Strength Weekly goes to a hot place for a bit and leaves a site under reconstruction until September: the Essays, Journalism and Plays sections are, oddly, available via the ‘Archives’ column to your right. The archives for Jan, Feb, March 2007 will provide access to these crisp items. Plus, of course, you can use the lively ‘Categories’ column to call up eye-catching elements.

In a few days we will leave the hot place and go inland to somewhere we have not visited before. Images of this place are available and I have studied them. They depict a small town surrounded by mountains. Further detail is not available. This, then, is the ideal condition for hands-free visualisation wherein the traveller imagines where he will be staying based on the sum of his life experiences and brochures that he may have savoured.

It is fairly clear that the town has a street stretching away from me and rising slightly towards the horizon. There is a surprising number of cafes, many of which are staffed by young people in dreadlocks. At the far end of the street one can see purple cloths on which Tarot cards have been placed by oxblood-skinned New Age internationalists. I see one or two people that I last came across in Ibiza in 1963. The town is Swiss, however, and snow lies prettily on the roofs of the houses that face the camera.

I am enjoying myself in this place and will report back when it has been tested against the place to which we will drive shortly.

A further elaboration of the exercise involves the attempt to recall the details of the anticipated destination once it can no longer be anticipated, due to one’s arrival in its material equivalent.

19.07.2008