There is still a part of me that struggles with the voyeuristic aspect of being a photographer who points the lens at people without them being aware.  However, I rationalise this by making the distinction that I am observing rather than editorialising. I took a sneaky photo on a train with my phone camera and felt, in the end, that I could not put it on my blog because I chose deliberately to pick a moment which was unflattering in the extreme to the subject. He was a very over-weight American tourist wearing a baseball cap, slouched in his seat, legs splayed wide and one foot resting on top of his massive suitcase.  In the simplest terms it was an unkind photo that invited the observer to judge the subject. I would like to think that the images above are simply a disinterested capture of a moment in time.

However, there is always an element of editorialising when we click the shutter. We are taking a deliberate decision to frame and time a shot to tell a story. I can only hope that the story I tell is one of engagement and interest and not judgment. Gill suggested to me that I should do a collection of images entitled 'Other People's Lives.'. I think it's a great idea and it has helped resolve some hesitation I had about publishing the image below.

At this point the policeman is angrily gesturing at me to follow him and we go down a long street till he finds a place to stop.  The two officers get out and stand menacingly above my side window. These are not happy friendly cops dealing with silly tourists. They are jaded city cops at the end of a long day by the look of them. After a few attempts to communicate it's obvious they haven't a word of English and I don't speak Italian. One asks me to get my 'phone translate'.  At this point I realise that my 'phone translate' won't work because I have run out of data.  Neither officer seems very pleased at this and one gets his own phone out. After several sessions of each of us speaking into the phone I am informed that I was not paying attention to the road. 

I  am hardly in a position to argue with them so I confess meekly to my crime and apologise. I didn't think it was a good excuse to say I had been distracted by his gesticulating at me when I was simultaenously stalling and trying to read Google maps. The two of them have a spirited discussion in Italian and then I am informed by 'phone translate' that they will not take any action this time but not to repeat the offense.  I give a large interior sigh of relief and  apologise again into the officer's phone. They get back in their car leaving me on the side of a horrendously busy street wondering how to get back on course to escape Bari. 

The next 30 minutes getting out of Bari were a  nightmare. The combination of Gill struggling with Google maps, an unfamiliar car, and crazy Italian drivers possibly shortened my life by several days. I didn't realise that the car was able to read road signs and we passed one warning car occupants to belt up for safety. The car responded by starting a repetitive beeping alarm signal because it thought there was a person unbelted in the back seat. The weight sensor couldn't distinguish between a small case and a human. I had no idea what the alarm meant at the time which was a very uncomfortable feeling as I waited for some terrible consequence of ignoring the alarm. Luckily it stopped after a few kilometres, the car having worked out that we were happy to carelessly risk the lives of the occupants.

We were not able to use the GPS in the car for two reasons. Nobody had explained where that handbrake was let alone how the GPS worked. Secondly the GPS was part of a car management system the size of an iPad next to the steering wheel. The designers of the Starship Enterprise Bridge had obviously been hired by Renault.

When we got to Cisternino, our destination, we had to rely on Google maps on my phone. Not enough people realise that Google maps is often totally inaccurate and I am one of those people. We drove around for an hour desperately trying to find our house. Google maps had positioned it in totally the wrong place. We went up and down lanes barely wider than the car desperately hoping that we would  not meet anyone going the other way.

I discovered that my ignorance of how the car worked had a frustrating consequence. At one point we had made a navigational mistake and turned into a frighteningly narrow lane. When I attempted  to put the car into reverse I discovered it would not engage no matter how hard I tried. It was only after we found our house that the owner kindly showed me that you have to pull a small ring upwards under the gear handle in order to engage reverse. 

I had no choice but to continue down the lane and attempt to circle back to my starting point through further miniscule lanes with low stone walls which came frighteningly close to the very expensive paint work on the hire car. I had never realised before how valuable it is to have reverse gear. We stopped at a few houses to ask the way but nobody had the least idea where our Trullo was. It was only through sheer good luck that we finally found the house. A journey that should have taken about an hour had taken nearly three.

The day had started with an alarm mistakenly going off at 4 am and ended at 7 pm. We fell into bed and slept like logs!

I felt so sorry for our host at the Trullo as he had obviously been waiting for a very long time for us to arrive. However, he gave no sign of impatience and was charming as he showed us around. He proudly told us that the 8 eggs he had left for breakfast were from a local farm. (Yes there's seven. I had one for breakfast) Curiously, two of them had numbers in pencil which was, I assume, to ensure eggs were eaten in the right order?

He hadn't just left us eggs. There were loads of coffee pods, little packets of nutella spread and jam. A packet of toasts and six packets of savoury snacks In the fridge there was butter and two cartons of milk and a bottle of mineral water.  On top of all that he had left a packet of pasta and a bottle of tomato sauce. Our towels were tied with purple ribbons and the whole place was immaculately clean. I was touched that he and his wife had obviously gone to so much trouble to make us feel welcome. I texted him to say how pleased we were with the way we had been welcomed and he replied,

"These are the messages that fill my heart. My wife and I really put a lot of love into preparing the trullo and we are happy when our guests feel pampered and at home."

When we travel, Gill and I are so often touched by the kindness of strangers.