Naples

A young man pulls up on a scooter – a pea green Vespa. He wears a polished metal bike helmet, a violet scarf, dark jeans and a tight green jersey. He whistles as he gets off the bike. At the bottom of the steps we are descending, a beagle, tied to the rail, barks and strains, tongue lolling, grinning, panting. The man unties the dog and together they get on the scooter, the beagle obedient in the footwell, tail wagging, the man's scarf whipping as he dodges traffic up the road and out of sight.


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Piazza Garibaldi, as we return in the evening from Pompeii: a mess of construction, taxis, buses, cars parked next to, behind and at angles to each other, pedestrians with suitcases, north African men hawking 'iPhones' and sunglasses, and above the Piazza, in the violet sky, several flocks of small black birds, merging and separating, turning and quivering like sequins.


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A fresh, damp, salty smell from the fish stalls. Wide low-sided white and blue plastic containers half full of water holding thin silver sardines, long flat smudge-skinned frost fish, clams the size of knucklebones, and octopuses, their mottled grey and violet hoods pulsating. The fishmongers hose refuse away over the cobbles.


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Along the narrow streets the view on either side gives into rooms with beds, tables, televisions, mothers fathers, sons and daughters all together, and washing drying on racks. In one room a girl is laying the table: her brother sits and watches her from a corner, his hands folded in his lap, his armchair a dusty violet bruise in the dim.