Not Enjoying Himself In A Gondola, pencil sketch, 4×4in (10×10cm).
I saw this young man gliding past us as we sat, en famille, in our gondola (£75 for 30 minutes). Perhaps he was thinking about the Easter Islands, too. Maybe he was having to pay for the ride
There is a theory, now I think disputed, about the Easter Islands, but it’s a great theory, even if it is wrong. Apparently the islanders became so obsessed with their strange cult of enormous carved stone heads that they poured so much of their resources into it – specifically wood, which they used to make runways to transport the heads from one part of the island to another – that they went past the point of no return, and ran out of trees. The trees had held the topsoil together, nourished and protected it against the Pacific weather. As the trees disappeared, so did the topsoil. The islands grew less fertile, and the islanders had no wood to make boats to fish from. Their numbers dwindled. They got hungry. Their thoughts turned to roasting meat, and their plump-looking neighbours…