the limited Italian vocabulary I had, with some success. I wasn't destined to spend any night at my grandparents. Rather, it was a stop lasting two to three hours, and then I would move on. Whilst I was backpacking America in 1978, my parents were sunning in Loano, on the Ligurian Coast. Therefore, when he asked me where I would like to go, I too chose Loano. My granddad, being how he was, immediately decided which hotel I should stay in, and made a phone call booking on my behalf. He, along with his wife, drove me to Porta Nuova Station to board the train for Loano. On the platform, I kissed and said goodbye before boarding the train.

My grandparents were Italian old-school, and considered themselves the head of the entire family, including both my parents, my aunts and uncles, their sons and daughters and their spouses, along with their children, that is, all my cousins on my mother's side were under their umbrella. I even recall a severe telling-off my grandad gave to one of his grown-up sons, one of Mum's younger brothers and my uncle, a married man with children of his own. Personally, I didn't like their family worldview, but I gracefully submitted myself to their way of thinking and kept on smiling and showing affection. Admittingly, once alone on board the train, I felt relieved. I never saw them again, as they both died a few years later.

After a non-stop ride, the train pulled into Loano Station, the first in a line of coastal resorts. I found the hotel quite easily, and with my name and identity already on their register, I was assigned a room. Unlike in America, this hotel had a swish feel about it, it was very comfortable and they served breakfast. I stayed three nights there before deciding to check out to do some exploring around the northwestern area of Italy, taking in Genoa, Pisa, Viareggio, and Florence.

Loano. This was taken during the 2020 pandemic.

My grandparents knew that I was at a certain hotel in Loano. But they didn't know how long for. Therefore, by leaving Loano, I felt that I was also escaping from their watchful eye.

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Next Week: My Traveller's Cheques were stolen and how I survived Florence pennilessly.

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The photos I took on the 1981 trip to Italy were also in slide form, therefore the pics posted here are stock photos. Other than that, they all depict the places I visited.

Travel Biography - Week 26.

Backpacking USA was Inspired by both Music and Drama.

Some American cities, and even the whole State, are made famous or romanticised by pop music. Towns that would have remained relatively obscure had they not been brought to our attention by the song's high record sales. As already mentioned in this series, Tony Christie's Is this the way to Amarillo? gave me enough motivation to stop and take a look around, spending a day in the Texan city. Likewise, the mention of Los Angeles in Mamas & Papas, California Dreaming, also popular during the 1960s, gave the State an impression of a sunny paradise - even in Winter. Hence, I spent more time in California than in any other State in the USA. Gene Pitney's song, 24 Hours from Tulsa, gave me some motivation to look around this Oklahoma city during a bus service stop in 1995. Then, more related to backpacking, Simon & Garfunkel's America, narrates about a young couple who boards a Greyhound Bus in Pittsburgh to search for their destiny.

Then not to mention the Animals, House of the Rising Sun, a gambling house and theatre in the French Quarter of New Orleans. All these songs I mentioned were in the charts throughout the 1960s, and I remember them all. Along with the TV cop series, Starsky & Hutch, and the big screen hit, Superman, the Movie, indeed, the world of entertainment was the main inspiration for both the 1977 and the 1978 solo trips to America. Also, all these locations were real places, and in 1978, the House of the Rising Sun was a 24-hour gambling venue that was one of many entertainment venues making up the city.

 Superman Movie inspired my 1978 trip to the USA.

How times have changed. Nowadays, try looking for this venue on Google Maps, a website known for highlighting individual businesses, and apparently, this venue no longer exists.

On to Miami Beach, Florida.

I spent three nights at a YMCA hotel in New Orleans, giving me up to four days to check out the location, that is, mainly in the Creole French Quarter, the equivalent of the Old City. Then it was time to move on.

I boarded the Greyhound Americruiser at the Bus Station for Miami Beach, where I would arrive the next day. It was the beach where I alighted, and not at Downtown Miami, a couple of miles further south. Yet, had I had more knowledge of the area, I might have gone as far down as Key West, a coral cay island which is connected to the mainland by a highway. The Keys, a variation of Cays, are the only coral reefs found in the Atlantic Ocean and are on the boundary with the Gulf of Mexico. But in 1978, I knew nothing about them, so much for my failure at secondary school. But not because I was stupid, but because the staff at the school thought that we were foolish enough to be dumped into a slow learner's classroom, and taught the fundamentals I had already learned at primary.

