To Noto or London to Sicily in a Ford (Bloomsbury, 1989) by Duncan Fallowell should be prescribed reading for the hundreds of judges scheduled to fly to the capital of Sicily to judge the Concours Mondial from 23-26 of April this year. Of course to this Jozi joller, warnings of the dangers of visiting the crime capital of Europe to someone living in the crime capital of “the seething darkness of Africa” come as old news. What are bag-snatching feral children with knives on scooters to a veteran of gun-toting car and home hijackers? That the cops in both cities use their sirens to get home in time for lunch, is par for the course.

Aleister Crowley, wickedest man in the west

Speaking of courses, that Sicily has no golf course was valuable information. And bad news indeed for the Observer’s wine pundit whose frequent freebees to SA are interrupted by rounds of golf. Confirming the Southern Cape botanist’s conclusion that the two biggest threats to Cape fynbos are golf courses and vineyards. Said golfer was spotted disporting himself in Camps Bay last week, leaving his snow bound readers the advice to buy local wine and save the planet from an excess of CO2.

Which was the bizarre comeuppance for Duncan, to find that the mythical Lago dei Palici “a lost mythological lake of black water somewhere in Sicily” bubbling with natural gas (and reason for his trip) had been converted into a CO2 bottling factory for fizzy fart water and Coca Cola. Has the Observer been busy with another planet saving project, a predecessor to COC-UP?

So the Lago will be off the list of places to visit, as will the site of the Abbey of Thelema after which one of SA wine’s brightest jewels, Thelema on the appropriately named Helshoogte (Heights of Hell), was named. For the Abbey “turns out to be a small traditional Sicilian cottage not far away in a large overgrown garden… We sit in the bee-loud sunshine awhile, enjoying the secret sweetness and solace of the Abbey of Thelema.” Slightly miscast as the lair of Aleister Crowley “wickedest man in the world” (Sunday Express), described by Wikipedia as “astrologer, hedonist, bisexual, recreational drug experimenter, and social critic” which sounds a bit like Duncan. But Aleister was deflowering virgins a century ago, long before environmental crimes became the acme of all evil.

The comparison of Duncan to a secular Aleister de nos jours is confirmed by the conclusion of the road trip. “If all travel is the pursuit of magic, and the purpose of the magic is to get one’s rocks off, what is the purpose of getting one’s rocks off? … To exalt oneself … And the purpose of exaltation?… To find oneself … Which is to say, to lose oneself… And the purpose of losing oneself is happiness…” Since Aleister died in Hastings in 1947 and Duncan was born in Middlesex the following year, given the sedate speed at which souls travel between counties, perhaps it’s reincarnation…

While Thelema may have been a damp squib, there’s always the monastery of Santa Maria della Provvidènza “derelict of course, built after the earthquake to celebrate deliverance, although since the entire city was thrown down and many killed this might be said to be stretching a point about God’s kindness.”

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