High Speed Farce

The HS2 debacle – sadly – seems to sum up how badly Britain is broken.

The plan to build a high-speed rail link from London to the North of the UK was always going to be beset by controversies – over destruction of homes and serious damage to the environment.

But either build the damn thing or don't.

What we're left with now, it seems, is all the misery and uncertainty and negative impacts... without any of the benefits that might have accrued.

All we'll have is some sort of high-speed rail link between Birmingham and the London suburb of Old Oak Common (where? I hear you ask) plus some close-to-worthless promises about improving transport in the North.

When I visit my adored city of Naples, I like to take the train from Rome. The high-speed option does somewhere between 180mph and 200mph all the way, with no messing about. It's a fantastic ride. If it can be done there (and in so many parts of Europe), why not here?

I don't have room for all the answers... and anyway you can probably put them together yourself.

Which reminds me: my series See Naples and Live was among the most-read pieces on this blog, so I hope to be posting others soon with See Naples and Live More.

Owed To A Nightingale

Writing a magazine piece about Rome has reminded me of standing recently in the room where John Keats died. And at the same time Bob Dylan's "Duquesne Whistle" is blowing through my mind.

The great debate about whether Dylan was as good as Keats (or vice versa) was handled beautifully by Professor Christopher Ricks in his ambitious book "Dylan's Visions Of Sin", when he looked at Keats' "Ode To A Nightingale" and Dylan's "Not Dark Yet".

Was the way these two wove in and out of each other lyrically and philosophically a mere coincidence?

"Coincidences can be deep things," says Ricks, "and if two artists were to arrive independently at so many similar turns of phrase, figures of speech, felicities of rhyming, then my sense of humanity might go up a plane." [There is a strained pun here that will be appreciated — and groaned at — only by Dylanophiles.]

Ricks goes on more elegantly to say there was no coincidence. He believes Dylan had the "Ode" in mind "even if not consciously or deliberately" when he "created his own re-creation of so much of it".

I think he's right. Few poems or songs of mortality can touch "Not Dark Yet". And it was the song that came into my mind as I stood in Keats' room.

Keats was just 25 when he died – against his will. Dylan was 25 when he had his motorcycle accident – maybe not against his will?

Dylan is 71. It's not dark yet, but it's getting there...

When In Rome

I've been away. I'm back. I went to Rome to coincide with my close friend, an American naturopathic physician, who was touring Italy. He's not been well lately and neither of us is getting younger, so I had the feeling it might be the last time we would meet.

It was an emotional reunion, as expected. But what I didn't expect was for him to notice a small patch on my skin and volunteer a diagnosis of actinic keratosis — a pre-cancerous lesion.

My doctor has just confirmed my friend was right, and I will have it treated. It was a good job that I went to Rome... on more than one level.

It might have been my last meeting with a dear friend. But then again, it might not. We agreed that we could meet again in five years' time, in India. If we're both still here...

As BB King said: "There is always one more time..."