Special spaces!!!

The last month or so had a bit of a slow period as my bride travelled to exotic Brisbane to see lots of people and celebrate a few special occasions. One such special occasion was the realignment of the North Yorkshire mob to Brisbane. So, without the motivation of the tour guide, I became somewhat of a stay-at-home, but I did venture to far flung shopping malls to “pick up a few things”.

I find little difficulty with my mate the TomTom in finding the centres but the car-park entrances are far from obvious. Anyway, a much needed study chair, some computer equipment and small speakers to enable us to hear DVDs were achieved.

During that period I did make a two night trip to Madrid. I had never been to Spain before but found Madrid to be an interesting if large city. A walking tour through some of the historic parts and a couple of very fine meals left me with happy memories and a desire to return sometime as a tourist. The fact I was not a tourist was perhaps best typified by my failure to take a camera – hence not much picto-graphically on Madrid, except that I was impressed by the chandelier in the conference room I sat in so, captured it with my phone during a quieter interlude.

On the bride's return, we got moving again and used our spare weekend days for some country drives. This weekend and last, we had Saturday drives to see two very special spaces – sacred spaces!

At the suggestion of our Kiwi friends, we went to Subiaco where two Benedictine monasteries exist.  In the 6th century, St Benedict spent three years as a hermit near the old site of one of Nero's holiday homes, and they later built a series of churches and chapels attached to the cave in which he spent his time. They are of course, now very old and ooze that monastic atmosphere. A second, more monasterial monastery, Santa Scholastica's, is nearby but below the cave. Scholastica was Benedict's twin sister by the way and this monastery (abbey) was where the very first printing was ever done in Italy. You see they were very 'scholastic' there. And a lot of the lovely marble was prefabbed and brought up from Roma.

How do I know so much you say. Well after a simple but very nice five course lunch in the monastery refectory, we joined in an excellent Italian language guided tour of the place and this delightful young Italian woman had us enthralled with her knowledge, clear Italian pronunciation and brown eyes.

Incidentally, the inspiration for Subiaco oval is unexplained – not enough space for a bowling alley in the real Subiaco, much less an AFL ground. And we did kind of hurtle through it on the way out as the storm that had been threatening for hours broke on us and poor Pierre the Peugeot had to bravely deflect some hail stones.

The second special space was entered yesterday at Assisi – the home of St Francis (you know – of Assisi). A delightful Umbrian hill town; a monastery, a bunch of other churches; stunning frescos in the renaissance style (much more recent than Subiaco's middle age ones); and an exquisite dinner over-looking the late evening countryside before a night drive home to Rome. Assisi really is Franciscan, but it is also so neat and pleasing to look at. Of course, why it is so neat is largely because it had to be rebuilt under UNESCO patronage after the devastating earthquake of the 90s. Very hilly but bedecked in pink building stones that change colour as the day fades. Down three levels below the monastery lies St Francis's tomb and an extremely sacred atmosphere of silence with many devoted followers flocking to the place. Our arrival home around midnight meant that we saw the Umbrian countryside lit up by the quite intense population and landmarks like the Spoleto fort glowing and twinkling in their night-time illuminations.




And the final special place – just 100 metres from our front door – my barber's shop. Now I suspect that he has been cutting hair for around 70 years now, so he is really good at it. His eye-sight is not what it may have been so he does have to get very close to see (no specs needed however), and somewhat short in stature, he tells me that I have to slouch a lot if it is to work. Each haircut takes 20 minutes – goes through an exact routine, fine-tuned over many years – but we guys do chat a lot. OK so we chat in Italian which is not so good for me, but I do pride myself that I do speak more Italian than my barber (Senor Marco) speaks English.

We did run into a bit of strife last week over what 'corto' or 'short' means.  You see, when I specified 'non troppo corto' - meaning not too short pal - we then went into a little comparison business where we both showed one another what that meant by holding our thumbs and index fingers like 'so'.  After a bit of negotiation we came to agreement, but I think I agreed to 'only this little bit remaining' while I thought I was indicating 'only this little bit off'.  Great value haircut - will last months.

Marco's barber shop is a real institution around here and all the local chaps go there. It is a busy and special place – in fact so busy that the barber has not had time to, or thought to, turn the calender since Agosto (August) 2007. Now that was probably a very good month, and August is when you go on holidays here anyway, so maybe when you return you just get out of the rhythm of calendar-turning. Or maybe he just likes the picture of the Trevi fountain that graces Agosto 2007.

My pictures this time: First, scenes from the St Benedict Subiaco site (including time out to smell the roses, the glowering storm that eventually wet Pierre, and Santa Scholastica from above - (home of nice lunches and tour guides); a few miscellaneous shots including the parade review on the Italian Military Day from my office's roof; the Tiber in its summer livery of stalls and bars (before the crowds arrive); [all that to separate Assisi – so you don't get your sacred spaces confused] – scenes from Assisi including the Monastery and lush green lawn; views of the town and from the restaurant, and from the gents under the Monastery – we see some great things from toilet windows in Italy; sadly no barber shop pics – but the Madrid chandelier that caught my eye.

Arrivederci!!