To freeze cryogenically or not to freeze cryogenically, that is the question

I swear to God, if I have to make one more decision during this preganacy, I'm going to go crazy. I'm a bit of an elephant when it comes to making choices, just the colour of the baby's room would have done me for the whole nine months. But no. Now we have to decide whether or not to save the blood and tissue (yum) from the baby's umbilical cord. Turns out that we can't simply donate it to the Italian national cord blood bank because I might have Mad Cow disease. Seriously. This pregnancy is turning me into a mad cow, I know that much. Anyone who lived in the UK between 1980 and 1996 is considered at risk of having BSE and so can't donate. I wanted to tell the nice lady on the phone that I was vegetarian for a lot of that time, but knowing my luck I'm one of those people who caught it from a Digestive biscuit.

So we've been looking into saving the cord blood privately. Italy doesn't really allow this, but friends recommended a Dutch company that does (just don't tell the Pope). It's expensive, but sadly not so much to have us running for the hills. Not that I've run anywhere recently, I would more likely waddle for the hills, stopping to take a breath every couple of paces.

Saving the cord blood privately has a whole range of amazing benefits, and goodness only knows what they'll be able to do in a few years' time. It just feels weird and selfish to do it privately, even though the public bank has shut the door in our faces. Also, leaving the ethical minefield to one side, there's the fact that I now feel that we HAVE to do it. How would I feel further down the line if my little panino-in-the-oven developped leucemia or something (touch wood, tocca ferro etc etc) and no match could be found? Like I said before, too many choices. I thought the Downs Syndrome screening was bad enough. I'm just a normal girl, not God.

The bureaucratic process of applying for this private service will also potentially keep me busy for at least the next month (and also involves more blood tests; my arms are starting to look like those of a heroin addict). The company sends you a special 'kit' where the medical staff in the hospital put the cord immediately after the birth and which you then have to send to Holland to be frozen. I have visions of standing in the Post Office with a bloody jiffy bag asking about the fastest European postal service and being arrested on the spot.

So you'll excuse me now if I leave you and go and switch off my brain for an hour and watch some trash TV. I'm not sure whether I'd prefer a nice cup of tea or if a fresh juice would be better. That's my kind of decision.

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Toothpaste and TVs

I just saw an advert on TV for an anti-ageing toothpaste. Is it possible that we now have to worry about our teeth ageing?? Isn't it traumatic enough to have to prepare ourselves for sagging wrinkly bottoms, bingo wings and chicken necks? (Not to mention the horrific - sorry, marvellous - things pregnancy does to your body. More on that later).
I saw this toothpaste ad on our new TV - the purchase of which aged me considerably. Have you bought a TV recently? No? Well, let me tell you, they're not box-shaped anymore. You also need a degree in techno-bullshit to understand if you're buying a TV or a fully staffed multi-screen cinema. The price tags are about the same. The funny thing is that no matter how much you spend, or how much your TV looks like a prop from Star Trek, it will give all your DVDs the same image quality of Prisoner Cell Block H. This is apparently called 'progress'. And by the way, hands up if you can actually tell the difference between normal and HD. Thought not.

On my first day home alone with the new TV I discovered another thing. It doesn't have an on/off switch. Now, I must explain that not only am I seven months pregnant, but also that we have just temporarily moved from Florence to Milan. I NEED to be able to watch TV in order to distract myself from the nightmare that is living surrounded by unpacked boxes and the never-ending bureaucratic procedures involved in getting myself registered in a different region's health system. Not fun. So there I was that first day, all excited about the new TV (the old one couldn't take the pressure of moving house and committed suicide) but I couldn't turn the stupid thing on. I pressed every button on the remote and felt all around the screen for some kind of switch. I read the manual in English, Italian and French. Nothing. If only I'd paid more attention in my German lessons, I cursed. Sighing, and just as I was about to give up on the idea of seeing Murder She Wrote, I noticed that the TV was, in fact, unplugged. Opps. Blame it on the pregnancy hormones.
G will be rolling his eyes as he reads this. I didn't tell him as I thought it might cross the line between endearingly stupid and cronically dumb. What I really need isn't a toothpaste to stop my teeth from ageing but something to stop my brain from ageing.