I write this because such sociological thinking annoys me! Instead of being spurred on to greater academic heights, rather, I was put in a box and it was assumed I remain in that box for life. Indeed, it's true that some in my classroom remained in their boxes and were quite happy to stay there. But I wasn't. There is a big, wide world out there, and it had always been my desire to get out there and explore. As I once read at primary school, "Can't do it" stays stuck in the mud, but try will soon get the cart out of the rut. How true! And I won't hesitate to say that the primary I attended whilst still living in London was a good school. In addition, alongside my travels, I also attended voluntary adult evening classes and gained a couple of GCE qualifications - awards well above my secondary school classroom agenda.

At Miami Beach, I walked along a little way and I soon found a moderate-sized hotel. It was much smaller than the row of towering skyscrapers that accommodated wealthier tourists along the Florida coast. But it suited me.

The hotel was situated along a strip of green running parallel to the narrow beach. The air was warm, but it wasn't sunny all the time. At least on one occasion, I saw several lightning flashes from the grey, overcast sky, to the ocean. Coconut palms grew and flourished at the green strip lining the beach. I have never seen this particular species of a palm tree before. Other species of palm I'm very familiar with, especially in western France, southern Italy, Israel, and the southern half of the USA. Even in Cornwall and the Dorset resort of Bournemouth, both in the UK, a hardier species of palm tree thrives. But here in southern Florida, these coconut palms (I think that's what they were) made me realise how close to the Equator I was, compared to all the other places I had visited.

Miami Beach is 25.81 degrees north, just a tad outside the tropical belt. The Tropic of Cancer runs just north of the Cuban capital of Havana, the city lying on latitude 21.51. The imaginary line itself is approx 180 miles south of Miami Beach. This means that I have set a new record for the most southern location I have ever reached, and the record will stand for the next 19 years until 1997 when I flew to Singapore, which lies just 1.36 degrees north of the Equator. However, that record was held for just five days, as afterwards, I flew further south to Australia. Here, in Sydney, is a new record of latitude 33.52 south of the Equator, and a record which stands to this day.

Palm trees of this variety flourish in Miami.

Having already visited Long Beach in California a couple of weeks earlier, I was able to make comparisons between it and Miami Beach. Of the two coastal locations, for me, I preferred Long Beach. The southern Californian stretch of coast had a wider beach still set in its natural environment (at least, that's how it was in 1978.) Miami Beach is a narrower strip of sand and is heavily commercialised with an endless row of hotel tower blocks. Indeed, although there was nothing unsightly, but had a beauty of its own, when compared with the natural wonders I have seen, I wasn't too impressed. However, one hotel stood out from the rest. This was the Hotel Fontainebleau. Unlike the others, this building was curved, very much like the two City Hall towers in Toronto. It grabbed my attention. To me, this hotel was the heart and soul of Miami Beach.

However, I was also impressed with the tall, often-leaning palm trees. The green strip, an undeveloped area of the coast, provided a lovely walk from the built-up area to my hotel.

Back to New York City.

As with all things, after three nights, it was time for me to make the long journey back to New York. This was crucial, very crucial! I was planning to arrive in New York on the same day I take off for London. By carefully selecting the right Greyhound Bus, I should arrive in the Big Apple around breakfast time. Take off for London was later that evening. This gave me a full day to spend in the city. Therefore, I prepared for the thirty-hour bus ride north from the southern tip of Florida, bordering on the tropics, to the cooler New York City where winters would be much colder had I lived there.

The journey with its several service stops was uneventful. By the time I arrived in New York, I felt unwashed and with stubble - like I was whenever I completed a long journey. How refreshing was the station washroom! After depositing my luggage in one of the left luggage lockers, I went out to spend my last day in America enjoying the sights of Manhattan.

