How Journalism Works

I'd better declare my interest at the beginning...

Some time ago, when I was writing a music column for an evening paper, I received an advance copy of Waterloo by Abba. This was prior to their Eurovision appearance and I had no idea who they were. My review simply stated that this was without doubt a number one hit record. 

The rest is history... two master composers, two great singers, a band that rivalled the Beatles in producing pop music with universal appeal. What's not to like?

Abba's recent return has been a general cause of excitement. But today the Telegraph carries a piece by someone called Ed Power, basically using several hundred words to sneer at Abba for saying they won't be doing any more after their comeback album and ongoing hi-tech London stage show.

Ed Power suggests that this may be because their new music isn't very good – and that's why they are not contemplating doing proper concerts. The more likely reason why two divorced couples in their seventies (who now have completely different lives) might not want to go out on the road together seems to have escaped Ed Power. As has the fact that they possibly have nothing left to prove.

Strangely, exactly two weeks ago, someone called Ed Power wrote a lengthy positive puff piece for the new Abba show and album in the Telegraph.

What happened in between? Abba gave an exclusive interview to the Guardian... 

See Naples and Live – 9: Deeply Moving

Galleria Borbonica             ©Nigel Summerley

As I've already mentioned (see this blog 14 October 2021, See Naples and Live – 2: Going Underground), some of the most remarkable sights of Naples are below street level, one of the most unusual being the Galleria Borbonica.

This was originally a huge tunnel commissioned by the Bourbon king Ferdinand II in 1853. His aim was to have an underground link from his palace to the army barracks (and to the Bay of Naples). He lived in troubled times, and the tunnel would ensure that either his troops could come and rescue him and/or that he could escape from the city by sea.

The tunnelling hit so many technical hitches that the king never saw it properly completed.

But in the Second World War it came into its own as a vast air-raid shelter. And in the 1970s it became a municipal dump for abandoned cars and scooters (many of them still there today).

During the war it was fitted with electric lights and extremely basic toilet facilities for the crowds who had to live underground while bombs rained down destroying their city. They had swapped one kind of hell for another...

But one piece of graffiti that one of them left behind summed up their situation – and perhaps also the spirit of Naples.

It reads "Noivivi". Just one word that probably should be two: "Noi vivi". But even then it wouldn't be, strictly speaking, grammatical.

But what it translates as is "Us alive". It must have been a message of defiance and hope and positivity written in the dark and filth and despair of the tunnel. And it meant: "We are still here. We survive."

See Naples and Live – 8: You Couldn't Make It Up

"Do that mean what I think it do?" as they say in Tennessee.

Well, yes, it appears to. And it's not just the name of one of Naples' most popular nocturnal eating spots... it's also a franchise spreading across Italy.

Just a few doors up from where I was staying in the Universit
a area of the city, it's especially popular with students.

I didn't sample its wares, preferring to frequent more traditionally named eateries. But for some reason it always made me smile on the way home after a night out.

See Naples and Live – 7: Prints Charming

 

©Nigel Summerley

This is the phone in the workshop of Carmine Cervone in Naples... and it works.

But it's not the most interesting of his machines – at least not to a journalist who was a reporter, sub-editor and production editor going back to the days of typewriters, copy paper and hot metal.

Carmine has linotype machines. And although they look like museum pieces, they are actually there to be used for printing... posters, papers, books, whatever comes along.

"The problem with new technology," observed Carmine, "is that it can produce idiots."

I almost cried as he spoke lovingly of the joys of beautifully designed typefaces, slugs of metal, and the skill of reading type upside down and back to front – just as I had to do on my first newspaper in the Midlands and later in the final days of Fleet Street. 

Carmine is not just a tipografo but he is also a filosofo. He says that to him it is important to work no more than four hours a day: "Then I can have time just to think."

Carmine Cervone's workshop and small museum is at Strada dell'Anticaglia 10-12, Napoli; the number of that phone is 00 39 081 29 54 83.

The wonderful Carmine Cervone ©Nigel Summerley

Still in use... a linotype machine                 ©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 6: Oh Mercy

There are many strange images in Naples depicting everything from the sacred to the profane – and pretty much every possible mixture of the two.

But the picture of a young woman letting an old man suck her naked breast must be among the most remarkable. All the more so because it helps form the centrepiece of a church.

It's part of Seven Works of Mercy by Caravaggio and was commissioned to go above the altar of the Pio Monte della Misericordia. 

I'd seen pictures of the painting and, to be honest, wondered what all the fuss was about. It seemed to be a dark, disjointed and downright odd piece of work.

But when I walked in and saw the real thing, I got it straight away. It's big, bold and utterly overpowering. 

