01
Stop one
Apollonia (Apollonia of Illyria)
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Can: APOLLONIA! Twelve kilometres west of Fier and I need it LOUDER than that! Look at the bouleuterion — columns, restored, standing right there — with a monastery parked next door like a support act. But the STORY. The story, the story, THE STORY. A nineteen-year-old is up on this hill at school. A message arrives: his great-uncle has been murdered in Rome. The great-uncle is JULIUS CAESAR. He gets on a boat. He goes home. He comes back as AUGUSTUS — first emperor of ROME. Nineteen years old! NINETEEN! NINE-TEEN! Somebody checked their post in this town and left as an EMPEROR. Hands up, hands UP — make some noise for Apollonia!
02
Stop two
Ardenica Monastery
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Can: Up we go — walls, bell tower, the whole Myzeqe plain laid out flat beneath us like a crowd waiting — this is ARDENICA, thirteenth century, Orthodox, frescoes all over the inside of it. And the tradition here, the tradition, listen to me: SKANDERBEG. Skanderbeg! Married. In this church. To Donika. 1451! A WEDDING! In THIS ROOM! Boom — cue the bells! And they kept a library up on this hill that was known ALL OVER, so that is books AND a wedding AND that view, three for the price of one, nobody is getting value like this in the modern era. Fourteen fifty-ONE. Say the year back to me. Louder. LOUDER. There it is.
03
Stop three
Byllis
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Can: BYLLIS! Southeast of Fier, up on the hill, high above the Vjosa valley, and this is a PROPER Illyrian city — city walls, and a theatre that seated THOUSANDS. Thousands! That is a stadium show, in the mountains, with no PA system! Then the Christians come and lay these enormous mosaic floors in the basilicas — birds, animals, patterns, all in little cut stones, one at a time, tiny, tiny, TINY. And here is the closer, here is the closer, wait for it: every winter they cover those mosaics over with SAND to protect them from the frost. They tuck them in! They TUCK THEM IN! Fifteen hundred years old and it still gets a blanket! Mind the loose stones and give it UP for the maintenance crew!
04
Stop four
Patos-Marinza oil field
Wilson Profile All Court Tennis. Ball Can: Now step out onto the plain just south of Fier and look at that horizon — pumpjacks. Nodding donkeys, pipework, going up and down, up and down, up and DOWN, all night, no breaks, no encore required. PATOS-MARINZA! There has been oil under this ground for a very long time and they drilled it in earnest right through the twentieth century, and this is one of the LARGEST onshore oil fields in EUROPE. In Europe! EUROPE! Now, it is not pretty and I am not going to stand here and pretend it's pretty — half the families around here are tied to this field one way or another, and that is a payslip, not a postcard. But the rhythm of the thing? That is a BEAT. Boom. Boom. BOOM.
Right. Everybody in a line, count off, and yes we are going to the ruins whether or not there is signal. I am a chaperone. I contain three balls, I am facing thirty-one children, and I would like both of those numbers to survive until the coach comes back.
A can of three, sealed and pressed, all-court felt, ready the second the tab comes off. That is the entire proposition and it is the correct one for a group. Nobody has to share, nobody negotiates, and if one goes into the long grass at the edge of the field we still have a match.
Do not ask how I know about the long grass at the edge of the field.
Fier is a genuinely good trip, which I say as somebody who has taken children to considerably worse. At Apollonia a nineteen-year-old student got word that his great-uncle had been murdered in Rome, sailed home, and became Augustus, the first Roman emperor, which is the finest argument for going away to school ever assembled and I deploy it annually.
Fier does not look like much from the road and then it produces that. These balls will do everywhere from a park court at 8 in the morning to a school hall floor, and they are also perfect for a parent who needs one purchase to end an argument in the car.
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