I fell over two days ago. I actually properly fell over, in the street and all by myself. I was pushing my bike backwards on the pavement (don't ask) and managed to get both feet caught on the pedal. My bike, which weighs about twice as much as me, lurched out of my hands and I went crashing down on top of it - on my back. Right in the middle of town. Do you remember me mentioning that I'd like one day to be mistaken for a chic Italian woman? Well, we're still a long way from that day it seems. Chic Italian women don't walk around with grazed elbows and a tyre print on their backs.
My bike basket contained a huge bag of strawberries which I had just bought from a guy with a truck at the side of the road. They were totally crushed by the fall and some strawberry juice, which looked alarmingly like bright red blood, leaked onto the pavement. As I scrambled to my feet, thinking I had got away without being seen, a man came rushing out of a shop, saw the strawberry juice and started flapping around,
'Ah signora! Are you ok?' He gesticulated.
'Im fine, thank you,' I replied crisply (why oh why can I not be a signorina for a bit longer?). Then I saw the strawberry juice and tried to explain that I had a big bag of strawberries and that they were now all squashed but he just looked at me like a I might have knocked a couple of brain cells loose during my fall. I dusted myself off and rushed away as if I had a very important meeting somewhere. Oh, the shame.
The reason I was backing up on the pavement in the first place, was that I had spotted a nice shady road to cycle down, out of the blazing sun. Summer has arrived in Florence and it's HOT. It's also that time of year when allergy sufferers are trying to figure out if you can actually scratch the inside of your eyelids (you can, sort of, but I'm not sure it's recommended) and you can get sunstroke just walking to buy some milk. The mosquitoes are also starting to stretch their little wings, in fact, I can hear the irritating little whine of one right now. That whine will be our soundtrack for the next 5 months.
However, all that aside, the best part of this season is that for a couple of weeks, Florence doesn't smell of exhaust fumes and dog pee, but rather wherever you go there is the most amazing smell of jasmine blossom. This is what I tried to focus on after falling over and completely humiliating myself: the fact that no matter what pickles we get ourselves into, nature comes into its own every year and takes over the city with this great smell. I can't believe I'm ending this blog post in such a cheesey way, but there it is. Either I'm getting sentimental or maybe the fall really did loosen a few brain cells.
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Wednesday, 20 May 2009
Friday, 8 May 2009
Be green in Florence!
Check out my new eco-friendly page in The Florentine and keep your eyes peeled for more in future issues! Let me know if you are aware of any interesting environmental initiatives in Florence, or if there's anything you'd like to see in the column. Let's make Florence greener!
http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=4488
(By the way, under this sentence is says Read more! in a really excited way, but actually this is the end of the post and I just don't know how to take the Read more! away...)
Read more!
http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=4488
(By the way, under this sentence is says Read more! in a really excited way, but actually this is the end of the post and I just don't know how to take the Read more! away...)
Read more!
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Where did you come from?
I don't know how to break it to him, but I think my brother may have been switched at birth. The red hair and blue eyes in an otherwise brown-haired and green-eyed family should have been enough of a sign, but last Sunday I got the final confirmation. Not only did he run in the London Marathon with one day's notice and no training, but he also managed to finish in 4 and a half hours. Actually, he's embarassed that it took him so long.
'How did it go?' I stuttered on the phone to him that evening.
'Well, the first 18 miles flew by,' he replied nonchalantly. 'Then I hit "the wall" and it was really tough.' 18 miles? The only time I ever run is for the number 28 bus and I usually hit "the wall" after about 18 metres.
Matt was always the sporty one when we were growing up, which totally let him off the hook academically and meant that I had to become the clever one, or just be an embarrasment to the whole family. He successfully stamped out any seeds of sportiness in me by ridiculing all attempts I made to throw a ball over-arm, pick up a badminton racket or correctly identify off-side. For example, after one surprisingly good athletics lesson at school, I ran home to tell my mum that the PE teacher had said I leapt the high jump like a gazelle.
'Not sure exaclty what a gazelle is though...' I continued, enjoying the compliment nonetheless.
'A gazelle?' snorted Matt, 'I wouldn't be so pleased if I were you.'
'Why not?'
'Well,' he said with a tone of great authority, 'a gazelle is a bit like a koala - but with no arms and no legs. It's a bit like a furry acorn.'
I was devastated and avoided all forms of athletics for some time.*
I am slightly less gullible now, although only marginally sportier. The only exercise I get is to cycle to work. However, in Florence, cycling is something of an extreme sport: the moment you sit on your bike, you become invisible to all other forms of transport, SUVs in particular. To improve matters for cyclists, there are a few cycle paths in the city and the local council has launched a new advertising campaign to encourage more people to leave their cars at home and cycle. Their slogan is '+ bici + baci', which means 'more bikes more kisses'. I fail to see the connection. Having said that, I nearly kissed the pavement recently when, distracted by a '+ bici + baci' poster, I didn't see that the brand new cycle path I was on abruptly ended in a brick wall.
Still, I keep cycling and hoping that the hill up from Piazza Leopoldo will get easier, even though it never does. My brother, on the other hand, now wants to do the New York Marathon. How can we be related? I remember a couple of years ago, having a cup of tea in my mum's kitchen and Matt unexpectedly showing up at the back door.
'Where did you come from?' I asked him.
'Same place as you,' he replied.
We have the same sense of humour, at least.
* I grew up in the Hampshire countryside where the main animals were cows, sheep and squirrels. I obviously didn't pay much attention at the zoo.
Read more!
'How did it go?' I stuttered on the phone to him that evening.
'Well, the first 18 miles flew by,' he replied nonchalantly. 'Then I hit "the wall" and it was really tough.' 18 miles? The only time I ever run is for the number 28 bus and I usually hit "the wall" after about 18 metres.
Matt was always the sporty one when we were growing up, which totally let him off the hook academically and meant that I had to become the clever one, or just be an embarrasment to the whole family. He successfully stamped out any seeds of sportiness in me by ridiculing all attempts I made to throw a ball over-arm, pick up a badminton racket or correctly identify off-side. For example, after one surprisingly good athletics lesson at school, I ran home to tell my mum that the PE teacher had said I leapt the high jump like a gazelle.
'Not sure exaclty what a gazelle is though...' I continued, enjoying the compliment nonetheless.
'A gazelle?' snorted Matt, 'I wouldn't be so pleased if I were you.'
'Why not?'
'Well,' he said with a tone of great authority, 'a gazelle is a bit like a koala - but with no arms and no legs. It's a bit like a furry acorn.'
