Villa Borghese & the Pincian Hill

Sculpture and springtime! Villa Borghese was probably my favourite part of Rome.

Wild Literary Parties

I went to London last night with some friends for Pyramid Schemes, a one night exhibition by Lawrence Lek and The White Review. I only took my phone, so don't have any amazing pictures, but thought I'd post this here along the lines of 'Things I've Written'. The exhibition was comprised of 100 word texts by artists and writers on the subject of imagined architectures; I wrote a few paragraphs which my friends instantly guessed was mine on the basis that my academic research sometimes really infects my fiction. It's on the right in the image above. I'm not really sure if it's my best writing, but it was fun.

Aix-en-Provence, the Cambridge of the Sun

The idea of going somewhere specifically to do work is kind of stressful for me, but really the flight to Aix-en-Provence always changes my mind. On the left, mountains float like clouds above the blue land, and the puffs of smoke from power stations in the valleys look so insignificant seen beside them. I think perhaps there's nothing lovelier than the descent into a Provençal airport, with the blue of the mediterranean and the orange glow of warm land. In the Marseille Airport's low cost carrier terminal, everything smells immediately of soap and sweat and honey. The bus pulls in five minutes from Aix's centre, and it's possible the Cours Mirabeau at dusk on a Sunday is the happiest street in the world.

Photos: Countryside Rugby

Snow has fallen on the daffodils and it seems winter might last forever, but once in February we had a warm day and I took some photographs. I'm not that into rugby, but I really enjoyed the afternoon and it does photograph well.

Lithuania: Vilnius in (Mostly) Photographs

Vilnius, capital of Lithuania, doesn't have the easy quirky fun of Tallinn or the stylishness of Riga. The Baltic states are usually grouped (and visited) together, though I went to Vilnius this January, two years after visiting Estonia and Latvia. But while Russia proper is further from Vilnius than the other cities, the USSR feels closer in Vilnius than anywhere else I've visited. Tallinn has its bars and Riga its art nouveau facades, but history weighs heaviest on Vilnius.

I don't have time to properly research Vilnius, plus I was reading about cognitive overload the other day (appropriately enough, I can't remember what I read because there is too much in my head) so I'm trying to focus more on my own impressions and less on acquiring all the facts there are to acquire.  But Vilnius was wonderful and covered in snow and I thought I'd gather some of my photographs, impressions and recommendations here. 

A Guide to Aix-en-Provence, or, What I Learnt On My Research Trip

Aix-en-Provence isn't the most obvious place to go for research... unless you're studying French colonisation, in which case, like me, you'll be spending a lot of time here! Aix lives up to all the clichés, with buildings the colours of honey, an almost constant scent of lavender and sky that turns pink and then blue at twilight. The stone can be explained by the town's proximity to the Bibémus Quarries and the lavender can be explained by all the shops and street stalls capitalising on tourist expectations, but the sky is seriously just magical. It's also 100% blue most days.

So Aix is ravishing beautiful*, but Cezanne's studio is the town's biggest tourist attraction and that takes less than an hour to visit if you examine absolutely everything in the room with a magnifying glass. It's smaller than Cambridge and the museums can't even slightly compete. There isn't much to do. 

Strangely enough, this is a good thing.

Exploratory Road Trips: the 1961 Cambridge Afro-Asian Expedition

A while ago, a series of intriguing photographs popped up on Retronaut, showing an old VW van plunging into rivers and pausing in front of mountains. The writing on the side of this van read 'Cambridge Afro-Asian Expedition'.

Images: I B Tauris Publishers, via Retronaut

I was intrigued, but there's not much written on the 1961-2 Cambridge Afro-Asian Expedition. There is a book on the subject being published soon, which is where these photographs have surfaced from. Otherwise, the only information on the trip I can find are the notes of those working on the book.