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Seven Month Itch

Seven Month Itch
'Well Signora, 10 kilos is quite a significant weight gain I'm afraid,' frowned the nurse. I couldn't help glaring at the sweaty rolls of flesh jiggling on her arms as she fiddled with the weights on the scales.
'I'm seven months pregnant fatty, what's your excuse?' I replied. Of course, I said no such thing - but I wanted too. Bloody cheek.
Then the gynaecologist did a quick examination and, being ridiculously ticklish, all his prodding of my tummy made me giggle. Talk about a total loss of dignity. My friend the nurse was highly amused by the whole scene. There's nothing like total strangers laughing at you when you don't have any underpants on.
The gyny confirmed that baby is head down and apparently doing very well. I have just 3 or 4 hundred more blood and various other tests left to do now. Thank God you gain a couple of litres of blood in pregnancy otherwise I wouldn't have any left. In fact, between the blood tests and the mosquitoes, I seem to have the most sought after blood in the land.
Anyway, this week I've been looking through the list of necessary items for the hospital bag and I have to say that it's slightly disconcerting. A nightdress with wide sleeves to wear during labour? Maybe I've misunderstood something about where the baby comes out from - probably wasn't paying enough attention in my antenatal class that day. G looked through the list with me and rather predictably liked the sound of the paper (or mesh) (??) knickers. He spotted 'intimate soap' and said,
'Now Mel, don't forget this and show yourself up as a typical English girl who never uses the bidet.' Ha Ha.
'Millions of English people can't even spell bidet and still somehow have miraculously clean bottoms,' I smiled through gritted teeth. My hormones are making me so sensitive that I'm even ready to defend wall-to-wall carpets in the bathroom and tagliatelle with a side order of chips these days.
The only thing I've bought so far from the list are the maternity sanitary towels, which are quite frankly terrifying. At the bottom of the list it says that it's not necessary to bring a 'guaina' or a 'pancera', which is good as I have no idea what they are. There's so much to learn in pregnancy and learning it all in a foreign language is pretty exhausting.
In the meantime, I'm just enjoying the Italian summer: 35 degrees in the shade and tarmac melting into soup in the street, lovely. Fortunately, being pregnant in Italy doesn't mean just blood tests and paper knickers, it also means you can walk around flapping a fan and wearing a silly sun hat and get away with it. If that chubby nurse wore my sun hat she'd just look daft.
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The World Cup for girls

Why is watching England play football like spending 90 minutes slowly peeling a plaster off your arm? At one point during Sunday's match, Germany had so many goals that they just seemed a bit embarrased, not sure whether to score again or just kick the ball around amonst themselves.

Lampard's disallowed goal might have turned things around, after all, nothing gets us Brits going more than a bit of hard-done-by under-dog spirit. We was robbed! (I started having headline flashes). Honest Albion cheated of victory by sneaky Swiss ref! Neutral country? Pah.

In the end however, the fact remains that England played like a lot of sulky woosies and the Germans played like, well, Germans. I wanted to yell at the big screen that my unborn child was kicking more than the England team.
'She's not kicking, she's dancing,' chortled G, 'we all know she's going to support Italy when she grows up.'
We clearly still have a few parenting issues to work out.

Ever since Italy went out, G has done nothing but remind me that if England do well then it'll all be thanks to an Italian. Well, dearest, that particular theory works both ways. Today, Mr Cartoon Face is ina lotta trubol. Sadly, there are no prizes for best dressed manager. Otherwise, Capello's waistcoat would have won first place for England hands down. As for the German manager, I have only three words: Just For Men.
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I'm back!

I'd like to say that I've become older and wiser since my last post, but that just wouldn't be true. What has happened and what has kept me away from my blog is that I am pregnant. Yup, I'm in the club, got a panino in the oven, in the family way, or, as they are so fond of saying here in Italy, I'm in an 'interesting' state.
The first few months were not, however, particularly interesting, which is why I wasn't blogging. Twenty-four hour nausea, more gas than the North Sea and more saliva than the maddest camel lugging fat tourists round the pyramids. You might be expecting a lily pad but what you get is bloating, puking and spitting.

Forget food cravings, for the first three and a half months I didn't want to eat anything and the only thing I craved was to always have someplace close to hand to be sick. I couldn't even stomach my beloved Marmite and went into a kind of Marmite mourning. The thought that I might never be able to eat it again was almost more than I could bear. I also discovered pregnancy hormones which make you cry at TV ads with puppies in them and the kind of news stories shown on Studio Aperto. (For non-Italians, Studio Aperto is a pseudo-news programme where the main stories are set to weepy music and all seem to involve either family members murdering each other or cats getting stuck in trees) (with a large side order of breasts, obviously).