That breastfeeding covers two works of mercy (visiting the imprisoned and feeding the hungry) and comes from the classical Roman story of Pero, a woman who breastfed – and ultimately saved – her father when he was locked up and sentenced to starve to death.

The other manifestations of mercy shown are: clothing the naked, giving shelter to the homeless, giving drink to the thirsty, visiting the sick, and burying the dead. And Caravaggio brings it all back home to Napoli; as Peter Robb says in his excellent book Street Fight in Naples: "... the angels looked as if they'd parked their Vespa round the corner... Mary seemed about to lower a basket for a loaf of bread or a packet of Marlboro..."

There are other paintings in Misericordia, but they only serve to show how far Caravaggio was ahead of – and then an influence on – his contemporaries.

He basically dared to go where other artists hadn't dreamed of going.

See Naples and Live – 5: Beauty and the Mask

©Nigel Summerley

Readers of An Odyssey in the Year of the Plague (see this blog, March to October 2020) may remember this masked woman whom I photographed in the window of a Naples pharmacy last year. Like everyone around at that time, she was properly covered up.

A year on, she seems to be following the UK government's guidance (ie you don't have to do anything if you don't feel like it) rather than the rules in Italy, where carrying a vaccination certificate and wearing a mask is a fact of daily life. At Napoli Centrale railway station the other day I saw an armed cop remind the only person in the place who wasn't wearing a mask to put one on straight away...

Anyway, below is how Our Lady of the Pharmacy appears this week: maskless and fancy free.

It's might just be me, but I think she looks much more alluring with her mask on... doesn't she?

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live – 4: Beyond Words, Beyond Pictures

©Nigel Summerley

The other day I talked about being lost for words – in the subterranean world hidden away beneath the centre of Naples.

But not long after that, I was somewhere where I was not only lost for words, but sickened by sights that I could not allow myself to even hold up a camera to. (The picture above is of one of the more wholesome exhibits.)

That's not to say that I wish I had not visited Napoli's Museo di Anatomia Umana; everyone should see what can be seen there – if they can stomach it.

This is definitely not light entertainment. As well as showing assorted bodies and bits to illustrate the workings of the human being, the Museo also has a collection of what can go terribly wrong with it – in the form of deformed foetuses that never made it into life, but have an eternal life here preserved in large jars in formaldehyde or alcohol.

There are more than 50 of these on show, and to see them is like being present at some mass atrocity – although the atrocity here has been committed by nature (or, rather, its failings).

I will not go into details any more than I am able to provide photographs.

But I do say: go and face these awful things – and realise how blessed you are to be alive.

See Naples and Live – 3: See Naples and Dry

 

©Nigel Summerley

One of the great delights of Naples – and there are many – is to be able to hang your washing out over the street, go out for the day, and return in the evening to find every bit of your laundry perfectly dry.

It also makes you part of the local community, since not only are all their clothes on display to you and every other passer-by (from mundane socks and knickers to sometimes exotic garments of uncertain roles), but yours are on show to them.

My favourite piece of laundry so far – spotted hanging from a balcony in the quintessential old Neapolitan area of Sanita – was a gigantic technicolour bedspread featuring the face of Marilyn Monroe. My humble effort, pictured above, could hardly compete...

See Naples and Live – 2: Going Underground

 

©Nigel Summerley

I am seldom lost for words, I'm told... But I was stunned into silence by the subterranean galleries of Pietrasanta, far beneath the very centre of Naples. Partly because of my Italian guide's limited English and my own limited Italian... but mainly because I have seldom been anywhere so awe-inspiring.

Here we were, going the equivalent of four or five storeys below ground, through a maze of tunnels and channels, where the local tuff stone had once been extensively mined and where in the Second World War Neapolitans had sheltered from the bombs raining down on them.

The galleries take you back to the times of the Romans and the Greeks and the ancient inhabitants of Naples... and really do stun you into silence.

©Nigel Summerley

©Nigel Summerley

See Naples and Live

Some Neapolitan philosophy

I fell in love with Naples last year – on my Odyssey in the Year of the Plague (see this blog from March to October 2020). But I was only passing through, so it may have been just a temporary infatuation.

I had to return to see if it was the real thing. Was it truly as alive and and as crazy and as exciting as I thought? No, it isn't – I find that now I'm back, it's even more so, in all departments.

I'm only here for a few days, but Marco – in whose place I'm staying in the old city – has given me a list of personally recommended restaurants and bars that could occupy every hour of the days and nights of my visit.

And I already have my own impossible list of amazing things that I want to see.

Another mini odyssey starts here...