Strada does Fellini

Coming back from Stefano’s having paid for the new battery I stopped to photograph this scene. There was something about the light, the cold, the fitful drizzle, the empty straight headlight lit road flanked by low factories and the stark blocks of flats and crane that reminded me of Fellini - those strange liminal spaces filled with overpowering light at the edge of developing towns where not very much happens- like a Giorgio di Chirico painting - but where there is an overpowering sense of ennui, of being caught in a cycle of time that cuts back on itself in all its futility, a backwater that holds expectancy that never delivers and finishes with a shot of Marcello Mastroianni disappearing into deep shadow.

As I said somewhere else these impressions are fleeting and probably more in the beholder than the scene itself. But it struck me enough to stop and take the picture.

The builders came up and we talked through Phase 3 that all became terribly technical as architect and father and son building firm talked about the thickness of the ‘gettata’ (jet-AH- tah) - the cement subfloor that the driveway would need before a mystery called an ‘autobloccante’ could be laid.

We went large and touched on swimming pools and the new land: better, suggested Luca, to buy the lot (10 hectares) than try and split the deal. Most is unkempt chestnut forest and a vineyard to recover. Just blood sweat and tears but I’ve the land hunger in me. As Gianluca said in a hugely affectionate way, You’ve really become a contadino, Ferrrgooose. (A peasant, in the nicest possible way.)