And that includes a trip to the World Trade Center, back then, represented by two gigantic cigarette-lighter-like structures, known as the Twin Towers. In 1978, I would never have imagined that almost exactly 23 years later, on September 11th, 2001, these iconic structures would be history. And so, I had no hesitation in paying to board an express elevator specifically designed for a non-stop vertical journey to the observation gallery, where I spent several hours just gazing across Manhattan from the outdoor rooftop viewing platform.

The time has come to take a special bus to the airport, thus bringing to a close the greatest travel experience I ever had in my life up to then. After such a trip, a month-long cross-Atlantic holiday, I actually believed that this was it. There was no need ever to cross the Atlantic in the future since I had already had two trips there. Packed in my luggage, I had three, maybe four size 110 film cassettes, and I was eager with anticipation to get these slides processed, to show others on a big screen the adventures I had, especially in the Grand Canyon.

The flight was an overnighter from New York Kennedy Airport to London Gatwick. I knew that once arriving home at my quiet apartment, post-holiday blues might set in. However, in the 1970s this form of mental illness was not so intense. Rather, this became a lot more intense after the end of the long hauls dominating the 1990s, especially after the Round-the-World trip of 1997.

A terrible Disappointment follows.

One of the pitfalls any traveller can find himself in is what I call, Touchdown Sunday, back to work Monday. During the 1970s, the outbound take-off was normally on a Saturday, and a normal return touchdown fell on a Sunday morning. It was as if specifically timed this way, to maximise the duration of the getaway yet at the same time, allow a day to readjust to normal day-to-day living. In 1978, I worked at a large engineering company, British Aircraft Corporation, the aircraft division of this huge, State-owned company was based in Weybridge, Surrey, an otherwise insignificant town in the London commuter suburbs.

As there were several departments, each housed in different buildings, with a street running between them. It was on this street that there was a small shop that sold a wide variety of miscellaneous products, including photo processing. My cassettes were sent off. But a week later, they returned, unprocessed, and still in their cassettes. Tudor, who manufactured the films, wasn't able to process slide films, so they returned them to me to ask permission for the films to be processed by Kodak instead. I said yes, and again, off they went. A week later, the tiny slides returned fully processed and ready for projection.

I took this pic of the Twin Towers in 1998.

After buying the projector made especially for size 110 slides, I went through them all, alone in my apartment. So far, so good. Many of the pics came out superbly, and with the image thrown onto the white screen backed by the bright light, it look as if I was looking out of a window instead of looking at a piece of paper. The slide show would entertain an audience.

That is until I began to view the images of the Grand Canyon. All the South Rim images were fine, as was the hike down to Indian Gardens. However, when I snapped the river scenes early on that following morning, the daylight wasn't strong enough to register on the film. The result was that although the river itself came out okay, all the surrounding cliffs and buttes appeared as dark silhouettes. 

How terribly disappointed I was! And there was nothing I could do about it. A lesson learnt in having a cheap camera for convenience.

Was this my last trip to America for the rest of my life? At first, I thought so. But, after seeing those spoilt photos, I knew that one day I'll be back. My travel destiny had just taken a sudden turn.

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Next Week: The 1980s as the interlude, where great changes were made.

Travel Biography - Week 25.

1978 Arrival in Portland, Oregon, with some bad memories.

In this week's blog, I shall resume the 1978 trip across the USA, after distracting for one week due to a hospital appointment. In a sense, the best part of the entire holiday was the visit to the Grand Canyon and the unscheduled hike from South Rim to Phantom Ranch, and then back up on the next day, which is now behind us. I then continued with the diary into Los Angeles, and my stay at the Hotel Cecil, with its dark past. And how I was coaxed to listen to a lecture delivered by the Moonies before boarding an overnight Americruiser bus to San Francisco.

And now, I'm ready to move on, this time to Portland, as I did a year earlier in 1977. But unlike the previous year, I did not look for a hotel but had intentions to leave on the evening of the same day. 

It was a Sunday when I arrived in this Oregon city in 1978. Heh! I recall the previous year when I found myself caught up with the Church of Scientology here in Portland. It goes to show how easy it was to be tricked into parting with my cash, which after all was said and done, was all about, regardless of the pretences they claim to bestow for my own personal benefit. Back then, I very nearly paid them $200 for the use of their electropsychometer, or E-meter for short. This device has no real practical purpose, rather I tend to think it was an elaborate version of a lie detector. As one who was "unclear" of all personal trauma, this device was meant to "clear" me of all past negative experiences and to leave me happy and unrestrained from all that would hinder my happiness.

