The Getz Files

There are lots of places telling you about the best hotels in the world, and I’ve been fortunate enough to stay at some of them – the Shangri-la in Singapore, the Polana in Maputo, La Mamounia in Marrakech – but there aren’t so many reporting on the worst hotels. Good bad hotel stories are individual, very specific, and can be hilarious. I went around the ICTY asking people for their experiences. Almost everyone had a story, taking in most parts of the world. Thanks to all of you –sorry I couldn’t use every story. To those few who couldn't think of any really bad experiences, I say wait, your turn is yet to come.

Behind the Iron Curtain
Aubrey stayed at the Moscow State University Hotel, which was connected to a casino run by the mafia. The bathroom, which lacked hot water, had peeling paint, and one had to stand on a mold-covered pallet to wash. One afternoon, when her party returned to the hotel, the receptionist demanded immediate payment of a $20 phone bill rung up by one of the travellers. He didn’t have it on him, so the receptionist refused to give any of them their keys. One guy tried to grab his key but was roughed up by the security guard. Eventually, the hotel staff let them into their rooms – and then locked them in until the next morning, when they checked out (which isn’t surprising).

Moscow sounds lovely. Sabine, staying in a student hotel, had a room filled with roaches, sub-freezing temperatures and boiling wallpaper. Yes – boiling. Apparently, the hotel had 2 days with and 2 days without water. When the water went off, the upstairs neighbour had left his tap on, eventually flooding one side of the building.

Also in Russia - Siberia this time – Diane teases me with the mention of cockroaches (again), but won’t reveal more details until Monday as she needs a few days to come to terms with the horror of the experience.

For an overall bad experience, Tara’s youth hostel in Riga “was like something out of a horror movie. It was very dreary, and the area of town didn’t feel safe at all. It was really spooky - the hotel is this massive building and since no sane person would vist Riga in the dead of winter, my boyfriend and I were the only guests. It was dirty and disgusting smelling, like a combination of years of cigarette smokes and mold.”

Ex Africa Semper Aliquid Nonoperational
My worst experience was in Mozambique, at Bilem. Our hotel ran out of water and electricity, so the fans stopped, with the temperature about 38 degrees outside. It looked like a refugee camp, with people lined up against the walls, slowly melting from the heat. Oddly, Stephen had the same experience in Cameroon.

I also had a hotel in Morocco with a towel the size of a hankie and a shower so small that the shower curtain wrapped all the way around me. But the view of the sea was phenomenal.

The Mysterious and Not-so-mysterious East
Chantal managed to find 2 youth hostels in China that were more than just dirty – the sheets were suspiciously moist. In one of them, the smell of sewerage wafted up through the toilets every morning.

In Sydney, Stefanie discovered white clumps on her trouser legs while on her way to a meeting. On her return, an investigation of the closet revealed three years’ accumulated dust.

Lovely Latin America
Caroline’s hotel in Peru had centipedes in the toilet.

In Belize, Grace found herself in a filthy hotel where the beds lacked mattresses. She didn’t stay.

Western Europe and America – The First World?
Geerten has been particularly unlucky. From Ostend, surrounded by old bibulous Brits and staring at a concrete wall, to Miami, where the hotel just told the guests to bugger off when the hurricane approached, to New York, where there was vomit in the communal lavatory every morning, he knows how to pick them.

Fiana’s B&B in the Arran Isles had hair in the bath, a coat of grease on the kitchen and a sticky kitchen table.

In London, Phillip had a toilet so small he couldn’t sit on it properly. The shower was a pipe connected to a shower head. As he puts it: “I turn the water on, the pipe goes bang, the shower head hits the ceiling, I’m standing in the middle of a fountain and all my clothes in the bathroom are soaked.”

Stephen also found a place with character in London: bloodstains on the wall (he isn’t certain what kind of blood), a dead rat in the ventilation system, and a phonebooth-type shower with only cold water in the middle of the room.

