One Small Thing: Boris Starling
Volpaia is one of those ridiculously beautiful walled villages which dot the Tuscan landscape: a cluster of stone houses perched on a hilltop with vineyards all around and cypress trees marking the edge of the road as it rises through hairpins and switchbacks. I’d cycled up there that morning - we were staying with my in-laws who lived nearby, and everyone else had driven on ahead - and as I arrived in the square Florence came over to me.
There are lots of things I love about this photo, but two stand out in particular. The first is the obvious: the universality of an adult talking to a child, and the almost infinite number of captions you could choose for that. She may well have been asking me why I’m wearing such an absurd get-up: those are jelly beans on my shorts, and the jersey is the maglia rosa worn by the leader of the Giro D’Italia. Any proper cyclist will tell you it’s infra dig to wear a leader’s jersey, and it is, but the maglia rosa is such a beautiful colour that I couldn’t resist. Only the Italians would have the panache to clothe the leader of their national race in bright pink.
And that’s the second thing I love about this photo: it’s a small part of Italy, a country which has a deep and special place in my heart. Just out of shot hundreds of people were coming out of church, and everybody was embracing everybody else and wishing each other ‘auguri’ and ‘buona Pasqua.’ It didn’t matter if you were a total stranger: you got hugged and kissed all the same. In these days of social isolation and skin hunger that memory is a keen, bittersweet one, but it’s also a harbinger of hope for what life will be like at the other end of this all.
Discover more about Boris Starling's books here. I also recommend following on Facebook for some of the most elegantly turned and moving posts about sport and politics to be read in the English language.
Stay well, stay safe, stay home.
