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@bsrg1.bsky.social for your delectation!

Should you ever find yourself in Pontedera, home of Piaggio, and, tbh, there is no other reason why you would, you must go to its Vespa museum, a homage to Italian style, La Dolce Vita and Mods. And a genius post-war economic success story.

Beautiful Parma!

For some reason it’s very funny to me that we can’t eat where we planned because Tom Jones (at 86) is singing Sex Bomb in Lucca’s main square. We are eating nearby and getting a free concert in any case.

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A Pisan art student bumped into Keith Haring in Manhattan one day and said: “Why don’t you come and paint a mural in my home town?” So he did. It’s called Tuttomondo, it symbolises peace and is the second last outdoor work he created before his death a few months later in 1990.

Mathew’s Writer’s Bookshelf is one of my favourite substack reads (I mean all of Mathew’s pieces are brilliant) so it was an honour to be asked to take part and a delight to have the chance to talk about books I love.

I should have said, my anti-fascist pasta eating took place in beautiful Bologna where I've never been before. Sometimes I like to plan but it's also cool just to wander into a city you do not know and be wowed by it.

It's July 25, the anniversary of the fall of fascism in Italy, so, in town squares everywhere, people are gathering to eat "anti-fascist pasta", a tradition started by a family who fed their village to celebrate on the day. It's a lovely communal affair with partisan songs. The food was delicious!

David Byrne was phenomenal though - an awesome sound and spectacle and much more colourful and trippy than these pics suggest. Will be thinking about it for a long time. "Love and kindness is the most punk thing you can do. Love and kindness is a form of resistance."

On a late bus home from the city centre yesterday, after a gig, there was a scarily drunk, aggressive man screaming randomly, so, of course, everyone was head down looking at their phones. This other unrelated male passenger waited until he was safely at the front before shouting back/

I got my hair cut by a man who wanted to talk about books. He talked *so* much about books, often stopping for a solid 5 minutes to make his point. It was great - my ideal hair appointment, except now I realise he has cut one side much shorter than the other. That's the price you have to pay.