But the best so far is from Kirsten: in Rome, there were worms in her shower. The proprietor at first didn’t believe her, but once confronted with the evidence, returned with a can of Raid and sprayed it liberally. Kirsten returned to the room a few hours later to find the smell of Raid still strong, and the worms looking quite perky. She was moved to another room, where one wall was painted like The Bahamas. So not all bad then.

If anyone has more to share, please do.

My roommate Tara turned me on to an excellent music site: pandora.com. It's part of the Music Genome Project, which catalogued thousands and thousands of songs by numerous musical criteria. You stick in a song or artist that you like, and then get really good streamed radio, with some most interesting choices. I've got a couple stations going called Synco-Rhythmo Rock and Depressed White Guys, and I've been hearing some new music that I like a lot. Check it out.

So I was googling myself (as you do), and thought I'd see if there are any findable pictures of me. As I suspected, looking for pictures of "Matt Getz" came up with a lot of pictures by this rather well-known poster artist who appropriated my name about 10 years before I was born. But "Matthew Getz" had just one result: I think you'll like it.

Urban of course means relating to a city. Urbane is worldly, sophisticated, somewhat insouciant. (My definition; Wordnet says, "1: Showing a high degree of refinement and the assurance that comes from wide social experience; "his polished manner"; "maintained an urbane tone in his letters" 2: Characterized by tact and propriety 3: Marked by wide-ranging knowledge and appreciation of many parts of the world arising from urban life and wide travel; "the sophisticated manners of a true cosmopolite"; "urbane and pliant...he was at ease even in the drawing rooms of Paris", which isn't all that far from my definition.)

Both of them, I like to think characterise my life - not only myself, but also my friends, and others that I like being around. Some cities are more urbane than others, and I think Amsterdam is pretty high on the list. Which is why it was a good setting for a mini-reunion with good friends, and a rather sophisticated outing.

I was joined in the Dam at the flat of Kjetil Larsen by Rich Barnett and Chris Barchak.

Kjetil is from Norway - I was probably the first person who spoke to him when he arrived at Stanford. He was "young, slim and promising" (his words). We were friends there but lost touch after, so this was the first time I've seen him in about 11 years - but the time lapse wasn't felt.

Rich and I became friendly early on at Stanford; we were part of the same residential educational programme (Structured Liberal Entertainment) and Rich became famous for his multi-part questions. After college (and all that entailed), while I went my wayward ways, Rich became Big in Japan, but we've always been in touch and have managed to spend time together at fairly regular intervals.

Chris I met in London through Rich (via Hamish) and we had many awesome times there together; he once leant me an off-white tracksuit to watch Fulham with Gordon in the rain after we'd been out all night and morning clubbing.

Now these guys are very important to me on a number of levels. As individuals, they are fantastic people. They are also parts of groups of my friends, who matter a great deal to me. And they know me, which means 2 things. First, they can connect and call me on my bullshit (rare and infrequent though it is). Second, when I'm with them I see my past - as well as my present and my future. I feel very blessed in the friends I have managed to make and retain, and I am proud to count these guys in that number.*

That may not have been very eloquent, but it's from the heart.**

So what indeed did we do that weekend? First night we stayed at Kjetil drinking and talking till the wee (actually, they'd started getting a bit bigger again) hours. Second night, we went to the Supper Club, a very fancy restaurant-cum-bar-cum club. Five-course meal (while lying on a bed) over many hours, with massages, entertainment and other cool stuff. Then you go downstairs to dance. Pricey, but worth it - unusual and sophisticated. We went because another close friend, Alex Lustberg, has opened the San Francisco branch. (My friends are so impressive...)

* Conversely, I sometimes feel sad at the friends I have lost touch with or cannot see often, but I realise, when I'm being philosophical, that this is partly a price I pay for moving around, which has itself gained me many new friends. Though some of it is my fault for not working hard enough to maintain contact.

