Photographing Florence

This is one of the quiet narrow streets between the centre and St Ambrogio. It had recently been washed with a heady mix of water and disinfectant. A street sweeper told they are washed three times a week. He was inspecting even narrower, darker streets for discarded syringes.

The historic squares are flooded with light and people. I half-heartedly thought to myself they should make tourists wear muted colours - faded ochres, siena, burnt siena and occasionally a bit of subdued gamboge - so they at least blend in.

I've met a few people on my travels who bemoan Florence's fate, that is has become an open-air museum. And yesterday there was an article in the papers passionately arguing that something needs to be done to stop Florence's historic centre becoming a Venice - in other words, a town which local inhabitants have largely abandoned to tourists, the night-time economy, short-stay apartment lets and the people who move in and out of the city to service the tourist stream.

The local authority's response seems to have been to ban cars from the centre from Thursdays to Saturday afternoon.

I'll have plenty of time to think about these issues and maybe try and work out different ways to photograph Florence and all its different people.

I've put in a few extras - I'm really ripping through them - another narrow street, the street sweeper and the disinfector sharing a moment, a young Chinese couple having fun with a TV set they brought to the piazza being watched over by Dante, no less, and a villa on the Arno.

I rounded the day off by buying a vacuum cleaner. The one in the house here appears to have been manufactured in the Renaissance (before they had really got the hang of vacuum).

The Boss returns tomorrow and I see I have laid a pretty trap for myself. Now that modern cleaning apparati are to hand there is nowhere to hide.