I was devastated and avoided all forms of athletics for some time.*
I am slightly less gullible now, although only marginally sportier. The only exercise I get is to cycle to work. However, in Florence, cycling is something of an extreme sport: the moment you sit on your bike, you become invisible to all other forms of transport, SUVs in particular. To improve matters for cyclists, there are a few cycle paths in the city and the local council has launched a new advertising campaign to encourage more people to leave their cars at home and cycle. Their slogan is '+ bici + baci', which means 'more bikes more kisses'. I fail to see the connection. Having said that, I nearly kissed the pavement recently when, distracted by a '+ bici + baci' poster, I didn't see that the brand new cycle path I was on abruptly ended in a brick wall.
Still, I keep cycling and hoping that the hill up from Piazza Leopoldo will get easier, even though it never does. My brother, on the other hand, now wants to do the New York Marathon. How can we be related? I remember a couple of years ago, having a cup of tea in my mum's kitchen and Matt unexpectedly showing up at the back door.
'Where did you come from?' I asked him.
'Same place as you,' he replied.
We have the same sense of humour, at least.
* I grew up in the Hampshire countryside where the main animals were cows, sheep and squirrels. I obviously didn't pay much attention at the zoo.
Read more!
Tuesday, 31 March 2009
He's a Good Fork
My other-half is himself split into two halves, English and Italian. Half cold, damp drizzle and orderly queues, and half fiery Ferrari and wild hand gestures. People often ask me if he’s more English or Italian. This blog posting is dedicated to him.
He drives like a lunatic and likes his steak still moo-ing (Italian), but takes milk in his tea and says ‘whoops-a-daisy’ when he drops something (English). He says that he can’t multi-task like women can, but will cross three lanes of traffic at eighty km per hour, swear down the phone and light a cigarette at the same time (Italian).
He generally has the table manners of a badly-trained monkey (Italian, sorry) and twice as much body hair (Italian again). His hair is brown, although he insists it is ‘blond’ (English for the colour and Italian for insisting it’s blond), and he has size 46 feet which are even uglier than mine (English). The other day I came home to find him waiting to show me his big toe nail which had rotted off, again (this is the rogue Yeti gene coming out, the one I hope won’t be transmitted to our children). The other morning he was reading and asked me,
‘What’s a ‘bassoon?’
‘I think it’s a large wind instrument,’ I replied. ‘A bit like you.’(English)
He didn’t think this was as funny as I did (Italian).
He thinks it’s normal to have a blocked kitchen drain for six months and to have to tip the washing-up water down the toilet. It gives our house a kind of campsite atmosphere which appeals to his puritan side (English). One of his biggest heroes is Magnum, who he could rival for chest hair (Italian) and dress sense (English). Two Christmases ago he bought me a oven dish from Lidl wrapped in newspaper (English). He has no clue where the iron lives (does any man?).
He whisked me to New York to propose, which he did on one knee at midnight in Washington Square Garden (Italian). He secretly asked my dad for my hand in marriage first (English). He will take me out for dinner to celebrate the tiniest triumph at work (Italian) and will make me a hot water bottle and cup of tea, just how I like it, if I’m feeling poorly (English). He spontaneously offers massages that last forever and asks for nothing in return (I don’t know where this comes from, I just hope it never changes). He gets excited about baked beans (English) despite being a buona forchetta, or ‘good fork’, meaning someone who loves great food (Italian).He likes to keep magazines in the bidet (English – it’s true, us English rarely use the bidet for it’s original purpose).
Every morning in the shower, he sings made-up songs about me (Italian) and then tries to make me dance with him in his bathrobe and slippers in the hallway (eccentric English). He tells me how beautiful I am ten times a day (Italian - this one outweighs almost everything else), and says he really fancies me in my new reading glasses (English). Finally, he regularly whispers two of my favourite phrases into my ear:
‘I love you, baby’ (Italian) and then, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ (English).
Read more!
He drives like a lunatic and likes his steak still moo-ing (Italian), but takes milk in his tea and says ‘whoops-a-daisy’ when he drops something (English). He says that he can’t multi-task like women can, but will cross three lanes of traffic at eighty km per hour, swear down the phone and light a cigarette at the same time (Italian).
He generally has the table manners of a badly-trained monkey (Italian, sorry) and twice as much body hair (Italian again). His hair is brown, although he insists it is ‘blond’ (English for the colour and Italian for insisting it’s blond), and he has size 46 feet which are even uglier than mine (English). The other day I came home to find him waiting to show me his big toe nail which had rotted off, again (this is the rogue Yeti gene coming out, the one I hope won’t be transmitted to our children). The other morning he was reading and asked me,
‘What’s a ‘bassoon?’
‘I think it’s a large wind instrument,’ I replied. ‘A bit like you.’(English)
He didn’t think this was as funny as I did (Italian).
He thinks it’s normal to have a blocked kitchen drain for six months and to have to tip the washing-up water down the toilet. It gives our house a kind of campsite atmosphere which appeals to his puritan side (English). One of his biggest heroes is Magnum, who he could rival for chest hair (Italian) and dress sense (English). Two Christmases ago he bought me a oven dish from Lidl wrapped in newspaper (English). He has no clue where the iron lives (does any man?).
He whisked me to New York to propose, which he did on one knee at midnight in Washington Square Garden (Italian). He secretly asked my dad for my hand in marriage first (English). He will take me out for dinner to celebrate the tiniest triumph at work (Italian) and will make me a hot water bottle and cup of tea, just how I like it, if I’m feeling poorly (English). He spontaneously offers massages that last forever and asks for nothing in return (I don’t know where this comes from, I just hope it never changes). He gets excited about baked beans (English) despite being a buona forchetta, or ‘good fork’, meaning someone who loves great food (Italian).He likes to keep magazines in the bidet (English – it’s true, us English rarely use the bidet for it’s original purpose).
Every morning in the shower, he sings made-up songs about me (Italian) and then tries to make me dance with him in his bathrobe and slippers in the hallway (eccentric English). He tells me how beautiful I am ten times a day (Italian - this one outweighs almost everything else), and says he really fancies me in my new reading glasses (English). Finally, he regularly whispers two of my favourite phrases into my ear:
‘I love you, baby’ (Italian) and then, ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’ (English).
Read more!
Thursday, 26 March 2009
WAX (for female readers only, no men - especially not my brother or dad - you have been warned)
This week has been all about exploring uncharted territory. Firstly, there's the bottom of the dirty washing basket, which I haven't seen for over a year. Very satisfying to find all those odd socks. Secondly, I've got to know the inside of my local beauty salon. Thirdly, my new friend Valentina, the beautician, has got to know an awful lot of me.
