Eruptions shadow my waking hours, with rivers of gold and impossibly heavy skies. A voice like a bomb announces figures – hundreds, thousands, millions – which could be anything, from fatalities, to flowers blooming in warm ash, to the times my father woke in a cold sweat with visions of whole islands split asunder rumbling in his gut. The only stillness is sleep: a summer path by a slow stream, where I come across a timber-framed cottage by Ronald Lampitt. Inside, women sit in a homely kitchen lit through crown glass windows, harmonising a thirties tune of wistful love. Then, I wake up trembling to Mount Semeru, Mount Vesuvius, and a stubby finger hovering over uncontainable fire.
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Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
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