FADO to FUJI

2009-12-21T10:04:00.000-08:00

FADO Music to drown to. All the melancholia of the Atlantic, songs of colourless, limpid, impotent tragedy.

FARNE ISLANDS Puffins, eiders (“Cuddy Ducks”) and Grace Darling rowing out into the ghastly gloaming of the merciless North Sea. A rough and magic place.

FARO An attractive, low-rise town with a highly cultured woman in the tourist office. How come this is the capital of the cheapo holidays?

FELPHAM On the Sussex coast, where Milton had one of his visions - this time on the beach with the Prophet Job. Childhood holidays of shrimping and sandcastles and sitting on the kitchen draining board at the day's end, chilly feet revived in the steaming sink.

FIGUERES Our favourite café on the Rambla, tiled walls, aging apronned waiters and chocolate drinks so thick that your spoon stands upright unaided

FLUSHING Vlissingen in Dutch. What other place names have the English made their own? Leghorn (Livorno), The Groyne (Coruña), Ushant (Ouessant) Cathay (China), not to mention half the towns in India.

FOWEY My parents honeymooned here, immediately after World War II. Curling black-and-white photographs barely bigger than postage stamps, show broken ships on the Cornish shore: my father trying to explain to my mother how the Mediterranean convoys had been; my mother fresh out of her Air Raid Warden serge. Children swiftly followed.

FRANKFURT Cider town. Cider and books. Is it true that the town's old bars once had a trough below the stools so men didn't have to bother moving when they needed a piss? Or was the piss something somebody was taking with me?

FREDERICK II of Hohenstaufen Holy Roman Emperor, King of Germany, Italy, Sicily and Burgundy. Stupor Mundi (wonder of the world), he spoke six languages, including Arabic and wrote the first book on falconry. He's on my list of interesting people to come for dinner.

FUJI Japanese mountain and make of colour film, which has a green cast that suited the Asian landscape. Photographic film reflected the light of the county it came from: Agfa, from Germany and Switzerland, had a cool blue cast. America's Kodak caught the hot colours, yellows and reds.

A–Z TRAVEL SNAPSHOTS [F]

FADO to FUJI