** Also, I told Rich and Chris that I would write about what they meant to me when describing this weekend, to stop them making fun of my blog. It worked - they were halted dead in their tracks :-)

A couple weeks ago, we had a day off for Eid (I like the UN), so I went to Utrecht. A very fine one-day visit. Highlights:

• Utrecht has the largest railway station in Holland.
• The city has a very nice sunken canal running through it, lined with a number of bars and restaurants. Most peaceful and I'm sure in the summer most lively. Weirdly, though, you can't walk for very long along the canal. Every block or two you get stopped by a bridge and you have to go back up to street level.
• Its top attraction is the Dom Tower, at 112m the tallest church tower in the country (and probably the highest point). It's 465 steps to the top, and you stop at 4 different stages, so you don't die. (The tour guides must develop very strong legs.) There are two bell towers, which are quite amazing to be in - the bells are very cool. The top one has the second-largest peal in Europe. At the top, you can (obviously) see for miles though it was (typically) a very grey day, limiting visibility (or "vis", as my "diver" "friends" call it). V enjoyable. Here's a pic:

• Utrecht also has a really lovely museum of mechanical musical instruments, like pianolas, player pianos, street organs, dancehall organs and the like. A guide will play them for you (and sing along to the barrel organ) and some of them are wonderful. I particularly enjoyed: the Steinway reproducing grand piano where you see the keys being depressed, as if by a ghost (check out the video); the Hupfeld violin player, which has a player piano and player violins - four violins with one string each, ten mechanical "fingers" and a circular bow (check out the video); the playground organ that played an Abba medley.
• The city is very old, dating back to at least 47 CE. So the Central Museum has a very sweet little section of Roman archaeological findings - an entire room, for example, dedicated to half a Roman helmet that they found there. It also has a boat that's about 1,000 years old - long and wide, it's very cool. You could almost hear the boatswain, or whatever you call him, whip the rowers. The rest of the museum is very so-so, though they have good Gerrit Rietvelds (he's Utrecht second-most-famous son; number one is Marco van Basten) but I like these small odd museums. (My number one is still the Electro-Technical Museum in Budapest, where 2 mad scientists made the four customers create an electrical circuit and laughed when the last two touched fingers and we all got a shock.)
• In the Union of Utrecht, the seven northern provinces of then low countries decided to join forces against the Spanish, which is seen as the start of the Dutch Republic. (Interested in early Dutch history? Why not read about my trip to Delft.)
• Of course, as every schoolchild knows, the Treaty of Utrecht marked the end to the War of the Spanish Succession.
• The entry on Utrecht in Wikipedia has the most boring thing I think I've ever seen on Wikipedia -- a guide to transport in Utrecht.

A while ago I published a link to the annual King William's College quiz, with my answers.
Well, the answers are out, and I'm proud/ashamed to say I got 5 right and 5 half-right. Mo got 2.
Here is the quiz, and here are the answers.

Well, I haven't put much up here for a while - sorry about that - I got into one of my noncommunicative slumps. But I'm back now, and I'll start with one of our favourite features (in that it's the only one for which I have evidence that people I don't know have read it): good books. Not a top ten, but some recent reads.

Alan Hollinghurst's Line of Beauty, which won the 2004 Booker Prize, was a revelation. I loved it, and was a bit surprised. To explain why, I must talk a bit first about the previous Hollinghurst I read, The Folding Star. The book was written very lushly, quite intricate, all the words and sentences seemed rather meaningful. As everyone says, Hollinghurst is a superb craftsman. But it just didn't grab me, I think (and thought) because the subject matter was somewhat alien. It was all about gay sex and an obscure Belgian artist whom I didn't know and still don't. The sex was pretty explicit and not very moving (but sex, when written about in detail, usually isn't, I find). I wasn't turned off, but I was a little alienated. Reading that one wasn't a complete waste of time, but I didn't recommend it to anyone.

