experiments, the first:

Perhaps now the time has come to write it down; perhaps I am detached enough, now, from that unreal world of blinding white light and exaggerated shadows in the day, violent sunsets in the evening and all the time the blue of the sea like a shout of triumph in the background.

We must have met first on the boat, I one of the many sightseers he had to shepherd on board, blending, probably, into the heaving mass of tanned, sweaty, eager tourists smelling of sun cream and anticipation. I remember hanging on to his words as he explained, calmly and quietly, the theory behind volcanoes, crater formation, earth science, inserting a simple question or two here and there like candy for the wide-eyed crowd.

I remember,vividly, standing on the edge of the cliff, white surf on black jagged rock far below me, and he asking what I thought the broken walls of rock surrounding the caldera looked like; me fumbling my way to the naïve, obvious answer that they were like slices of cake -- dark grey stone threaded with seams of chalk, topped by icing-white villages. I remember blushing to the tips of my fingers at my own childish, stupid answer, then hearing him sigh quietly and say: "I can never look at them without fear. I wonder when it will be, five years, seven years, before the volcano erupts again, and all this will be blown away like sea-foam into the ocean from which it rose."