Martina Franca

While Sue is away working I mostly lead a solitary life. This is fine by me. For some years now I have lived my life in cycles of relative indolence and solitude followed by periods of more intensive activity and social interaction. When I am working or living among a group or have guests to entertain I spend much of my time having real or imaginary conversations with those around me, so that my life becomes a process of rehearsal and performance. I’m pretty good at it, but it takes effort. On my own the conversations go away and I am more free to be myself, whatever that is.

During these periods of solitude I get the occasional invitation and because of their rarity they loom large. Last weekend I was invited to a fiftieth birthday party in Martina Franca, a nearby town. Martina is an elegant baroque little place full of narrow limewashed alleys. It is packed with charming and expensively furnished apartments and it was in one such as this that the party was held. Climbing the stairs you are transported to a part of the town that the tourist usually does not see – the world up at the roofline full of secluded terraces and ancient masonry with a jagged horizon of chimneys and TV arials. From the balcony of the apartment you can stare down godlike at the ants circling the piazza below.

There were lots of people, Italian and English, guitar music and Indian food. I chatted to a few people I knew and some that I did not. Often on these occasions I find myself chatting to a British ex pat, usually with a kind of horrified curiosity. I don’t think that I am a snob and I like my fellow countrymen when I am in England, I really do. But here in the South of Italy the fixed anglocentric way of seeing things that many of them have seems ridiculous and in the end I fall back on frustrated silence. It was good to catch up with some friends, but in the end I was glad to climb back down the stairs to the chilly and deserted streets in search of my car.