Like every Spring, I decided to start getting my legs waxed, ready for Summer. Unlike every other Spring, I actually phoned and booked an appointment to have it done. Having my legs waxed is part of the Great Italianisation Of Self project: in my head, it's up there with getting Italian citizenship and knowing when the asparagus season is. Chic Italian women do not fumble around in the shower with a blunt Bic razor every morning and if there's one thing I want, it's to be mistaken for a chic Italian woman.
It's not the fist time I've had my legs waxed. My mum treated me to a leg wax when I was sixteen and I was so traumatised (thanks mum) that I didn't make any further forays into the world of grown-up depilation until I was twenty-one and decided to wax my own bikini line. I bought the strips and read the instructions which suggested doing the waxing in a warm, relaxing environment. My flatmate was out so I commandeered the living room, put the TV on and turned the gas fire on full blast. Half naked, sweating and nearly fainting from the fumes, I stuck one strip on and then took twenty minutes to find the courage to pull it off. I think they heard my screams in France. I couldn't face repeating the kind of agony that I hadn't expected to encounter till childbirth, so I went around lopsided for a few weeks.
Now, aged thirty, I decided it was time to try again. I called my local beauty salon and stuttered something about 'legs' and 'wax'.
'Do you also want your inguine done?' the beautician, Valentina, asked. I hesitated, no idea what inguine meant but not wanting to fail this first test of my Italian-ness.
'Yes', I replied firmly, I hung up and then immediately went on Google to find out what inguine meant. Maybe it means 'big toe', I thought (I have the feet of a Yeti, another stumbling block to Italian-style grooming). Unfortunately, I had heard her say linguine which is a kind of pasta and not something you'd want to apply melting wax to. I fiddled around with the spelling and eventually got the horrifying translation of 'groin'. Images of me writhing in agony on my living room floor in front of Eastenders nine years before flashed before my eyes. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound of hot wax.
Well, I can safely report that I survived - although there are parts of my body which may never forgive me. I knew it would be tough when I walked in and Valentina told me to take off my trousers and put on the most pointless paper thong I have ever seen. She has now seen more of me than my gynacologist and I could barely look her in the face as I stumbled out with my eyes watering an hour later.
This was one week ago and thankfully my other half doesn't mind the freshly-plucked-poultry look (now starting to fade and become a lot of ingrown hairs that hurt when I get goose bumps). Apparently, I have two to three weeks until I have to repeat the experience.
Unfortunately, I don't feel very Italian yet, just a bit itchy.
Read more!
Like every Spring, I decided to start getting my legs waxed, ready for Summer. Unlike every other Spring, I actually phoned and booked an appointment to have it done. Having my legs waxed is part of the Great Italianisation Of Self project: in my head, it's up there with getting Italian citizenship and knowing when the asparagus season is. Chic Italian women do not fumble around in the shower with a blunt Bic razor every morning and if there's one thing I want, it's to be mistaken for a chic Italian woman.
It's not the fist time I've had my legs waxed. My mum treated me to a leg wax when I was sixteen and I was so traumatised (thanks mum) that I didn't make any further forays into the world of grown-up depilation until I was twenty-one and decided to wax my own bikini line. I bought the strips and read the instructions which suggested doing the waxing in a warm, relaxing environment. My flatmate was out so I commandeered the living room, put the TV on and turned the gas fire on full blast. Half naked, sweating and nearly fainting from the fumes, I stuck one strip on and then took twenty minutes to find the courage to pull it off. I think they heard my screams in France. I couldn't face repeating the kind of agony that I hadn't expected to encounter till childbirth, so I went around lopsided for a few weeks.
Now, aged thirty, I decided it was time to try again. I called my local beauty salon and stuttered something about 'legs' and 'wax'.
'Do you also want your inguine done?' the beautician, Valentina, asked. I hesitated, no idea what inguine meant but not wanting to fail this first test of my Italian-ness.
'Yes', I replied firmly, I hung up and then immediately went on Google to find out what inguine meant. Maybe it means 'big toe', I thought (I have the feet of a Yeti, another stumbling block to Italian-style grooming). Unfortunately, I had heard her say linguine which is a kind of pasta and not something you'd want to apply melting wax to. I fiddled around with the spelling and eventually got the horrifying translation of 'groin'. Images of me writhing in agony on my living room floor in front of Eastenders nine years before flashed before my eyes. Still, in for a penny, in for a pound of hot wax.
Well, I can safely report that I survived - although there are parts of my body which may never forgive me. I knew it would be tough when I walked in and Valentina told me to take off my trousers and put on the most pointless paper thong I have ever seen. She has now seen more of me than my gynacologist and I could barely look her in the face as I stumbled out with my eyes watering an hour later.
This was one week ago and thankfully my other half doesn't mind the freshly-plucked-poultry look (now starting to fade and become a lot of ingrown hairs that hurt when I get goose bumps). Apparently, I have two to three weeks until I have to repeat the experience.
Unfortunately, I don't feel very Italian yet, just a bit itchy.
Read more!
Saturday, 14 March 2009
White Week (white face, weak knees)
So it turns out that I can do the splits. Both ways. I just got back from a white week* skiing in the Dolomites where I wowed everyone with my stylish snow plough and creative ways of crashing to the ground, despite not ever exceeding 2 miles per hour. To have an idea of what I looked like, imagine an ostrich on skis wearing someone else's badly-fitting clothes.
We were staying just outside Cortina. For me, Cortina is an old school Essex-boy car, maybe with fluffy dice and probably with 'Sharon&Darren Foreva' written across the windscreen. However, Cortina is also a very chi-chi ski resort in North-East Italy. It's the kind of place where B-list celebrities get photographed sipping champagne in leopard print dresses at parties thrown by aging playboys. If Ford Cortinas are tacky kitch, then Cortina the ski resort is rich kitch. If you don't have the right diamante sun glasses, blond hair extensions and D&G ski gloves then forget it. (Remember that as a rule in Italy, the concept of kitch doesn't exist - mothers take their kids to school wearing the kind of leather boots that you usually only see in S&M porn. This is, after all, the country that gave birth to Roberto Cavalli.) On the slopes, this means that the ten-year-olds whizzing past me were not only laughing at my potruding bottom but also at my ancient borrowed ski trousers, rain coat and €3 woolly hat from the market. It was like being the geeky kid at school all over again.
Surprisingly, by the end of the week and with the help of Alfonso, my fantastic ski instructor, I could make it down the blue slopes without posing too much of a threat to myself or those around me. Of course, I managed to end up with the only instructor over the age of 65 - I suspect my other half had a hand in making sure that was the case. Chain smoking Alfonso saw me through a couple of days of skiing in a snow storm too, which is a bit like skiing with a white sheet over your head. He even got me doing the fabled parallel turns and after that I was unstoppable (almost literally). The worst injury I got all week was when I nearly cut the top of my thumb off while chopping vegetables for soup one evening, so that's a result too.