The Line of Beauty, however, I recommend to all of you (both of you? you alone? Marvin?) - it too has lots of gay sex, and lots of obscure artists, but this time it isn't about that. It's set in the Thatcher years, and has a cast of very well-rounded, interesting characters. It also has a plot, narrative, pace - all of which were missing from The Folding Star. And it's true: every sentence is perfect. My favourite: "Nick felt a tear rise to his eye at the thought of the child's utter innocence of hangovers."

Henry James features quite a bit in the book, and people see Hollinghurst as very much in the Jamesian tradition. Well, on the evidence of this one at least, I think he's better, as I find it possible to read his books.

Sticking with beauty, I also read Zadie Smith's third novel, On Beauty. Again, I had read her previously - I loved her first novel, White Teeth - and had heard good things about this. I wasn't disappointed at all - the book is much fun and most engaging. What's interesting is that whereas Hollinghurst returns to similar themes - love/sex and art - this book is very different from White Teeth. White Teeth was a coming-of-age novel with a huge cast of characters in multicultural northwest London. This, on the other hand, is a campus novel with a subplot about Rembrandt. OK, you still have a fairly multicultural cast, but it really focuses on a family, rather than a society. It's very funny at times, and quite touching as well. To be honest, the ending disappoints, and it isn't perfect, but it's a worthwhile, entertaining book. (Interestingly, while Hollinghurst owes a debt to James, she follows E.M. Forster in this one. I read my first Forster last year - A Passage to India - and found it wonderful. I shall read more.)

Another novel which was wonderful fun was Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which reimagines early 19th century England as if magic existed. It's long - nearly 1,000 pages - but very easy reading - I finished it in 4 days (admittedly, I didn't have much else to do). It's written most of the time as a quasi-biography, with footnotes and references to other books and publishers which never existed; I enjoy that kind of postmodern lark. Some people think not enough happens for all the promise of a society with magic, but I really enjoyed the low-key plot -- if magic existed, magical happenings wouldn't be spectacular cliffhanger episodes all the time. Don't get me wrong, there is lots of tension and suspense in the book, and a fair amount of "action" in the second half. At least, I thought so. (I think this book could be a litmus test for which Getz you're most like - my sister didn't enjoy it at all.)

Moving away from fiction, I finally read a book I've been wanting to read for ages: Ambling into History by Frank Bruni. Bruni, a New York Times reporter, was with George W on the campaign, and this book is all about the prez, his character, his handlers, campaigning, the press, politics and all that stuff, as one sees it through a presidential campaign. (There is also a bit about Bush around 9/11, when Bruni used his insights to analyze what was going on.) It is fascinating. I learnt a lot more about Bush and his family, some of which was quite appalling, much of which is very funny (unpresidential goofs and the like), and some of which was very unsettling: I mean, I dislike Bush as much as the next guy (unless the next guy's Mike), but Bruni, who is no Bush partisan - he works for the NYT! - shows that the guy is actually human. At times I almost warmed to him, and to his parents. (There's a very funny scene when Bush ran his first and only marathon, in 1996. His parents were standing a couple miles from the finishing line. When they saw him, Barbara shouted "There are old ladies going faster than you. Get a move on," but George senior just said, "That's my boy.") Bruni even convincingly dispels the myth that Bush is dumb, or no reader (he may not be an intellectual, but that's a different matter): I was rather shocked to read about Bush recommending one of my favourite books, In the Lake of the Woods by Tim O'Brien. Eek! We share some of the same tastes! Makes me feel a little dirty, and yet powerful at the same time.

I think this is actually quite an important book for the insights it gives on a sitting president's character, and for a view on how campaigns work. I think all those interested in Bush, politics and the press should read it, especially those who don't like the man - this'll challenge some of your prejudices. My DC boys should definitely read it.