But I had a sliver of doubt about the whole programme, and eventually, I refused to pay them anything. Instead, I left them to continue on my way, feeling none other than a mighty sense of relief that I hadn't fallen into their trap and found myself out of pocket at a location thousands of miles away from home. And yet, one American celebrity, Tom Cruise, the titular of the movie, Top Gun, was an ardent disciple of the Church of Scientology.

Tom Cruise in the movie, Top Gun.

Back to my visit to Portland a year later in 1978. After alighting at the Greyhound Bus Station, I paused briefly outside the Church of Scientology building and moved on to look for a proper church. Nearby was the First Baptist Church of Portland, and I entered in time for the morning service. The service itself was okay, conforming, as expected, with the normal Baptist liturgy. It was after the service, whilst consuming a coffee and a doughnut or two, that I ended up talking to a middle-aged couple, Mr and Mrs Johnson. As the conversation progressed, they asked whether I would like to have lunch with them at their home. I accepted their invitation. Presently, I found myself in their car, driving to their residence.

The house was in a typical American suburb, detached, and with a spacious back garden which boasted an outdoor swimming pool. After a sumptuous meal, we sat and talked. During the conversation, he began to boast of his son's achievements. Unfortunately, he was not at home, or else I would have liked to have befriended someone of my own age, especially if he was a committed Christian. 

Mr Johnson then produced a vinyl LP, complete with its sleeve. On it was the title, The Anvil of God's Word, with a drawing of a broken hammer resting on a solid iron anvil. The message behind the title and illustration was that the Bible will endure as the Word of God forever, despite the constant hammering of it by sceptics and atheists. At the end of the day, it's the hammer that breaks, leaving the anvil completely intact. The 12-track record, with six tracks on each side, was as authentic as any other vinyl album that was sold in record shops at the time. It was composed by Jeff Johnson, the son of the couple I had lunch with. The proud father didn't just allow me to look at the album, instead, he insisted that I keep it, pack it away in my luggage, and take it back home to the UK. And so, it's been in my possession ever since.

Later that afternoon, they offered to let me have a swim in their garden pool, despite the weather not being very warm. I changed into my trunks and jumped in. The pool was too small for a serious swim, and the chill in the air reduced any length of time to a shorter, twenty-minute dip. However, all this was a taste of American domestic life, a sampling of their culture without the trimmings of tourism.

Later that evening, Mr Johnson drove me back into town, from where I headed for the Greyhound Bus station, as was originally intended.

This Album was given to me by the Johnsons in 1978.

The Journey Continues.

I have to say that the rest of the journey around the United States was not as eventful as the first two weeks were. Hence, rather than go into detail about every town or city I stopped at, instead, I'll give a list of the places I stopped at and highlight those worthy of commentary.

From Portland in Oregon, I travelled east this time (and not north towards Canada, as I did the previous year.) Some 37 hours later, around breakfast time, I arrived in Cheyenne, Wyoming. Here, I met a young Frenchman, 18-year-old Florence Cozon from the French city of Lyon. We talked, and we became friends. Or at least, I tried hard to converse as smoothly as I could, even using the few French words I knew. Although his French was fluent, he couldn't speak English, and there he was, in America, an English-speaking nation, on his own, as I was.

Somehow, I envied him. I knew for sure that at 18 years old, it would have been unlikely that my parents would have allowed me to fly across the Atlantic on my own. But he did say that his mother gave him a string of warning lectures before he took off. On the other hand, in 1978, France still had mandatory conscription for the majority of young, 18-year-old males. Whether Florence was travelling in preparation for military service, whether he had just come out of the army, or backpacking to avoid the call-up altogether, I will never know. He might have even received an exemption. But being slim, slightly taller than me, and looking quite fit and abled-bodied, I couldn't imagine him receiving an exemption unless he had an asymptomatic illness.

The friendship couldn't last. At Cheyenne, the bus was at a service stop. After re-boarding, we travelled together until we arrived in Denver, Colorado. At Denver, we both changed buses. He went west into Utah, whilst I went south into New Mexico. Like with all people I meet whilst travelling, we never saw each other again.