After a week at home my knees still feel like a couple of rusty hinges and my calf muscles have only just lost that feeling of being filled with concrete, but I find myself missing my time on the slopes. I'm planning next year's trip already which I'm sure will be even more successful because (a) I know I can survive the ski lift as long as I don't get cocky and start rummaging in my pockets and (b)I now know how to casually walk in ski boots without looking like a total twit.
*Literal translation from Italian. A week spent in the mountains using muscles you didn't know you had and humiliating yourself in front of people you pray you'll never meet again is called a 'settimana bianca'.
Read more!
We were staying just outside Cortina. For me, Cortina is an old school Essex-boy car, maybe with fluffy dice and probably with 'Sharon&Darren Foreva' written across the windscreen. However, Cortina is also a very chi-chi ski resort in North-East Italy. It's the kind of place where B-list celebrities get photographed sipping champagne in leopard print dresses at parties thrown by aging playboys. If Ford Cortinas are tacky kitch, then Cortina the ski resort is rich kitch. If you don't have the right diamante sun glasses, blond hair extensions and D&G ski gloves then forget it. (Remember that as a rule in Italy, the concept of kitch doesn't exist - mothers take their kids to school wearing the kind of leather boots that you usually only see in S&M porn. This is, after all, the country that gave birth to Roberto Cavalli.) On the slopes, this means that the ten-year-olds whizzing past me were not only laughing at my potruding bottom but also at my ancient borrowed ski trousers, rain coat and €3 woolly hat from the market. It was like being the geeky kid at school all over again.
Surprisingly, by the end of the week and with the help of Alfonso, my fantastic ski instructor, I could make it down the blue slopes without posing too much of a threat to myself or those around me. Of course, I managed to end up with the only instructor over the age of 65 - I suspect my other half had a hand in making sure that was the case. Chain smoking Alfonso saw me through a couple of days of skiing in a snow storm too, which is a bit like skiing with a white sheet over your head. He even got me doing the fabled parallel turns and after that I was unstoppable (almost literally). The worst injury I got all week was when I nearly cut the top of my thumb off while chopping vegetables for soup one evening, so that's a result too.
After a week at home my knees still feel like a couple of rusty hinges and my calf muscles have only just lost that feeling of being filled with concrete, but I find myself missing my time on the slopes. I'm planning next year's trip already which I'm sure will be even more successful because (a) I know I can survive the ski lift as long as I don't get cocky and start rummaging in my pockets and (b)I now know how to casually walk in ski boots without looking like a total twit.
*Literal translation from Italian. A week spent in the mountains using muscles you didn't know you had and humiliating yourself in front of people you pray you'll never meet again is called a 'settimana bianca'.
Read more!
Sunday, 22 February 2009
Neighbours
Hold onto your seats because I’m going to shatter a myth: not all ex-pats living in Tuscany live in bougainvillea covered mansions on olive oil producing country estates. I know this is upsetting and difficult to understand but for most of us, there is no olive grove, no hunky local gardener getting his hands dirty in our herb garden and no Martini sunset overlooking the gently rolling hills. Forget ‘Under the Tuscan Sun’ and by the way, I recently read that Frances Mayes now lives back in California – which really tells you all you need to know about the Tuscan dream.
In reality, most of us live in condominiums, which is a kind of Latin-based fancy way of saying ‘block of flats’. In fact, ninety-nine per cent of people in Italy live in flats, even in the countryside which is bizarre. Rich or poor, nobody considers it shabby to live in a place where you can hear four sets of neighbours sneeze, burp or sing ‘O Sole Mio’ at 3am if the fancy takes them (Italians don’t really sing ‘O Sole Mio’ either, by the way).
I have the fortune of living on the ground floor in my condominium. This means that although I’m three thousand times more likely to be burgled and have so many problems with damp you’d think I lived in a swamp, I nonetheless boast a small garden. And I never have to buy pegs because the old ladies who live in the four flats above me just shower them down into my garden like confetti daily.
My neighbours are a mixed bunch. There’s Lorenzo next door – you’d never think that a guy who sings in a Black Sabbath cover band would have a little black and white dog called Rosy, would you? He also has two commando tortoises who must have jetpacks or something because no matter how many times I put them back over the wall, the moment I look away they’re back in my garden and munching on my flowers. Last Summer, one of the cheeky fellows spent two hours making rather obvious amorous advances on an old teapot I have on the patio and which I use as a flower pot. Then there’s Lorenzo’s granny who lives upstairs with Attila the cat. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen this tiny, grey haired, stooped lady out in Lorenzo’s garden calling for naughty Attila to come back upstairs for some lunch. It must be a cat with a severe identity crisis too because although Attila is a female, she has a (scary) male name and everyone uses masculine word endings when talking about her. I will never understand Italian. There’s also who Paolo lives on the first floor. He’s mid-fifties and the tallest, skinniest man I’ve ever seen. He looks like a daddy-long-legs spider when he’s on his motorbike. He gets so worked up when Fiorentina play that everyone within a two mile radius can hear the score and our window panes shake when they get anywhere near the goal.
I normally just write the rest of the inhabitants off a ‘nice old people’ but I found out something amazing about Duillio from the second floor at the condominium meeting last Thursday night. (FYI: a condominium meeting is when everyone in the block of flats gets together and decides thrilling things like when to have the septic tank emptied. Every condominium has an ‘ammisitratore’ who’s paid handsomely by us to chair these meetings and then do things like call the septic tank people.) (By the way, did you notice how I just slipped in there about septic tanks? You didn’t think a modern city like Florence would have mains drainage did you? I’m really telling it how it is today). After the meeting last week, Duillio, who’s ancient and almost totally deaf, told us that he had just been awarded a gold medal of honour by the German government in recognition of the time he spent as a prisoner of war in Germany at the end of the Second World War. After much shouting of questions, he told us how, as a soldier, he was captured here in Italy and taken to Germany to work in a factory for a year. He told us how the factory was bombed by the Allies and he spent 48 hours under the rubble. As he quietly said, that’s like from now to tomorrow night and then the same again. Not knowing if he’d live or die. He lost so much weight during his time as a prisoner that it caused permanent damage to his stomach and he had to be operated on after the war. He told us that when he was presented with the medal in Livorno, a journalist asked him if he had any good memories of his time in Germany. He had answered that there was a man there, a manager in the factory, who had lost his son in the war. Diullio told us that being tall, blond and blue-eyed himself, he must have reminded this man of the son he had lost because quite inexplicably, he took Duillio from the factory to his home for Sunday lunch with his family nearly every week.
