The Rainbow Seat, Piedmont

Diana and Micha have created an extraordinary space here at their B&B in Piedmont.

It's a photographer's delight really.  Everywhere you look, there is some exquisite detail.  Yesterday, swimming in their pool, I would stop sometimes, lean on the side and just concentrate on how much beauty there was there in front of me.

And perhaps it seems like I'm exaggerating, or that I don't get out much, or I'm easily impressed but really, I'm almost sure that it's just about the fact that B&B Baur is beautiful.

It's all about details too ...

One of the things that really struck me about Diana and Micha's B&B were the details ... exquisite details.

I felt concentrated, like a kid playing in mud, using flowers and twigs for decoration.  I had light and colour.  I was that lost during those moments when I played with my camera ... lost in the light, and the details.

This is an odd photograph and yet  I think I like it.  The light struck me but perhaps I saw the mosaic first.  I don't remember but it's like this.  You can spend hours in each room, outside, and in doorways, just noticing the details, one by one.

Climbing back into a kind of beauty ...

Leaving facebook has taken me out of the news-loop. I know some interesting people over there.  There were the real life friends and the faraway friends, the new friends too but there were also the journalists and professors and peace activists.

I didn't want to sleep in life.  I had done that in New Zealand, where discussions about the situation in the Middle East and the history of oil and colonisation didn't really happen in my worlds.  Even later, at university, I opted to wander between literature and anthropology. Always seeking a kind of beauty as opposed to cold hard facts and sciences.

I'm going wandering next week.  Stepping out of this everyday city life and into another kind of life.  One that will involve living out in the country, eating freshly-laid eggs, and picking vegetables from the garden.

Did I tell you, I've been dabbling with becoming vegetarian.  I'm liking it so far, although still only dabbling.

And out there, in the peace of the countryside, I'm planning on writing like I haven't written since I reached 27,000 words in a novel back when I lived on that airforce base in New Zealand.

I'm thinking of early mornings, with coffee. out on the verandah.  The kind of early mornings where I get to see sunrises outside in a good way again.  And tasty coffee ... I'm packing the Nespresso machine because kidnapping a barista would just be rude, and taking their high quality coffee machine would be theft. 

And everything I have on Genova is going in too.

Meanwhile I've been playing in Photoshop, with one of my favourite Istanbul photographs.  Beginning again ...