Maps and their meanings

One room has a wall hung with framed maps, some old and beautiful, hand-tinted, others engraved on ivory-paper.

There are modern maps of geological structures and primaeval seabeds, land-locked now, but in their aridity yielding Giotto’s landscapes.

Les Estats de l’Eglise et de Toscane speak of religious power ceded long ago, while Magni ducis Hetruriae status, in ditiones tres Primariis tribus, Urbibus cognomines confims the survival of ancient divides into the present day.

L’Italie, Golfe de Venise lays out Dalmacie with the Republ. de Raguse and its glittering city Ragusa (how ugly the name Dubrovnik) facing its mother state across what now is called the Adriatic.

Across from Venice itself Istria and the city of Fiume speak in the lost voice of d'Annunzio (who, as commander of the 87th fighter squadron "La Serenissima", in aeroplanes of such beauty they take the breath away, will always be a fallen hero).

A map of Illyrium offers the scale in Roman miles of 5000 feet each - I can see more calculation of the ‘190 kilometres divided by five eighths is - what dear - oh, now I’ll have to start again’ kind, during long journeys.

One group of maps is not framed. Folded and repeatedly refolded into a military pocket or pouch sized wedge, they show where they are only by the lettering . There are sets of numbers and marks and scrawls hand-written in, which are to me as indecipherable as the printed cyrillic script denoting this lost terrain. These are the maps of an artilleryman. A pen and ink sketch of huge skies with rolling clouds, orderly family houses with hayricks, groves of poplars beside water, entitled ‘Tappa nella Steppa verso il Don - Luglio 1942’ is framed on the wall; it speaks volumes.

Ready here but not in Camden

The sound of light gunfire took me to the windows overlooking the church square. There was the owner of the local grocery shop, crouched in the vicolo behind the house opposite, shooting pigeons as they failed to find footholds on ledges fitted with pigeon repelling wires. He remarked later to a household shopper that we needn't worry as he wouldn't hit the house. I thought 'couldn't hit a house' was an insult in shooting circles but clearly 'wouldn't hit a house' is a sign of skill.

There's a robust attitude to gun and other arms -law observance in this part of the world. Some time ago there was an amnesty for undeclared arms (various) and on searching the building (ever-suspicious of the strain of individualistic behaviour that sleeps, and often wakes here, through the centuries) I found, 1 bayonet (used, horridly, by the look of it), 1 long, curved sword which I would call a scimitar (used, positively viciously-nicked from top to bottom of the blade), 4 duelling swords of various thicknesses (used, possibly only in sport, but who knows what the house inhabitants might define as sport?) a carabina case which, worryingly, had no carabina inside, where is it?, and an air gun (new, unused, thank goodness the grocer is doing the honours across the square).

So I put them all in a safe place, deeming the missing carbine to be in a safe place already, except for the duelling swords which are looking decorative in a stanza del terrazzo .

Once the arms had been declared to be in the house there was no requirement to hand them in; just so long as it's known they are there, they said.

I didn't declare the Landrover Defender, even though its booklet describes it as tried, tested and approved in use by armies throughout the world.