Now, I'm feeling much better as I am in the hallowed second trimester, the eye of the pregnancy storm as it were. I can eat and drink without gagging which is nice and, more importantly, I can't get enough Marmite again. Phew. Bring on my mum's homemade imported pickled onions and spicy apple and raisin chutney!

It's a little girl, by the way.

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A wooly night time incident

Don't be fooled into thinking that it's always hot and sunny in Tuscany; it's been raining for so long here that the plants in my garden are actually rotting. Walking across my lawn is like walking on a three foot deep muddy sponge and my neighbour has a pump going 24/7 to try to clear our flooded cellar. It's also pretty chilly and I've got into the very old lady habit of always taking a hot water bottle to bed. Hot water bottles rock in the winter. Especially if you're as tight-fisted as I am about turning on the heating.

I got into knitting last year and the first thing I knitted (apart from a predictable succession of scarves) was a nice wooly hot water bottle cover. It's red and I even experimented with the knit and purl stitches to create a kind of chequered effect. Very nice. I didn't know how to close it around the top so I just stitched it in and now if I ever want to take it off I'll have to cut it. My Other Half is terrified that if I knit him a jumper, I'll just knit him into it and he'll have to wear it forever like the poor hot water bottle. In his worst nightmares he wakes up to find that I've knitted him into a wooly straight-jacket.

The other night, I was snuggling down in bed with a book and my trusty hot water bottle when my Other Half trundled into the bedroom. He clambered into bed, causing the usual freezing drafts as he flapped the duvet around for no reason, before finally settling down and starting to read. Out of the blue and without moving a muscle above the duvet, he stole the hot water bottle from around my ankles with his great knobbly size 46 feet. I was flabbergasted. He didn't even look at me as he commited this most heinous of bedtime crimes. I looked at him. Nothing. Fuming, but not sure what to say, I stared blankly at the pages of my book. After a couple of minutes he glanced at me innocently and said,
'No hot water bottle tonight?'
I stared at him. Was this a trick question?
'Er, yes, and you stole it from me as soon as you got into bed.' Ha, you can wipe that innocent look off your face buddy.
'What?' He replied, suddenly fidgeting his feet around at the bottom of the bed. 'Oh,' he said, reddening, 'I thought that was your foot.'
He had mistaken the wooly and boiling hot water bottle for my foot. What's a girl to do?

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The Great Name Change and subsequent Embarrassing Incident

I'm currently in the middle of a bureaucratic nightmare. For once though, it's entirely of my own making. In a stubborn English way, I decided to take my husband's surname. Before you start waving burning bras in my face, let me make a few things clear: (a) it wasn't his idea, (b) it doesn't mean that I'm bowing down to him in any way and (c) I believe it's what you do in your life that shows whether or not you're an independent woman, not how you chose to call yourself. So there. Why should I one day have a different surname to my children? Not fair.

The problem lies in the fact that in Italy, by law a woman CAN'T take her husband's surname, so there's no official procedure to follow. As it is, the ancient rusty cogs of bureaucracy here have their own unique concept of time - one Italian bureaucratic minute represents an hour of normal human time, an hour is a couple of weeks, a month is a year etc. In Italy, new name means new tax code, which leads to a series of startling and terrifying trips to the tax office. New name means informing banks and getting new bank cards. I've sent numerous faxes and letters by recorded post with photocopies of my passport, ID card, national insurance card, great-grandfather's inside leg measurement, list of my favourite types of cheese etc. I've been waiting for my new bank card for a month.

Now that I'm almost at the end of the Great Name Change, I'm thinking about writing a book on the experience. I could fill several volumes on the tax office alone and I'm still not entirely sure that I'm not registered twice. I'm waiting for a letter in the post informing me that I am actually two people and that the government is sending a priest to my house to perform some kind of identity exorcism.

