Did I forget to pack something?

I’m going to Italy for a week. If you were going to call, don’t.

Here’s what I’ve packed:

• my little camera

• a little-r camera

• extra roll of film for the little-r camera

• shitty disposable camera for underwater

(I should tell you this, as well: they let me hire a boat off the coast of La Spezia. I had the thought one day that I could, if I were so inclined, hire a boat so that I could wear a little hat and drive it around pretending I was in The Talented Mr. Ripley. So I found a website that specialises in such things, and sent a few messages: “ciao,” I wrote. “I do not have a boating licence, nor have I ever driven a boat. Can I borrow your boat for the afternoon?” and they said, in what I’m coming to understand as a very Italian fashion, “si.”)

• a tripod

(The tripod is for a years-long series of landscape photographs taken at midnight in UFO hotspots, so this whole trip is a tax write-off.)

• clothes, I guess

• umbrella

(It’s supposed to rain over Italy all the way through to next week.)

• a pack of playing cards

• a book of playing card games

(I’d love to be the kind of guy who can whip out a pack of cards when there’s a few hours to kill. I’ve worked on sets for the last decade. I could have been setting up a retirement fund during all that downtime.)

• three books, minimum; more if I can squeeze them in

The question is: what?

I’ve been in a reading slump recently, so I made a pile of books that I know or strongly suspect to be great. The heavy hitters, the ol’ reliables: Susanna Clarke, Iain M. Banks, Michael Chabon, Hayley Campbell, Kurt Vonnegut, etc. Comfort food; the stuff that always hits the spot, but too much of it keeps you on the same paths you’ve always walked. But I’m about to be on holiday, I guess.

Into the suitcase goes The Talented Mr. Ripley. I have an e-reader, but Highsmith is a paperback kind of author, and I mean that as a compliment. And just look at that cover. The design is credited to Liam Relph and Michael Salu for Vintage.

(I love book covers. I’d love to have one of my own someday, when I’m ready.)

Historically, I haven’t been good at holidays. I get antsy leaving London because so much of my work comes across my desk less than 48 hours before call time¹ and I’ve lived through enough famines to savour the feast.

I’ve also learned I’m not a sightseer. When I go to a new place I want to wander between glasses of full-bodied red wine saying buongiorno, signor uccello to every bird that I see, not to spend hours in a queue to take a selfie with the arc de triomphe. I want to listen to lo-fi jams in a jacuzzi bath. I want to fall in love with a smoking jacket in an off-broadway window and to imagine myself smoking a pipe by a fire. I want to smoke a pipe by a fire, while other rains pitter-patter on the window. God, I miss smoking.

The one exception to this rule: the Santa Justa elevator in Lisbon. An ornate, wrought-iron elevator to nowhere; the eighth wonder of the world. A beautiful, perfect work of art and science in harmony, the left brain and the right sculpting hand in hand in unison. A real testament to what we can achieve together if we got out of our own way for a minute. The fanciest way I’ve found to get up high and then come back down.

I think this section below the content break is going to be a photograph that I took and I feel good about, and a bit about what I’ve been up to professionally. Unfortunately for you, recently I’ve been getting up to a lot of funding applications and emails, so here’s a single picture.

Now that I look at it, that’s actually a really good picture. Okay, here’s an alternate:

It’s incredible that I’m not famous. Which of you has the power and influence to make me famous? One of you must know the right people.

In frame is Molly, a woman I’ve known for years on the internet as a keen observer of the world who’s also been blessed with the above-pictured face. It’s incredible that she’s not famous, too. Surely some of you must know the other kind of the right people. Not the kind you’d introduce to the likes of me; the right kind of the right people.

One more and then I really have to go to the airport:

1  once, upon landing in New Zealand after a long flight, I turned on my phone to find an email from Carl Palmer, at that time the photo commissioner at Channel 4, inviting me to cover a puppy show in three hours’ time.² I have never forgotten it, nor do I plan to forgive Carl Palmer.

2  he then asked if I’d be free next week to shoot some key art for a programme involving some of my favourite comedians playing with Lego.³

3  Carl, if you’re reading this: I will have my revenge.