10:30pm. I came upstairs to finish writing. The pianist was great but more than a little distracting.
As I stood on the balcony I saw a little flash on the horizon. At first I thought it was fireworks. They seem to set off fireworks for no specific reason in Italy: birthdays, Saints' days, Great Aunt Luisa's shopping day, you name it, they'll be letting off the pyrotechnics.
As it was, it turned out to be fireworks of a more natural kind. I've spent the last hour and a half watching a storm sweep up the Mediterranean. It's electric and completely silent, too far away for the rumbles to reach Sorrento. Above us, the stars still twinkle. But behind Naples and the gulf, the whole sky is exploding with silent sheet lightning. In a voice inside my head that's scarily like my Dad's, I've persuaded myself that it's not coming this way and I've come inside.
The storm, however far away it is, is massive. We just don't get such long-lasting and huge electrical storms over the UK. That is why I suppose, a whole load of English people have just abandoned the jazz keyboardist below, and are standing on the terrace as though on some sort of cruise ship. Nature provides great entertainment.
It's just as well, because nature let me down a bit, on top of Vesuvius today.
After feeling the sadness of Pompeii, I really wanted Vesuvius to be a smoking angry villain, sleeping, fuming, growling, almost ready to strike. Not that I'd want the volcano to erupt! That's the last thing Naples needs. And I don't want to be selfish or anything but I wouldn't want to be on the crater if Vesuvio were to creak open an angry eye and wake from its monstrous sleep.
No, I expected it to be sulphurously steaming while it slept. As it turned out, the old monster is just a mountain with a hole in it.
What's more, it was so cloudy, there was absolutely nothing to see. A dragonish drop of about two hundred metres, crags and steep rocks swooping down inside the bowl to a pile of black, volcanic stones. They looked like they could have been in any valley, anywhere.
Being inside a cloud didn't help. We couldn't even see the other side. I walked round the rim, treading the black soil underfoot. Rope fences either side separated us from the sheer drops either into, or down the mountain. There was little difference, as there was just white fog both sides. It was more like walking across a rocky bridge.
The volcano is asleep though. Some day, the passion at its heart, the fire, the purpose and the pure power will awaken again.
I feel like there is a theme here. Perhaps something - passion, romance, fire, needs to wake up in me. It didn't really occur to me until I got here, that this is a country that's all about passion. Even the storm, flashing over Italy as it is right now, seems to be a bit of a sign.
So tonight, with the night breeze whipping through my hair, with red wine coursing through my veins and the sky bursting with light over a sleeping mountain of secret flame and fire, I prayed. I asked God to wake me up. Back home there are many fire blankets, many passion-extinguishers who mean well, who speak well, who reason well and quench the flames. Perhaps I should ask for more of that oil that keeps the lamps burning.
I saw more amorous graffiti today. TI AMO, PRINCIPESSA MIA, half-way up the volcano through the windows of the coach. I had a thought of an olive-skinned Italian youth, spray can in one hand, the hand of a young, dark beauty in the other, leading her through the mountainside groves to that piece of unspoiled wall just so he could show her.
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