cars – the heart thrills

Milan, 25 January 2017

We were down at the seaside a week ago and, as is our wont, we went for a walk. The walk we chose this time was one we had last taken thirty or more years ago. It’s the walk which links le Cinque Terre, the Five Lands, five coastal villages occupying a very rugged piece of the coast in southern Liguria. The Cinque Terre have become very famous in these intervening years and we were reading online that hordes of tourists descend on these five luckless villages during the summer. Luckily, the tourist flow has slowed to a trickle by the middle of January. We passed hardly anyone as we walked between the villages of Vernazza and Corniglia (the only part of the full walk we did this time). One or two youngsters galloped past us; otherwise, we met and walked for a while with a very nice couple from Chile, retirees like us, who were coming to the end of a long tour of Europe.

As readers can see, especially in the picture of Corniglia, the villages of the Cinque Terre are clinging on for dear life to rugged slopes that fall pretty much sheer into the sea. This is a photo of Manarola, the next village down

and Riomaggiore, the furthest south of the five villages.

I love villages like these that seem to spill down a slope. They always remind me of a tumbled pile of children’s blocks

(or perhaps like this when the villagers in question get into more adventurous architecture)

Italy seems to have many such villages, but a quick surf around the net threw up a number of other examples around the world. There’s this village, for instance, the village of Peillon in France’s Maritime Alps.

There’s Oia, on the Greek island of Santorini.

Even further afield, there’s the village of Al Hajjarah in Yemen.

These villages are lovely to look at from a distance, but their real beauty is to be found close up. The steep terrain, the building of houses close together, means that these villages are full of winding alleys and stairways disappearing around a corner

leading you on to discover quiet corners.

And no cars! Cars, the cancer of our cities … I dream of the day when they are banned from cities, where all cities are like Venice

where people own the roads rather than cower on pavements, keeping themselves and their children safe from these one-ton steel monsters hurtling down the streets, bringing death and destruction to anyone foolish enough to step off the pavement at the wrong moment.

There, I’ve had my little rant against cars. Feel much better.

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Vernazza: https://www.incinqueterre.com/en/photo-galery
Corniglia: http://www.gettyimages.it/detail/foto/corniglia-cinque-terre-italy-fotografie-stock/543796033
Manarola: http://robgreebon.photoshelter.com/gallery/Cinque-Terre-Images-Manarola-Riomaggiore-Vernazza-Corniglia-and-Monterosso-al-Mare/G0000Zi9yrR4QNtA/
Riomaggiore: http://hdr.name/cinque-terre-riomaggiore-manarola-monterosso-vernazza-corniglia/
Children’s blocks: https://www.walmart.com/search/?query=Wooden%20Childrens%20Blocks&oid=223073.1&wmlspartner=TQiP6m79tRs&sourceid=08842105053019505796&affillinktype=10&veh=aff&cat_id=0
Children’s blocks: http://affordableluxuryblog.com/2011/11/ten-wooden-toys-that-children-will-love-to-get/
Peillon: http://www.beyond.fr/villages/peillon.html
Oia, Santorini: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/santorinidave.com/santorini-photos-and-travel-info/amp
Al Hajjarah, Yemen: http://jobpakistanforfree.blogspot.it/2016/01/top-10-amazing-towns-on-cliff-tops.html?m=1
Lane in Greece: http://www.jackthedriver.com/services.asp
Alleyways in Positano: http://www.jackthedriver.com/services.asp
Lanes in Santorini: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/435582595180183853/
Venice street: http://www.charmingitaly.com/it/article/24-ore-a-venezia

Beijing, 2 March 2013

When we arrived back in Italy from the US in 1990, I was … underemployed, shall we say. So when I was offered a job to do quality control on a small landfill I agreed with alacrity. It was the first time I had ever worked on a landfill, and I hope it will be the last. Apart from the nauseous smells drifting up from all the rotting garbage, I was perpetually afraid I would leave my wife a widow and my children orphans. Methane was pouring out of that landfill and it would have taken only a small spark to send us all hurtling into the afterlife.