New name also means re-registering with your doctor. I was at the hospital recently, about to have a rather intimate medical test, when the nurse who was filling out the forms told the nurse with the freezing cold metal instrument to stop because it appeared that I was not myself, but someone else. An imposter.
'Don't worrry,' I said, trying to sound as nonchalant as a half-naked person in the company of two fully dressed people can sound, 'I've changed my name and this test was booked in my old name. I have all the documents in my bag.'
'But where has your old name gone?' replied the nurse at the desk, eyes narrowed.
'It's just gone.' I shrugged (not easy to shrug with your legs in stirrups).
'But where has it gone?' She wasn't giving up.
'It's just gone.'
'But where?' I was starting to feel really silly at this point. She looked at me hard. I wanted to say: 'Yes, my old name decided to swim to Elba and never came back. That bastard. I did get an anonymous postcard from the Bahamas last week and I have my suspicions that it was from that crafty old name, but I can't be sure so I had to get this new name.' Instead, seeing no way out of the impasse, I reluctantly got down, put on my knickers and retrieved all my ID documents from my bag.
'But your old name has just gone,' she gasped.
'Yes.' I said, with what I hope was an air of finality. Knickers came off again and the test was completed in awed silence.

Bureaucracy can be really fun.

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Schizophrenia

I'd like to throw a quick question out to any expat readers. There are a few posters around Florence advertising language classes with the slogan 'chi parla due lingue vive due vite', meaning 'people who speak two languages live two lives'. Am I the only one to find this a disturbing concept?

I often have the nagging feeling that when I speak Italian, I'm not quite the same person as when I speak my native English. And just to be perfectly clear, I don't actually enjoy feeling of there being two people in my head. There's not that much room in there as it is.

The Italian-speaking me is, well, a bit more Italian. I yell at people who cut me up on my bike, I talk to strangers on the bus, I chat to the fruit and veg man about the different ways of cooking pumpkin (it's his favourite vegetable too). The English-speaking me, on the other hand, is all please, thank you, yes sir, yes sir, three-bags-full. Would you mind terribly if I inconvenienced you - I'm really awfully sorry - but could I trouble you to move your shopping trolley off my foot? Terribly sorry to be such a bother. Thank you. Sorry. Etc, etc.

Nonetheless, I behave differently here than I would in England because (and I know how ridiculously pathetic this sounds) the English me is nervous of not knowing how things work and of making a fool of myself. Brutta figura may be a quintessentially Italian concept, but I seem to live permanently in its shadow. I can't seem to shake off this round peg/square hole feeling.

I recently signed up at my local swimming pool, which I had been putting off for about two years for fear of being different. Will I be the only one who doesn't take a dressing gown into the pool area? (yes) Do they all chat and shout and laugh together naked in the showers? (yes) Do I look completely stupid in my swimming cap? (oh yes). I now have to contend not only with helmet-hair, but also goggle-eyes in the morning. Beautiful. The thing is that despite being different and foreign and thinking way, way too much about this stuff, the swimming pool is great. I don't know why I waited so long to join.

Next year will be my 10th year in Italy and the Italian me is finally and inevitably starting to get some ideas about supplanting* the English me. My other half (my other 'other half'?) has heard me talking in my sleep in Italian, which is both bizarrely discomforing and wonderful. What still throws me completely off kilter is if I end up randomly having to speak Italian in England. Or, as happened at a Brit/It wedding I went to recently, I speak Italian all night to Italian friends while surrounded by English people who are round pegs like me, but complete strangers. That kind of situation can lead to some seriously confusing schizophrenic feelings.

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* As this is absolutely the first time I've ever used the verb 'to supplant' I looked it up and found the following definition: To usurp the place of, especially through intrigue or underhanded tactics, which sounds like just the sort of thing the Italian me would try to do.

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Free chocolate is always a good thing

What a bizarre, random and wonderful morning yesterday. G and I got up at 6.30am (yikes) and dragged our sleepy selves to viale dei Mille to give out free chocolates to complete strangers on bikes. As I said, bizarre and random.

You could be forgiven for not knowing that yesterday was European Car Free Day. Of course, Florence was as grid-locked and smog-filled as ever. The avenues were playing out their usual early morning symphony of honking car horns. I often think how pleasant it must be in countries like Denmark or Sweden, where everyone cycles and where wearing a cycling helmet isn't the social equivalent of admitting that you spend your evenings putting your DVDs in alphabetical order (ie: something that most people would rather throw themselves off the Ponte Vecchio than confess to doing themselves, no matter how much of a good idea it might be). Of course, this is car-loving Italy, not some Nordic paradise where people actually stop and give way at roundabouts (give way at roundabouts?). The first rule of the road here is 'It's always my right of way', shortly followed by 'I'm bigger than you, so it's definitely my right of way' and then 'If you don't get out of my way then I'm going to grate you through the grill of my SUV'.