It’s hard to match Duillio as I see him today, watery-eyed and shuffling off to the take the rubbish out, with this image of a fresh faced, golden haired young man. It made me feel extremely sheepish about having taken a day off work that week for something so silly as a stomach bug. I also realised that I hardly know my neighbours – and I’ve lived in this flat for four years. Florentines aren’t so expansive as everyone thinks Italians are (another myth out the window I’m afraid) and let’s face it, I’m far too English to make the first move to get to know everyone myself. Who knows what stories the others could tell.
I wouldn’t mind having a chat with the tortoises too, actually. Having said that, I secretly suspect that they already understand me perfectly well but think I’m too stupid to notice their plotting.
Read more!
In reality, most of us live in condominiums, which is a kind of Latin-based fancy way of saying ‘block of flats’. In fact, ninety-nine per cent of people in Italy live in flats, even in the countryside which is bizarre. Rich or poor, nobody considers it shabby to live in a place where you can hear four sets of neighbours sneeze, burp or sing ‘O Sole Mio’ at 3am if the fancy takes them (Italians don’t really sing ‘O Sole Mio’ either, by the way).
I have the fortune of living on the ground floor in my condominium. This means that although I’m three thousand times more likely to be burgled and have so many problems with damp you’d think I lived in a swamp, I nonetheless boast a small garden. And I never have to buy pegs because the old ladies who live in the four flats above me just shower them down into my garden like confetti daily.
My neighbours are a mixed bunch. There’s Lorenzo next door – you’d never think that a guy who sings in a Black Sabbath cover band would have a little black and white dog called Rosy, would you? He also has two commando tortoises who must have jetpacks or something because no matter how many times I put them back over the wall, the moment I look away they’re back in my garden and munching on my flowers. Last Summer, one of the cheeky fellows spent two hours making rather obvious amorous advances on an old teapot I have on the patio and which I use as a flower pot. Then there’s Lorenzo’s granny who lives upstairs with Attila the cat. You haven’t lived till you’ve seen this tiny, grey haired, stooped lady out in Lorenzo’s garden calling for naughty Attila to come back upstairs for some lunch. It must be a cat with a severe identity crisis too because although Attila is a female, she has a (scary) male name and everyone uses masculine word endings when talking about her. I will never understand Italian. There’s also who Paolo lives on the first floor. He’s mid-fifties and the tallest, skinniest man I’ve ever seen. He looks like a daddy-long-legs spider when he’s on his motorbike. He gets so worked up when Fiorentina play that everyone within a two mile radius can hear the score and our window panes shake when they get anywhere near the goal.
I normally just write the rest of the inhabitants off a ‘nice old people’ but I found out something amazing about Duillio from the second floor at the condominium meeting last Thursday night. (FYI: a condominium meeting is when everyone in the block of flats gets together and decides thrilling things like when to have the septic tank emptied. Every condominium has an ‘ammisitratore’ who’s paid handsomely by us to chair these meetings and then do things like call the septic tank people.) (By the way, did you notice how I just slipped in there about septic tanks? You didn’t think a modern city like Florence would have mains drainage did you? I’m really telling it how it is today). After the meeting last week, Duillio, who’s ancient and almost totally deaf, told us that he had just been awarded a gold medal of honour by the German government in recognition of the time he spent as a prisoner of war in Germany at the end of the Second World War. After much shouting of questions, he told us how, as a soldier, he was captured here in Italy and taken to Germany to work in a factory for a year. He told us how the factory was bombed by the Allies and he spent 48 hours under the rubble. As he quietly said, that’s like from now to tomorrow night and then the same again. Not knowing if he’d live or die. He lost so much weight during his time as a prisoner that it caused permanent damage to his stomach and he had to be operated on after the war. He told us that when he was presented with the medal in Livorno, a journalist asked him if he had any good memories of his time in Germany. He had answered that there was a man there, a manager in the factory, who had lost his son in the war. Diullio told us that being tall, blond and blue-eyed himself, he must have reminded this man of the son he had lost because quite inexplicably, he took Duillio from the factory to his home for Sunday lunch with his family nearly every week.
It’s hard to match Duillio as I see him today, watery-eyed and shuffling off to the take the rubbish out, with this image of a fresh faced, golden haired young man. It made me feel extremely sheepish about having taken a day off work that week for something so silly as a stomach bug. I also realised that I hardly know my neighbours – and I’ve lived in this flat for four years. Florentines aren’t so expansive as everyone thinks Italians are (another myth out the window I’m afraid) and let’s face it, I’m far too English to make the first move to get to know everyone myself. Who knows what stories the others could tell.
I wouldn’t mind having a chat with the tortoises too, actually. Having said that, I secretly suspect that they already understand me perfectly well but think I’m too stupid to notice their plotting.
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Tuesday, 6 January 2009
Incu bus
Sheer joy aboard the number twenty eight
When schools are closed for two-week Christmas break.
No squarking gangly boys in gobbling flocks
And no teen stink of ancient mouldy socks.
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When schools are closed for two-week Christmas break.
No squarking gangly boys in gobbling flocks
And no teen stink of ancient mouldy socks.
Read more!
Saturday, 20 December 2008
Bomb attack on local Post Office
(translated into English from the Italian daily newspaper ‘Il Telegrafo’)
Italian police are currently searching for 30 year old English woman, Melissa Morozzo, after she exploded a home made bomb in the Via Alamanni branch of the Post Office Bank in Florence yesterday morning. Nobody was seriously hurt in the blast although several Post Office employees suffered paper cuts after the piles of forms littering their desks were blown into the air. Thirty five customers who were queuing at the time are also being treated for bruising caused by flying rubber ink stamps.
The clerk who had been serving Mrs Morozzo at the time said in a statement to police that, ‘Signora Morozzo had come in earlier in the day wanting to close her current account with us and I had sent her away with a list of documents and forms she needed to do this. She came back two hours later but had forgotten to bring her full birth certificate, officially translated into Italian by the British consulate and signed by the chief of police, a high court judge and the Prime Minister. I tried to explain this to her, remembering our company policy that “the customer is always wrong and smiles are for sissies”, but she just started shouting and screaming. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor two metres behind my desk with my head centimetres from the paper shredder. Complete pandemonium had broken out.’
Another eye witness, a 40 year old man from Cameroon who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of a reprisal, claims that Mrs Morozzo’s last words before throwing the bomb and escaping were, ‘you can shove your stupid pen on a bit of string up your a*?!’.