So now, you may be asking why it is that I only read books I like. Perhaps I have no taste. Or I'm really lucky. Or I have learnt how to pick books that I will enjoy. Well, it's a combination of the 3. Also, I don't finish books I don't like. (My records lengthwise are Primary Colors - 2 paragraphs - and Gravity's Rainbow - 250 pages. No hyperlinks because they both suck.) Still, every now and then I read a bad book, and a recent disappointment was Freddie Mercury by Peter Freestone, his PA for years. Unfortunately, the guy can't write, and what he does write isn't interesting - no revelations, nothing insightful about Freddie, my first rock god. He clearly loved Freddie, so he doesn't want to reveal any confidences. And he wasn't that interested in music. What a pity. Oh well. (In case you're wondering, I lasted 40 pages.)

More books soon, as I'm nearly finished a couple.

I've never watched Trading Spouses, I imagine I never will (some day, I'll put my reality TV rant up here). But this is compelling - and quite scary.

Taken with a digital SLR with a huuuuge aperture. (Maybe I need a 6th camera.)

Every year, King William's College, a school on the Isle of Wight (or Man - I suspect they're the same place) gives its students a very hard quiz, which is reprinted in The Guardian.

This is the link. I'll put a link to the answers up as soon as it appears.

I have a few (very few) guesses. If you have any, throw them in the comments and we'll see how many we can get. Scroll down for the guesses (so you can ignore them if you want).














1.5 - Louis Pasteur
1.8 - Ballad of Reading Gaol

4.1 - Maccabees; Handel
4.2 - Ruth; Handel
4.3 - Daniel; L.S. Lowry
4.9 - Deuteronomy; Weill

5.8 - Land's End and John O'Groats
5.9 - Scallops

6.1 - Personification
6.3 - Alliteration
6.4 - Repetition/antiphony
6.5 - Litotes
6.7 - Antithesis
6.8 - Alliteration (I think they're also anapests)

7.3 - 1984
7.7 - Something by O. Henry

8.1 - 500,000 pounds
8.8 - William Wordsworth

9.1 - Balthazar
9.2 - Crystal Pepsi
9.10 - Nebuchadnezzar

10.8 - Nice
10.10 - Melton Mowbray

11.6 - A Borgia
11.7 - Also a Borgia

15.6 - Burnt Oak
15.9 - Marble Arch

Had a look at the birthdays my family members and I share with famous people (pretty easy to do if you're keen - just type your birth date into Wikipedia).

Among the more interesting findings is that my sister shares March 18 with at least four heads of state/government - Grover Cleveland, Neville Chamberlain*, Fidel Ramos and FW de Klerk (five if you count Queen Latifah).

Joining her with a US president is my mother (November 24), with Zachary Taylor; my Dad (January 14) has a US traitor - Benedict Arnold. And both mother and father have a serial killer - Harold Shipman and Ted Bundy.

I, however (November 13), and the only one with a well-known saint (St Augustine), a king of England (Edward III) and a Supreme Court Justice (Louis Brandeis).

* Churchill once said, "History will not be kind to Neville Chamberlain. I know, because I'm going to write it." Talking about Churchill, just watched again that wonderful BBC Movie about him - The Gathering Storm. Albert Finney is amazing as Churchill. Churchill really was a great man and was extraordinarily right about Hitler and how to fight WWII, but he was so very wrong about so many things - Gallipolli, India, British society. I guess one could liken him to Isaiah Berlin's hedgehog.

Here he is on the Joe Scarborough show (ooh, I feel dirty just typing that man's name). Like Alabama says to Clarence, he's so cool.

(Although a crazy man wants me to play rugby for a social club in The Hague. I imagine he thinks I'm one of those tough South Africans my mother always warned me against.)

This is Part I because I have, arggh, lost a bunch of pictures and am trying to recover them.




Spent the first few days in Naples, which is a big, old (2600 years) city with lots of marks of old times and frustrated modernity. This is the square where Bellini, composer of Norma, lived. Now it's got nice restaurants, artsy coffee shops and a gaggle of Camorra-lite drug dealers surrounding it.