Nonetheless, as part of European Car Free Day, the FIAB - an Italy-wide cycling association - organised volunteers in cities across the country to stand at important junctions at rush hour and hand out free chocolates to anyone cycling past. The idea was to reward all those people who leave their cars at home, as well as to promote local pro-cyclist groups, like Florence's 'Firenze In Bici'. We had fluorescent vests and signs hanging round our necks explaining that we weren't complete lunatics, although most people looked at us us with suspicion at first.
'Free chocolate?' They would say, eyes narrowing, 'What's the catch?'. Once they realised we weren't trying to sell insurance or help them find God, they loosened up. Everyone smiled and chatted. One elderly gentleman, who was approximately half my height and rode an ancient creaking bike, told me that unfortunately, he couldn't eat chocolate anymore. He wobbled off his bike and informed me that he had been born on 17th January 1918. He then proceeded to slowly trundle across the busy intersection diagonally, completely ignoring the traffic lights, to go to a bar on the other side. 10 minutes later, he crossed back to his parked bike, going diagonally again across about 20 lanes of traffic, waggled his finger at me and cycled off.

So it was a bizarre morning. What was wonderful about it was the feeling of giving something away for free, telling people how great they are and making so many people smile. Wow. I was buzzing for the rest of the day. The most difficult part was worrying about my Italian while explaining what we were doing to complete strangers. By the end of the morning though, I could even pronounce 'associazione' without getting tongue-tied or spitting in people's faces. Result.

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Houston, we have a problem

The first couple of weeks of September are known in Italy as the period of rientro, or re-entry, referring to the fact that the whole nation returns home to work after the August holidays. The word rientro somehow brings to mind astronauts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The sudden force gravity burns up their space ship and nearly tears them limb from limb which, funnily enough, is almost as traumatic as re-entering the work-atmosphere after the holiday. Your body cries out for the non-gravitational freedom of the beach or the mountains, but no matter how hard you cling to the feeling of sand under your feet, you can't do anything to stop yourself being dragged back to work. It doesn't help that the suffering is universal, as nearly everyone in Italy is forced to take their holidays in August. September is like a time of national mourning for holidays lost.

This means that September is also a time for re-assesment. Resolutions are made for the new work-year. A whole host of new crappy TV shows start. Christmas seems a hundred years away, it's still hot enough to melt tarmac and everyone knows some lucky bastard who's still on holiday. One of my rientro resolutions is to stop moaning, but it's tough. Especially after such a lovely holiday.

We spent two weeks in August walking in the Dolomites and I loved it, despite getting lost in the woods on our first short hike. There's nothing I enjoy more than clinging to a slippery branch over a rocky precipice with an icy mountain river thundering below while G shouts,
'Come on, I think I've found the path up ahead!' And then, just as I make it across, 'No, I think it must be back the way we came.'
We did several day hikes, including one to the startlingly turquoise Sorapiss lake.
'I wonder what makes it that colour?' I wondered outloud.
'Toothpaste' said G without pausing for thought. He should be a mountain guide.

On the way to Sorapiss, I had my first brush with a Via Ferrata. The Via Ferrata are more difficult paths with metal cords embedded in the rock so that you have something to cling onto (or, more sensibly, attach yourself to with ropes and clips and other mountaineering bits and bobs). We took a different path coming back from the lake and found another short stretch of Via Ferrata, as well as a terrifyingly narrow path across a massive scree and a couple of hundred metres of descent on a still very mobile rocky landslide. I discovered vertigo and couldn't look up from the path for fear of tumbling down the valley floor hundreds and hundreds of metres below. Or vomitting up my polenta and grilled cheese lunch. My nerves and my aching, knocking knees may never forgive me. Of course, G loved every minute.

Apart from day-walks, we also spent three nights in rifugi, sleeping in dormitories and then lugging our backpacks over several kilometres and several hundred metres of descent and ascent for the next night. Our first rifugio, Biella, was a teeny bit basic. No hot running water and the toilets were of the hole-in-the-ground variety. I know, I know, it's no big deal, but after walking all day and squatting in the undergrowth, it would have been nice to find a proper loo. You might say "well, little Miss Fussy-Pants, they're much more hygenic and easier to clean", but if that's the case then why do they always stink so bad? The toilet at Biella didn't even have a lock on the door so if someone had barged in, then the opening door would have knocked me down the hole, bare bottom first. Eugh.
The best thing about Biella was that it made the next two rifugi seem like 5-star hotels. And the polenta and strudel were exquisite.

