Dante’s Beach, Ravenna

I opened the WhatsApp message and read: ‘Massed missile and drone warning. About eighth since I’ve been here. I’m deep underground.’ It was from my old friend James. ‘They organise camping stools in the metro,’ he added.

He was in Kyiv, where he had first gone in 1997 with his acoustic guitar and electronic keyboard and where he had met his future wife, Svetlana, who lived in distant Kharkiv. Their romance blossomed in Gurzuf on the Black Sea, where Chekhov had a house, and where they met up four times that summer.

They moved first to Bratislava on the Danube where he founded a magazine. They then moved on to a small town just over the border in Austria, where he dabbled in property and they still live. They have three children. 

Later that day, he sent me another message: ‘Saturday night – the beautiful people massed in the pavement cafés of Yaroslaviv Val, Kyiv. There’s an ongoing massed drone attack. Do they care! Life is to be lived. Just an extraordinary atmosphere.’

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