In late 2009 I travelled to Italy with a few good friends. It was an important personal cultural pilgrimage, and I spent a month wandering about the Italian peninsula, variously writing and sketching in cafés in Rome, Florence, Venice, Sorrento, Lucca, Siena, Amalfi and on the Isle of Capri. This photo was taken on the 21 October 2009 in a piazza in Florence. Digital cameras have their uses - the metadata attached to this image tells me that it was precisely 19 minutes past 12 noon when I took the snap. I was writing with my Porsche Design stainless-steel weave ballpoint pen in a leather-bound  journal I had bought earlier that week, also in Florence. Florence does paper, albums, books and journals well. I particularly like the products of Il Papiro, who happily have a shop in Melbourne as well as three in Florence. While there I managed to wander past all three stores, although I didn't plan to.

On a rainy Saturday night in Melbourne, it is good to look back at snapshots of a place and time that seem both distant, and yet not so far out of reach.