As I travelled south, I found myself sitting next to a bearded fellow, I believe, in his thirties. We both found out that we were Christians, and having a spare Bible, he gave it to me and asked me to keep it. It was well-used and crumpled, but I was able to read it whilst on the move.

St Antonio, New Orleans.

I continued the journey south, During the small hours of the night, the bus had a service stop at Amarillo, Texas. But I was in no mood to step outside the station premises. Therefore I rested before moving on. In the early evening of the next day, I arrived at St Antonio, also in Texas. During the service stop, I managed to make my way to the River Antonio, where a pier for boarding a riverboat was based. Among others, I boarded the riverboat that plied along the river which winds its way through the city. Afterwards, the bus stopped at the Alamo Mission Chapel. Although it was shut, it was still enough for me to take a good look at the main face of the historic building.

The Alamo Mission Chapel, Texas.

I arrived in New Orleans, Louisiana, by the next morning, and I decided to spend a few days here. The hotel I stayed at was actually the YMCA in the new part of the city, a short walk from the French Quarter. Whilst under the most refreshing shower I had for a while, I was ogled at by one elderly gentleman sitting on a nearby bench. Although he called out to me, I just ignored him and said little or nothing.

This reminds me of the song, YMCA, by the Village People, with its lyrics aimed at young men meeting at a venue where women were forbidden to enter, and thus, coaxing gay relationships. It was released in October 1978, just two months after that incident in New Orleans, and I believe, made it to the top of the British pop chart. 

Which also reminds me...

In 1978, at Bourbon Street, there was an all-night gambling house and strip club, Rising Sun. This goes to show how pop entertainment can also teach where my school failed. The 1960s singer Eric Burdon with his band, The Animals, released a song in 1964, House of the Rising Sun. Although apparently non-existent at present, according to Google Maps, back in my day, not only did this establishment exist, but I actually went in to look around. The upstairs floor had gambling rooms, where customers sat at a table, each with a deck of cards and playing for cash winnings. Downstairs was the strip club. And yes, I did sit towards the back and watched.

I know, as a Christian, I should have walked straight out, according to my church friends. Surely, this was no place for a Christian! But what I felt in my heart matters. It was a deep sorrow for the woman who performed on stage. She did it for a living, and she didn't look that happy. I felt sorry for her, what it must be like having an audience of lecherous eyes gazing at her. Eventually, I rose and walked out mid-show, feeling none the worse for wear.

On another occasion, I was walking along the street, and I was stopped and spoken to by what I first thought was a young woman but turned out to be a male cross-dresser or transvestite. I was beginning to wonder whether this city was really God-forsaken as some had reputed it to be.

Yet, New Orleans French Quarter is steeped in history. In the evening, a band marches through Bourbon Street. Whether or not this was a remnant of the slave trade where servants were, in the past, publicly displayed for sale, I wasn't certain. But it's not to be confused with the annual Mardi Gras, a street performance similar to the Notting Hill Carnival, but unlike the Summer London festival, the Mardi Gras takes place in February.

Whilst checking out the French Quarter, there were two other British visitors, both from where I worked at the time, British Aircraft Corporation in Weybridge, Surrey. They too were backpacking the States at the same time I was. Back at work a couple of weeks later, these two approached and asked me if I was in New Orleans. When I answered yes, they replied that they saw me there, and had asked whether I was on my own, and also answered yes to that, they gasped, and said how brave I was!

I was impressed with the Creole architecture of the French Quarter, with the first-floor balconies fronting many of the upstairs bars. Yet, despite the uniqueness of the architecture, one friend of mine, who saw the slide I took of one of the streets, said what a dump New Orleans was - just like (the town of) Maidenhead, eight miles north of our hometown of Bracknell.

Creole Architecture, French Quarter, New Orleans.

The main square of the French Quarter was Jackson Square, backed by St Louis Catholic Church, in which I sat and meditated one afternoon. Fronting the Square is the bank of the Mississippi River with raised levees preventing the river waters from overflowing and flooding the city. 

Eventually, it was time to move on.

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Next Week: Miami Beach and back to New York.