As you can imagine, this place attracted a strange bunch of people, from the drivers of the shovel scoops who worked all day on the open landfill cells to the guys the quality of whose work I was there to control; they were closing the filled cells, capping them, and inserting a methane collection system. We would all go down to the local restaurant at lunch – great food, by the way – and the shovel scoop drivers in particular always accompanied their lunch with copious quantities of the local wine. I made sure to give those people a wide berth when they working in the afternoon.

I got to be quite friendly with the leader of the team closing cells. He had worked on many different landfills and would regale me with tales of these jobs as we stood around waiting to check the work the others were doing. One day, he told me about this completely illiterate, uncouth man who owned and ran a modest landfill, and who made pots of money with it. The man lived in a house next to the landfill. One day, he invited my friend into the house and with a mysterious air took him to a room in the back of the house. The room had a curtain running across it, which, after turning on some strategically located spotlights, he dramatically drew. “That guy,” said my friend, leaning in “had a brand new, unused Ferrari Testarossa behind that curtain.” “Wow!”, I said. “And it was yellow!” he continued

I was dumbstruck, and my friend nodded meaningfully. Yellow! Good Lord Almighty! Everyone knows that Testarossas must be red! Any other colour is … such bad taste.

Anyone who has watched Formula 1 races knows that red, and only red, is the Ferrari colour

(well, nearly only red). And it is red because before the war, when nations rather than car companies competed in Grand Prix races red was Italy’s colour (and green was Britain’s, while France was blue).

I was reminded of this terrible faux pas in taste a few days ago when, walking to work, I saw a baby-pink BMW parked on the side of the road.

Baby pink! Everyone knows that BMWs should come in some shade of grey – because it’s just the right colour for this kind of highly tecchy car but also because grey became Germany’s racing colour in the 1930s.

I have to tell you that bad taste in car colour has touched even my family. When I was really little and we were living in Africa, my father had a typically English car, the Austin Hereford Saloon.

So far, so good. But our car was … egg blue. I distinctly remember the colour. I liked it, but I was young. Now that I am a few years older and far wiser, I always ask myself: how on earth could my father, a sober, upright member of the community – just like the man sitting behind the wheel in the picture above – how could he have possibly chosen such a terrible colour? I never asked him and it is now too late, alas.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not absolutely rigid about staying with the “normal” colours of a car. Take the Citroën Traction Avant, the French car that popularized the use of front-wheel drive. This car was manufactured from the mid thirties to the late fifties, so there were still lots of them around in France when I was growing up, and they were all, without exception, black.

I’m rather reminded of Henry Ford’s memorable quote: “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.”

But now look at this example, which I came across – rather bizarrely – parked on the side of the road in Luang Prabang in Laos.

That rich burgundy colour is really gorgeous. Every time we walked by it, I would stop to admire it. And one time, as we were walking towards it, the owner got in and drove off! I watched it lovingly as it moved sleekly down the road … although I really began to appreciate modern novelties like catalytic converters when the fumes from its exhaust nearly knocked us out.

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Yellow Ferrari: http://wallpaper.goodfon.com/image/287512-1680×1050.jpg
Red Ferrari: http://www.looksfeelsworks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/ferrari-testarossa-1.jpg
Ferrari Formula 1 cars: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f0/Ferrari_Formula_1_lineup_at_the_N%C3%BCrburgring.jpg/1024px-Ferrari_Formula_1_lineup_at_the_N%C3%BCrburgring.jpg
Pink BMW: my photo
Grey BMW: http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rCuWvf1YiRs/Tx0vyO1Wy9I/AAAAAAAAAhg/wMJcA4t4zEU/s1600/bmw-car-front-view.jpg
Austin: http://nevsepic.com.ua/uploads/posts/2011-03/1299860301_4008697193_2eb0005cce_b_nevsepic.com.ua.jpg
Black Citroen traction avant: http://talk.newagtalk.com
Burgundy Citroen traction avant: my photo

Tag: cars

VILLAGES CLINGING TO THE MOUNTAINSIDE

CAR COLOURS