Next to the Piazza is Port'Alba, one of the old gates to the city. Naples is replete with statues on the top of buildings, and odd columns covered with decorations, busts and the like. Here's one.

Everybody hung out in Naples at one stage - Verdi premiered Aida there, for example, Caravaggio painted and fought here, and Dante put in some time. This is his statue in Piazza Dante.

We stayed in the Centro Storico, a dark warren of streets still laid out on the plan the Greeks set up so long ago. The streets are tiny and cramped, very gloomy and eerie when it's raining, as it did most of the time we were there. However, every now and then as one walks along - whang! - a huge church appears, set back from the road and soaring up to heaven. This is one of the finest - Gesu Nuovo, with its very weird outside facade. Inside, it's a Baroque wonderland, with decoration on every possible surface.

The streets, as I said, are very old. Not really the kind of thing to drive on, you might think. But this is Italy, and they're not so concerned. Two consequences: in these extremely narrow streets you're forever dodging cars and mopeds (which I think have secured some sort of exemption from the laws of man and God); and almost all the cars have some sort of ding.

Naples has a reputation for being sunny and lively, but in the rain and overcast it can look quite forbidding.

Its most famous museum is the National Archaeological Museum, which is one of the best of its type in the world. All kinds of Greek, Roman, Etruscan antiquities, inlcuding amazing frescoes and mosaics from Pompeii and elsewhere. I must admit my favourite room was the collection of Classical Pornography, much of which was quite raunchy. If they are to be believed, the male organ has shrunk over the past 2000 years. Clearly, as this is a family site, I can't be putting those pics up, but copies are available on request. Here are examples of another type of big head:

One day we decided to go to Positano on the Amalfi Coast. A bit ill-advised because of the weather - buckets of rain, seriously - though we could still see it is a very beautiful part of the world. To get there, you take the very nicely Circumvesuviana railroad.
(This is exhausting - I'll put up more later.)

Sharon Stroke

Work is pretty quiet at the mo - none of my supervisors are back yet - so here's another book list (with the sports in brackets if not obvious).

1. The Willow Wand by Derek Birley (cricket)
2. Football Against the Enemy by Simon Kuper (see some very fine excerpts from this and other Kuper books)
3. How Soccer Explains the World by Franklin Foer
4. Ball Four by Jim Bouton (baseball)
5. Moneyball by Michael Lewis (baseball)
6. Beyond a Boundary by C.L.R. James (cricket) - James once said, "What do they know of cricket, who only cricket know?
7. Brilliant Orange by David Winner (football)
8. Full Time: The Secret Life of Tony Cascarino by Tony Cascarino as told to Paul Kimmage(football) - I haven't (obviously) read every sports autobiography but I cannot imagine there's a better one than this
9. The Glory Game by Hunter Davies (football)
10. A Season with Verona by Tim Parks

Honourable mention (because it ain't a book): David Foster Wallace's essay "Tennis Player Michael Joyce's Professional Artistry as a Paradigm for Certain Stuff about Choice, Freedom, Discipline, Joy, Grotesquerie, and Human Completeness", collected in A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again, is awesome.

I note that, the Wallace aside, there are only 3 sports on that list. Nothing about boxing, rugby, athletics, etc. I don't even know if there are any good books on rugby. If anyone has recommendations of other sports books that are as good as those on the list, please send them along.

Joined the gym last night (no, it wasn't a New Year's resolution). My gym is called Caesar's, which seems to me more redolent of decadence than asceticism and self-improvement. It's only OK. Like the other Dutch sporting facilities I've seen, it has no soap and a lot of regulations. You aren't allowed to wear swimming trunks in the steam room or sauna, but you have to sit or lie on a towel, which means that you need to bring 2 towels with you. Also, there are big signs all over saying that people who do not use the steam room and sauna for their intended use will lose their membership. I'm trying to imagine what people did.