Police bomb disposal experts have analysed the explosive device and found that it was made from a highly dangerous concoction of household cleaning products, the juice of two lemons and a large quantity of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce (toxic condiments commonly used by the English to flavour their otherwise tasteless food and available in Italy in dodgy Chinese grocery stores). Mrs Morozzo’s house has been searched and her computer has been confiscated by the police after several articles were found on it concerning her long-standing hatred of the Italian Post Office. Some articles were also found about ATAF, Florence’s public transport company, and police have revealed that they now fear a repeat attack on one of the city’s many efficient, clean and punctual buses. Mrs Morozzo’s husband and family have been questioned and declined to comment.
The Post Office has long been something of a role model in terms of customer service in Italy and there has been a general outcry from banks and the public service sector following this attack. In an official statement, a Post Office spokesman interrupted his morning cappuccino and brioche to state that, ‘the Post Office believes in treating all its customers equally. If we bend the rules for one then we have to bend the rules for everyone. This incident clearly demonstrates the danger our clerks face daily and plans to put bullet proof glass between staff and the customers are being considered.’
A nationwide search is being undertaken to find Mrs Morozzo, who is tall, dark haired and very English looking, both for her natural pallor and unstylish way of dressing. If spotted she should not be approached. Readers are urged to contact their local police if they have any information concerning her whereabouts.
Read more!
Italian police are currently searching for 30 year old English woman, Melissa Morozzo, after she exploded a home made bomb in the Via Alamanni branch of the Post Office Bank in Florence yesterday morning. Nobody was seriously hurt in the blast although several Post Office employees suffered paper cuts after the piles of forms littering their desks were blown into the air. Thirty five customers who were queuing at the time are also being treated for bruising caused by flying rubber ink stamps.
The clerk who had been serving Mrs Morozzo at the time said in a statement to police that, ‘Signora Morozzo had come in earlier in the day wanting to close her current account with us and I had sent her away with a list of documents and forms she needed to do this. She came back two hours later but had forgotten to bring her full birth certificate, officially translated into Italian by the British consulate and signed by the chief of police, a high court judge and the Prime Minister. I tried to explain this to her, remembering our company policy that “the customer is always wrong and smiles are for sissies”, but she just started shouting and screaming. Next thing I knew, I was on the floor two metres behind my desk with my head centimetres from the paper shredder. Complete pandemonium had broken out.’
Another eye witness, a 40 year old man from Cameroon who wishes to remain anonymous for fear of a reprisal, claims that Mrs Morozzo’s last words before throwing the bomb and escaping were, ‘you can shove your stupid pen on a bit of string up your a*?!’.
Police bomb disposal experts have analysed the explosive device and found that it was made from a highly dangerous concoction of household cleaning products, the juice of two lemons and a large quantity of Tabasco and Worcestershire sauce (toxic condiments commonly used by the English to flavour their otherwise tasteless food and available in Italy in dodgy Chinese grocery stores). Mrs Morozzo’s house has been searched and her computer has been confiscated by the police after several articles were found on it concerning her long-standing hatred of the Italian Post Office. Some articles were also found about ATAF, Florence’s public transport company, and police have revealed that they now fear a repeat attack on one of the city’s many efficient, clean and punctual buses. Mrs Morozzo’s husband and family have been questioned and declined to comment.
The Post Office has long been something of a role model in terms of customer service in Italy and there has been a general outcry from banks and the public service sector following this attack. In an official statement, a Post Office spokesman interrupted his morning cappuccino and brioche to state that, ‘the Post Office believes in treating all its customers equally. If we bend the rules for one then we have to bend the rules for everyone. This incident clearly demonstrates the danger our clerks face daily and plans to put bullet proof glass between staff and the customers are being considered.’
A nationwide search is being undertaken to find Mrs Morozzo, who is tall, dark haired and very English looking, both for her natural pallor and unstylish way of dressing. If spotted she should not be approached. Readers are urged to contact their local police if they have any information concerning her whereabouts.
Read more!
Tuesday, 18 November 2008
Here come the saints
‘A saint is just a sinner who fell down and got back up again!’, yelled the gospel choir master, an American with a voice like an oak tree and a smile like a grand piano. ‘Pick yourselves up, brush yourselves off and just keep on going. Oh yeah!’. I had a mini religious conversion at that gospel concert in Villa Strozzi two weekends ago. I could see the Italians around me having a hard time getting into such a fun, enthusiastic kind of spirituality, after all, they’re used to a darker, rumbling, fire and brimstone kind of God. Original sin is like the religious equivalent of ... wearing lead boots whereas this gospel singing made me feel like someone had attached a helium balloon to my heart. Still, everyone was clapping and stamping their feet by the end.
It’s turned out to be a spiritual couple of weeks since then. After the concert came an Anglican church service on Remembrance day in Milan (no whooping and yelling there, just lots of austere English ladies singing ‘All things bright and beautiful’ led by the rather camp Father Nigel). Then on the same day was my Italian nephew’s baptism. We went from Church of England to Roman Catholic as quickly as you can say ‘Holy Ghost’.
It was a mass baptism with about eight babies all done at once. They don’t actually all get dipped in the font at the same time (can you imagine the unholy racket they’d make together?) it’s more of a production line approach with the priest wandering between the pews anointing one little scrunched up forehead after another. I was looking forward to this, my first experience of a Catholic baptism and settled in next to my mother-in-law to watch from a safe distance where no-one would notice that I don’t know all the set responses to the priest’s incomprehensible mutterings.
I’ve been in total awe of the Catholic church ever since I went to G’s great uncle’s memorial service and found myself in the middle of a sea of people all droning ‘mea culpa mea culpa’ (‘I’m to blame, I’m to blame’) and beating themselves on the chest. I feared the geriatric priest was faking near-senility and was actually hypnotising everyone. I immediately snuck to the back, sweating. It was like a scene from a zombie movie. Anyway, I always feel much more prone to thunderbolts in Catholic churches, even the church mice nod disapprovingly when you’re the only one not to bow and scrape and make the sign of the cross when you go in.
Imagine my delight then when my sister-in-law scuttled up to me two minutes before the baptism ceremony and asked me to fill in for the godmother who couldn’t make it in person.
I’ve been a godmother before, but for my great-cousin whose family are all Methodist. Methodists, unlike Catholics, are more likely to offer you a nice milky tea and some ginger biscuits rather than a sip of the blood of Christ or hell and eternal damnation. So I was a little edgy, but you don’t say no when you’re asked a favour like that.
In the end it went well. The godfather was my sister-in-law’s colleague who was there with his boyfriend, so let’s just say that if anyone was going to get a thunderbolt it wasn’t going to be me. I made the sign of the cross on the baby’s head with my thumb (after the parents and godfather so I could see how to do it exactly) and held the baby with my right hand as they dipped his head in the font. It was all pretty jolly in the end. There was an apprentice priest on the microphone assisting the production line baby dunking who bravely tried to get the congregation to join in with the hallelujahs by saying things like, ‘this hymn has some rather complex lyrics… it goes “hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah”’ and ‘well, that’s about 5% of you singing, how about the rest? Come on!’.
