Monday, September 22

We have spent the day wandering. We took a taxi to one edge of the city; the edge where Coop and Lidl hang out either side of a gas station.

We discovered two things. The taxi driver appeared jolly because we had drastically overestimated the distance and he got 10 euros for five minutes work. The mall that housed Coop performed perfectly as a parody of a broken down mall. Everything that was not boarded up was broken down. And vice versa.

We walked slowly home, stopping a couple of times on the way. Now I leave the apartment with three bags of rubbish and head for the five big colour-coded bins in the next street down. I place the yellow bag in the yellow bin and so on.

On the way back I stop on Passeggiata Cavallotti just before I reach The Group and photograph a gull on a pile of stones as the sun starts to set. Clouds cover some of the mountain tops and a faint pink begins to take shape behind them.