The facilities are fairly basic - nothing like Old Eds or my lovely gym at Georgetown - but they have all one needs, I guess. I did a nice arm workout, with lots of supersets so I sweat, then did a few minutes on the elliptical machine and got thoroughly bored - I just don't have that mindset. Fortunately, I had an excuse: a 15-minute abs workout, which was quite good.

What is nice is the pool, which is big, deep and warm (nice if you're with a lady but not if you're in the jungle). Tonight I go spinning - can't wait to be shouted at in Dutch - I'll have to keep a close watch on what everyone else is doing.

Sure, everybody does it, but nobody writes about the really important stuff quite as well as the LA Times.

Read 4 books in Italy. Here they is:

At the second-hand stall under Waterloo Bridge, I picked up a book I'd been wanting to read for ages: Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer. One of the best science books I've ever read. I'd never imagined parasites are so important and successful. By one count, there are four times as many parasites as there are other living creatures. Even more interestingly, the author posits that parasites are the cause of the evolution of complex multicellular organisms, like us. It's very high on the ick factor, but fascinating. I also understand quite a bit better how the body works and would like to read more about physiology - does anyone know any good popular-science books about that? (Zimmer also has an interesting blog.)

When I'm somewhere different (I can't really say foreign, as that word has lost much of its meaning in my life) I always like to make sure I read a book about the place. This trip I picked A Season with Verona by Tim Parks. What a wonderful book, one of the best I've ever read on football. Parks travelled around the country with the fans watching every Verona game. He picked a great season to write about, as the denouement was really tense - I slowed my reading down towards the end to prolong the tension - nail-biting stuff.

Lots of interesting things about football and Italy; one thing that struck me is how backwards and racist much of Italy/Italian football can be. Verona, for example, has never had a black player (or hadn't when the book was written). Their owner even said, too honestly and quite cowardly, that he couldn't buy a black player because of the fans. This amazes me - I've always through that Everton, notoriously racist, was the last team in England's top league to have a black player, buying Daniel Amokachi in 1994. (Though this is actually quite complicated. In the 1966, FA Cup Final, Mike Trebilcock was apparently the first black player - playing for Everton - to score in the FA Cup final. They also had a black player called Cliff Marshall in the early 1970s, but apparently none others until Amokachi. If any Everton fans care to correct me - Mike Fox, perhaps? - I'd be most grateful.) I'm not saying there is no racism in English football, but I think a lot less than in Italian or Spanish. After all, in Italy, a Nazi salute isn't considered racist.

Parks himself is a very good writer, and I am determined now to read more of his work, with Europa coming next.

Sticking with non-fiction, and to an extent Verona, I read Will in the World by Stephen Greenblatt. More scholarly than the other books perhaps, but also most readable and really quite brilliant. We all know there isn't a lot known about Shakespeare, but there is a fair amount, and one can speculate if done reasonably and with a basis in fact, which I feel Greenblatt does. He is apparently the founder of the New Historicism school (well, it says so inside the book) so this is a strong example of that school. His use of personal and social history gives new insight to Shakespeare's works and really enhanced my appreciation thereof. There is also some great old-fashioned literary criticism, with a scintillating discussion of how, as Greenblatt sees it, Shakespeare created a new way of representing inwardness. If you have fallen off the Shakespeare horse and want to get back on, this will help.

Finally, a bit of fiction, on the plane and train home: Julian Barnes's new collection of short stories, The Lemon Table. A bit ho-hum really. I think maybe in the end I'm not quite sensitive enough for Barnes. I loved A History of the World in 10 1/2 Chapters, as well as Love etc. (so I will read Talking it Over) but the other stuff I read leaves me fairly cold. That said, the last two stories in the book are very good, so if you see it at a friend/library/bookshop, they're worth reading.