So all in all I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. I’ve accumulated enough religious credit to last years and I crossed my fingers during the baptism when we all had to solemnly swear to help bring the child up in the Catholic faith. There weren’t any scary ‘mea culpa’ moments and despite nearly tripping up as I walked to the font in front of the smart Milanese congregation, I was safe in the knowledge that if I fell, I could just dust myself off and keep going.
Read more!
It’s turned out to be a spiritual couple of weeks since then. After the concert came an Anglican church service on Remembrance day in Milan (no whooping and yelling there, just lots of austere English ladies singing ‘All things bright and beautiful’ led by the rather camp Father Nigel). Then on the same day was my Italian nephew’s baptism. We went from Church of England to Roman Catholic as quickly as you can say ‘Holy Ghost’.
It was a mass baptism with about eight babies all done at once. They don’t actually all get dipped in the font at the same time (can you imagine the unholy racket they’d make together?) it’s more of a production line approach with the priest wandering between the pews anointing one little scrunched up forehead after another. I was looking forward to this, my first experience of a Catholic baptism and settled in next to my mother-in-law to watch from a safe distance where no-one would notice that I don’t know all the set responses to the priest’s incomprehensible mutterings.
I’ve been in total awe of the Catholic church ever since I went to G’s great uncle’s memorial service and found myself in the middle of a sea of people all droning ‘mea culpa mea culpa’ (‘I’m to blame, I’m to blame’) and beating themselves on the chest. I feared the geriatric priest was faking near-senility and was actually hypnotising everyone. I immediately snuck to the back, sweating. It was like a scene from a zombie movie. Anyway, I always feel much more prone to thunderbolts in Catholic churches, even the church mice nod disapprovingly when you’re the only one not to bow and scrape and make the sign of the cross when you go in.
Imagine my delight then when my sister-in-law scuttled up to me two minutes before the baptism ceremony and asked me to fill in for the godmother who couldn’t make it in person.
I’ve been a godmother before, but for my great-cousin whose family are all Methodist. Methodists, unlike Catholics, are more likely to offer you a nice milky tea and some ginger biscuits rather than a sip of the blood of Christ or hell and eternal damnation. So I was a little edgy, but you don’t say no when you’re asked a favour like that.
In the end it went well. The godfather was my sister-in-law’s colleague who was there with his boyfriend, so let’s just say that if anyone was going to get a thunderbolt it wasn’t going to be me. I made the sign of the cross on the baby’s head with my thumb (after the parents and godfather so I could see how to do it exactly) and held the baby with my right hand as they dipped his head in the font. It was all pretty jolly in the end. There was an apprentice priest on the microphone assisting the production line baby dunking who bravely tried to get the congregation to join in with the hallelujahs by saying things like, ‘this hymn has some rather complex lyrics… it goes “hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah”’ and ‘well, that’s about 5% of you singing, how about the rest? Come on!’.
So all in all I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. I’ve accumulated enough religious credit to last years and I crossed my fingers during the baptism when we all had to solemnly swear to help bring the child up in the Catholic faith. There weren’t any scary ‘mea culpa’ moments and despite nearly tripping up as I walked to the font in front of the smart Milanese congregation, I was safe in the knowledge that if I fell, I could just dust myself off and keep going.
Read more!
Wednesday, 15 October 2008
Just one cornetto
The end of the world is nigh. They said so on the evening news. Well, not in so many words but nearly the whole programme yesterday was given over to that America correspondant with too many teeth, while in the studio the presenter had put her cleavage away and tied back her hair for once. We have to stop being snooty about poisonous chemicals in Chinese food because we're all going to be doing our weekly shopping at the local Chinese discount store before long, it seems... Try as I might though, I don't really understand this global economic meltdown. 4 trillion dollars lost two days ago but miraculously found again today. The New York Stock Exchange must have some amazingly big hiding places to lose that much. For some reason, nobody knows if they're going to lose the same again tomorrow, you can tell the place is run by men. I watched the TV7 Economy Special on Rai 1 the other night but I was distracted by Gianni Riotta's fake-nose-and-glasses combo. The gist seemed to be that thanks to too many stupid people over-stretching themsleves financially and too many stupid banks willing to finance them, we are all going to lose our jobs and have to live on stale bread and left over bits of parmesan rind from the back of the fridge for several years. The Chinese banks that have apparently bought our mortgages from our banks will probably repossess our houses and end up doing their weekly shopping in HyperCoop while we trundle off to Chan's China Discount Paradise.
I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that all this might be somewhat down to people being a teeny bit too greedy. I mean, just how big does your TV have to be? Is your viewing experience enhanced by being able to count Angelina Jolie's pores? I'm the last person I know with a TV that's actually the shape of a box. Do you really need the lastest generation phone just because it allows you to calculate the distance between here and the moon? Do you have to have a car the size of a Chinook helicopter which consumes as much fuel in a week as Lichtenstein? (Quick word on this subject: as a cyclist I'd like to remind 4x4 drivers that they might want to look left and right every now and again. We will make an awful mess of your front grill if you hit us and I dread to think what it costs to have one of those beasties cleaned.) Also America, a word in your ear: I saw you in the audience there at the last Obama / McCain debate and let me ask you, do you and your children really need another microwave/deep-fat fryer/family pack of popcorn/extra-large super deluxe tub of Ben & Jerry's Cookies and Cream ice cream? I saw a lot of elasticated waist bands stretched to the limit there and it wasn't a pretty sight. I think it may have simply come down to either the economy exploding or you.
It seems that yet again, the Italians have had it right all along. Just one cornetto, not a jumbo pack of 36 bought on credit and scoffed before breakfast. Anyway, what's done is done now and I'm off to scrape some frozen lettuce from the back of the fridge to eat with my noodles.
Read more!
I'm going to stick my neck out and suggest that all this might be somewhat down to people being a teeny bit too greedy. I mean, just how big does your TV have to be? Is your viewing experience enhanced by being able to count Angelina Jolie's pores? I'm the last person I know with a TV that's actually the shape of a box. Do you really need the lastest generation phone just because it allows you to calculate the distance between here and the moon? Do you have to have a car the size of a Chinook helicopter which consumes as much fuel in a week as Lichtenstein? (Quick word on this subject: as a cyclist I'd like to remind 4x4 drivers that they might want to look left and right every now and again. We will make an awful mess of your front grill if you hit us and I dread to think what it costs to have one of those beasties cleaned.) Also America, a word in your ear: I saw you in the audience there at the last Obama / McCain debate and let me ask you, do you and your children really need another microwave/deep-fat fryer/family pack of popcorn/extra-large super deluxe tub of Ben & Jerry's Cookies and Cream ice cream? I saw a lot of elasticated waist bands stretched to the limit there and it wasn't a pretty sight. I think it may have simply come down to either the economy exploding or you.
