Archive for August, 2005

Where there’s muck

Wednesday, August 31st, 2005

Out cycling this morning, I passed a field being ripped up. Walking a few metres behind the earthmover (It’s Scoop, mama!) was a man with a metal detector and a spade.

“Dude! WTF!!” I shouted, but he was too busy to look up.
I can’t imagine what he hoped to find. Since the land has been […]

Grazie Madonna

Monday, August 29th, 2005

Those whose prayers have been answered (see previous post), can show their gratitude at this ad hoc shrine in via Trastevere. The slot at the bottom of the wall for donations for “bread for the orphans” has been crowded out by a hundred or so plaques dedicated to the madonna. The oldest plaques are closest […]

Please please me

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

This statue is in Santa Maria in Trastevere. The hundreds of slips of paper are requests for saintly intervention. Note how the more enterprising supplicants avoided getting their requests lost in the mess at his feet and stuck Post-its on his cassock.
Although I forgot to note the name of the saint, it is almost certainly […]

SPQR

Wednesday, August 17th, 2005

I always reckoned that if you were going to be a bum, there are worse places to choose than Rome.
I took this photo in Piazza Santa Maria in Trastevere. The coat of arms of the city of Rome forms part of the fountain sculpture. The letters SPQR stand for Senatus Populusque Romanus (the Senate […]

Last exit for Italy

Thursday, August 11th, 2005

Someone once wrote that war was composed of long periods of utter boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror. That pretty much sums up my trip north from Rome to Friesland. The moments of terror came when an overloaded and swaying lorry suddenly swung out in front of me to overtake another slow-moving lorry. I […]