Dani Garavelli
@danigaravelli
Freelance journalist & writer. Bylines at the Herald, the Guardian, the London Review of Books, the Big Issue, Prospect Magazine et al. Radio 4 documentaries, including Waiting for the Van & Prosecuting Polmont. Shortlisted for the Orwell Prize.
For some reason it’s very funny to me that we can’t eat where we planned because Tom Jones (at 86) is singing Sex Bomb in Lucca’s main square. We are eating nearby and getting a free concert in any case.
A Pisan art student bumped into Keith Haring in Manhattan one day and said: “Why don’t you come and paint a mural in my home town?” So he did. It’s called Tuttomondo, it symbolises peace and is the second last outdoor work he created before his death a few months later in 1990.
I should have said, my anti-fascist pasta eating took place in beautiful Bologna where I've never been before. Sometimes I like to plan but it's also cool just to wander into a city you do not know and be wowed by it.
It's July 25, the anniversary of the fall of fascism in Italy, so, in town squares everywhere, people are gathering to eat "anti-fascist pasta", a tradition started by a family who fed their village to celebrate on the day. It's a lovely communal affair with partisan songs. The food was delicious!
David Byrne was phenomenal though - an awesome sound and spectacle and much more colourful and trippy than these pics suggest. Will be thinking about it for a long time. "Love and kindness is the most punk thing you can do. Love and kindness is a form of resistance."
Last time I was in the art deco Broadway cinema in Prestwick, the town I grew up in, the community group regenerating it had just been given the keys to the neglected building. Today, as part of a private members event, they showed a film for the 1st time in 50 years. Was thrilling to be there.
As it says, a perfect summer book - such beautiful, precise language & fragmented, dreamy atmosphere. What I love most is the way it mirrors the insecurities of childhood with the insecurities of growing old rather than just a handing down of wisdom. The chapter where they build Venice in the marsh!
I just saw a deer in the graveyard again. It's the most happy-making thing. This photograph is from the last time because today's was too fleet of foot.
Am reading Adam Weymouth's Lone Wolf just now. I'm really enjoying it and I might post more at some point, but I love this paragraph. It's so good on those serendipitous moments of reportage, but also on how you can feel two opposing things at almost exactly the same time.
Saw this Annunciation fresco by Fra Angelico with this Rothko at the Rothko in Florence exhibition. A genius idea to show R's work in the monks' cells at San Marco which inspired him. Imagine living a life of sober contemplation, but having either of these luminous images on which to meditate.
Been sent this plus a pic of my kids swimming. "It's off season, and they *mostly* just go for seals." Fine, lads, could you just get back to drinking excessively in the fanzone so I can stop worrying about you?
Things I met in the woods last night: a stoat (or maybe a long-necked snail); a primitive stone head; a wild boar and a demogorgan.
My latest obsession: Ruskin's pictures of the best of Lucca's churches. The first and third show the portico outside San Martino Cathedral where pilgrims on the Via Francigena changed their money.
Description of Dungeness that makes me wish I could go back there from Lifeboat at the End of the World by Dominic Gregory
Don’t really have a good one from the front cos her head is tilted upwards. Here’s one from the side though
Calling all hat experts. Can anyone tell me what this is? Is it a fedora? (I thought maybe it was a bit too round). Or a pork pie hat? Thank you.
Amazing stained glass in Christ Church College, my top painting in the Ashmolean (Paulo Uccello’s Hunt in the Forest) great afternoon at the Uffington Horse (terrible pic cos hail) enhanced by @peteralanross.bsky.social’s excellent book in portable paperback. Can we have a waterproof edition next?
Stumbled on this beautiful wee 14th century Church of the Holy Rood in Oxfordshire. Box pews, a rare oak rood beam and an amazing medieval painting of Saint Christopher with fish and and octopus (perhaps the earliest surviving example of its subject). Lovely willow tree outside.
“Give me my fucks back.” James Graham giving it everything, as always. Such a good night with The Twilight Sad.
Our apple tree. The apples are rubbish but the blossom is lovely.
My friend is live texting me her trip to Raasay and it’s all the therapy I need this Tuesday morning.
This book is so freaking good: black, sparse, funny, modern, it transcends descriptions of it as a working class Scottish novel. It’s making me angry all over again that Agnes Owens was so belittled and under-appreciated.