It seems that yet again, the Italians have had it right all along. Just one cornetto, not a jumbo pack of 36 bought on credit and scoffed before breakfast. Anyway, what's done is done now and I'm off to scrape some frozen lettuce from the back of the fridge to eat with my noodles.
Read more!
Monday, 6 October 2008
The Cold War II
So I thought I lived in a quiet area of Florence. Predictable. Boring even. There’s the fishmonger who’s been here since the dawn of time, he’s so old and knarled I suspect it was him that provided the fishes that fed the five thousand. There’s the owner of the bar on the corner who asks me daily if I still have a job (she wants me to quit my steady job to be able to teach her grandson English for a couple of hours a week. I already did this last summer and it’s absolutely the last time ...I attempt to force feed the present perfect to a grunting, gangly, greasy teenager). There’s the Berlusconi look-alike you see strolling round: I stopped dead in my tracks the first time I saw him. There’s the resident crazy guy who wears a turquoise jump suit, turquoise helmet and rides a turquoise scooter. He smells of wee and has inch-thick glasses that magnify his eyes balls so that altogether he looks like a poisonous frog. There are the local youths who hang around in the park at night smoking joints and snogging each other’s faces off. Everyone’s friendly, even the youths who try to look menacing but are about as scary as their grannies who sit in the park during the day exchanging ragù recipes. Even the crazy turquoise guy is nice, if you don’t mind the wee smell.
This was how I saw my local area until a week ago when I discovered that the second Cold War had broken out in my neighbourhood.
Our local circolo (a kind of politically leftwing members club, bar, community centre and in this case, cinema, rolled into one) is next to the neighbourhood Communist headquarters. It’s not like they interrogate you on Marx’s Communist Manifesto before letting you in to see the latest Benigni film, but there is an assumption that if you go there then you are basically a free-thinking, liberal lefty. You can tell this by the number of intense looking young people wearing floaty linen trousers and interesting scarves who go to the cinema. Well, Tuscany is famous for being leftwing, so nothing unusual there. What is unusual is that a far-right (dare I say it, neo-fascist) members club recently set up shop just a couple of hundred yards from the leftwing circolo. This caused complete panic in the neighbourhood. Urgent meetings were called at the circolo to discuss what to do about this evident threat to our safety, the good name of our area and democracy itself.
Considering Italy’s brush with Fascism last century and the menacing shadow cast by the Lega Nord’s recent rise in popularity, it’s kind of understandable that they would react strongly and I am the last person to defend Fascism. I am also, however, the last person to defend Communism too. What nobody took time to find out was what exactly was going on in this new rightwing club. To be honest, from the outside, it looked a lot like young people having a chat, listening to music and snogging (sorry, there’s that word again) their girlfriends on the sofa. No bomb making classes, booming thrash metal or swastika cross-stitch in sight.
Flyers were put up all over the area warning of the threat from these fascist hooligans and the estate agent who rented them the space was assailed one morning by over a hundred people who verbally abused her for having anything to do with them. Being actually quite nice people, our local fascists decided that it wasn’t fair for the estate agent to be bullied because of them and have consequently vacated the building and, as far as I know, the area.
Being a fair-play, wise old owl kind of guy, my husband was half way through organising a meeting between the two groups when the fascists up and left. His friends at the circolo are giving him the cold shoulder now. It seems that it’s all peace and love and liberal-thinking till someone actually comes along with a different view to yours. At that point you simply stamp your organic leather shoes, put your fingers in your ears, shout ‘NO NO NO NO NO NO’ and send your friends to harass an innocent estate agent.
In any case, the Cold War II is over for the moment, that is at least until the far-right gang find somewhere else to sit around of an evening comparing Mussolini tattoos. Perhaps my husband should have parachuted in the Berlusconi look-alike, they might all have been too surprised to do anything and actually talked to each other instead.
Read more!
This was how I saw my local area until a week ago when I discovered that the second Cold War had broken out in my neighbourhood.
Our local circolo (a kind of politically leftwing members club, bar, community centre and in this case, cinema, rolled into one) is next to the neighbourhood Communist headquarters. It’s not like they interrogate you on Marx’s Communist Manifesto before letting you in to see the latest Benigni film, but there is an assumption that if you go there then you are basically a free-thinking, liberal lefty. You can tell this by the number of intense looking young people wearing floaty linen trousers and interesting scarves who go to the cinema. Well, Tuscany is famous for being leftwing, so nothing unusual there. What is unusual is that a far-right (dare I say it, neo-fascist) members club recently set up shop just a couple of hundred yards from the leftwing circolo. This caused complete panic in the neighbourhood. Urgent meetings were called at the circolo to discuss what to do about this evident threat to our safety, the good name of our area and democracy itself.
Considering Italy’s brush with Fascism last century and the menacing shadow cast by the Lega Nord’s recent rise in popularity, it’s kind of understandable that they would react strongly and I am the last person to defend Fascism. I am also, however, the last person to defend Communism too. What nobody took time to find out was what exactly was going on in this new rightwing club. To be honest, from the outside, it looked a lot like young people having a chat, listening to music and snogging (sorry, there’s that word again) their girlfriends on the sofa. No bomb making classes, booming thrash metal or swastika cross-stitch in sight.
Flyers were put up all over the area warning of the threat from these fascist hooligans and the estate agent who rented them the space was assailed one morning by over a hundred people who verbally abused her for having anything to do with them. Being actually quite nice people, our local fascists decided that it wasn’t fair for the estate agent to be bullied because of them and have consequently vacated the building and, as far as I know, the area.
Being a fair-play, wise old owl kind of guy, my husband was half way through organising a meeting between the two groups when the fascists up and left. His friends at the circolo are giving him the cold shoulder now. It seems that it’s all peace and love and liberal-thinking till someone actually comes along with a different view to yours. At that point you simply stamp your organic leather shoes, put your fingers in your ears, shout ‘NO NO NO NO NO NO’ and send your friends to harass an innocent estate agent.
In any case, the Cold War II is over for the moment, that is at least until the far-right gang find somewhere else to sit around of an evening comparing Mussolini tattoos. Perhaps my husband should have parachuted in the Berlusconi look-alike, they might all have been too surprised to do anything and actually talked to each other instead.
Read more!
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