H.M.S. Illustrious by James Barrington

Author:James Barrington
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788633253
Publisher: Canelo Digital Publishing Ltd
Published: 2018-12-04T16:00:00+00:00

Wednesday 26th October 1983

A morning of working, and an afternoon of walking. A small pile of typing was waiting for me in the Air Office this morning, so I had to slave away over a hot keyboard to get that out of the way before lunch. After lunch, the doc and I decided to sample the delights of Genoa, and so walked ashore just after 1300, accompanied by Paul Harvey (the ATCO 2), Jon Seal (again) and Ted Taylor (the Captain’s Assistant Secretary).

Not very impressed, really. Genoa is obviously very old, with very large buildings around which run tiny little narrow streets, most of which were a bit on the grubby side, and there is a general air of neglect about the place. There are unsuspected beauties as well, though, with archways beyond which are fountains, statues and so on, and I suppose to be fair we were not looking at the best area of the city, being near the docks and so on. Paul (who went off with Jon and Ted) said he found a very attractive area indeed, with some excellent shops and facilities – even marble inlaid pavements.

The doc and I walked around for a bit, then headed for the funicular, a sort of railway effort running up to Righi, a hilltop community. Unfortunately, we walked right past the first station, and continued uphill quite a way before realising our mistake and finding an up-line station. The ‘train’, when it arrived, was a single carriage, on a slope, as it were, as the line ascends at an angle of about fifteen degrees up the hill, and the thing works, obviously, by the weight of the descending car dragging the ascending car up the hill, with some sort of power assistance, presumably, overcoming frictional losses and weight differences. Very efficient, though, and free, which was even better.

The view from the top was certainly worth the effort, as we could see both out over the harbour area and behind Genoa into the hills to the north of the city. Unfortunately, the air pollution mentioned earlier was still very much in evidence, and the view in both directions was very hazy indeed – I suspect that the citizens of this area suffer a good deal from respiratory tract disorders.

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