Here's my latest book list. My top 10(ish) works of what I call personal non-fiction. Some are autobiography, some memoir, some diaries, som less easy to categorise. All of them taught me a lot about the person writing it and about something else. They are also all among the most engrossing books I have ever read, giving rise to huge emotions. Dirt made me really really want to be a rock star, Into Thin Air had my mouth gaping and my knuckles white (it still haunts me), My War Gone By I Miss It So left me feeling as if I'd been doing drugs, and Country of My Skull made me cry constantly. I say you should read these all.

Again, no particular order:

1. My War Gone By, I Miss It So by Anthony Loyd
2. Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer
3. My Traitor's Heart by Rian Malan
4. Dirt by Motley Crue
5. Down and Out in Paris and London/The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell
6. The Liars' Club by Mary Karr
7. Spike Milligan's War Memoirs (all of them)
8. If This Is a Man & The Truce/The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
9. The Bang-Bang Club by Greg Marinovich & Joao Silva (here are some photos)
10. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
11. The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin
12. Fever Pitch by Nick Hornby
13. Country of my Skull by Antjie Krog

451 and 54-3: these are very happy numbers to end the second day with, even if we did bat very slowly and seemed to have been the victims of some very poor decisions.

Also very heartening is news that Makhaya Ntini was named SA's most popular sportsman - the first time a cricketer has won this accolade. This makes me really happy, as do numbers showing that cricket is SA's second-most-popular sport, and isn't that far behind football. I (obviously) love the sport and have always wanted it to be the sport of all my countrymen; I think it's getting there. Two years ago, when Macca took 5 wickets at Lord's, there was a front-page picture of him kissing the turf -- I thought that did so much for the sport's cause in the country. Bryan Habana's tries are (maybe) doing something similar for rugby, but I still see it as a much less progressive, open sport. Incidentally, you may have been wondering why it's Bryan, not Brian - because he was named after Bryan Robson, his dad's favourite footballer. And his middle name is Gary, after Gary Bailey! I love it!

Also, a thought for Eddie Barlow, who died at 65. I never saw him play, but I always appreciated that he was one of the greats and both wore glasses and was somewhat overweight. There's a very touching tribute to him from Bangladesh.

While it's still fresh in my mind and stomach...

Day 1: Naples
Lunch - Pizzeria Port Alba - Marinated seafood and Pizza quattro formaggi - the best pizza I've ever had
Dinner - Pizzeria Port Alba (nowhere else was open) - Sauteed seafod and Linguini con vongole

Day 2:
Lunch - Positano - restaurant by the sea - Spaghetti with prawns and tomato
Dinner - Naples - Vera pizzeria - Pizza with anchovies and capers - apparently I needed some salt

Day 3: Naples
Lunch - Caffe Arte - Costoletta milanese with mushrooms and potatoes
Dinner - Antica Osteria - Rigatoni with calamari, Veal limone, Fried artichokes - very simple place; fellow clientele looked like low-level camorra.

Day 4: Rome
Lunch - Tourist trap by Pantheon - Spaghetti con aglio olio e peperoncini
Dinner - Cul de Sac - Pate selection, tongue with mustard sauce, oxtail, cheese selection

Day 5:
Lunch - Tivoli - Station cafe - Chicken cutlet sandwich (mediocre)
Dinner - Rome - Spaghetti bolognese and spinach - spaghetti only a bit above average but spinach delicious

Day 6: Rome
Lunch - Trattoria del' Teatro - Pasta e fagioli and Risotto con funghi
Dinner - Trattoria del' Teatro - New Year's Eve dinner - calamari, panzerotti with pumpkin, spaghetti with calamari and prawns, calamri, prawns and fish, creme brulee

Day 7: Rome
Lunch - Moretta - Marinated artichokes, linguini with mushrooms
Dinner - Giggetto (in the ghetto) - Artichokes Jewish style, a very good bottle of Barolo and I can't remember what else - we were drunk and celebrating.

Except where noted, every one of these meals was superb, no matter how lowly the place (and even the one I can't remember).

Soon: Italy - a photo essay.