The holiday taught me yet again that Italy is a strikingly diverse country. In terms of landscape, culture and traditions, the Dolomites are another planet compared to Tuscany and another solar system altogether compared to somewhere like Sicily. Their first language isn't Italian but Ladin, a Germanic-sounding mix which is apparently closely related to Swiss Romansh. What other country in the world can boast such striking variety? It makes me feel proud to live here and priviledged to share in the diversity. I hate admitting to such a cheesy TV movie feeling, but it's true.

In the Dolomites, the landscape above 2000 metres is very lunar, so coming back to Florence did in fact feel like coming back from an expedition to the moon. Now, I miss the feeling of comradeship you get with other walkers, I miss the fresh air and I especially miss the polenta, cheese, strudel, canederli (dumplings), casunziei ravioli, wurstel ... You get the picture.

Buon rientro a tutti!

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Il mare

I just lost a toe nail. The second one from the left on my right foot. It had a long and bravely fought battle with my walking boot on a recent three-day hike. I almost thought it might hang on, but alas, it came off at the beach on Sunday near San Vincenzo where we were camping for the weekend. We gave it a full sea burial in the Mediterranean - nail varnish and all.

San Vincenzo is an hour South of Livorno and we got there by taking our bikes on the train. Moving around by bike is especially handy on the coast because each weekend in the Summer every Italian drags his kids, dog, mother-in-law and collection of sunglasses and speedos to the seaside. Everyone drives there, so no matter what direction you arrive from, you end up stuck in sweaty traffic jams both on your way there and back. When you eventually get to the beach you have to find parking, which is almost as much fun as crawling down the Fi-Pi-Li motorway towards the sea at 10kms an hour for 6 hours with all your friends, family, neighbours and colleagues in the overheating cars all around you.

Another oddity about the seaside in Italy, is that the coast is lined with private beaches. You have to pay for the use of a sun umbrella and sun loungers and, unless you're Fabio Briatore and can afford a place in the front row, you usually end up in the middle of rows and rows of identical sun umbrellas and sun loungers, surrounded by other people and far from the sea. To put it bluntly, people go from their cramped hot apartments in the city where they are surrounded by neighbours on all sides, to a cramped hot space on the beach where they are surrounded by people they don't know.

This isn't a problem for most Italians though because (a) there's hardly any concept of personal space here and (b) they just love the sea, il mare. Just say the words 'il mare' and most Italians get this misty look come over them. It doesn't matter if the only sunbathing space is a jagged 40cm wide rock, as long as you are at il mare.

There are also only two tanning options during the Summer months here. Golden brown or dead. If you're not tanned then you better spend the Summer hiding in a cupboard, or at least have the courtesy to look sheepish around your mahogany-coloured superiors. Don't get me wrong, I love having a tan, but it's such hard work for me - being so pale and English - that most years I don't bother. The down side to this is that so many people, including complete strangers, have a habit of staring at you and exclaiming,
'My God, you're so white!' As if they've just found out you have some terminal illness. Mention premature aging and skin cancer and there's a general kind of fingers in ears and shouting 'lah-lah-lah-lah I can't hear youuuuuuu' response.

Anyway, our cycling weekend at the beach was a success, despite being the whitest creature on the beach; despite the tent nearly taking off during a wind-storm at 5am Saturday morning; despite nearly getting lost in the dark in the woods when my other half coerced me into a bit of off-roading (my poor bike, my poor knees); despite cycling 10kms on a busy main road at midnight with no proper lights; despite whacking myself between the eyes with the head lamp while trying to read my trashy Vampire lit in the tent and most of all, despite losing my toe nail. RIP.

After all, (see a misty look come across my face) I just love the sea.

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I've found a new hero

I nearly choked on my falafel the other night in the kebab shop when, during a popular quiz show on channel 5, the camera zoomed in on the very pert rear end a 'show girl' climbing some stairs in a bikini. It was gynaecological. Viewers were treated to alternating shots of the girl's highly waxed private parts and the sweaty faces of young men ogling and applauding her from the studio audience. This was before the 8 o'clock news, by the way.

For those of you who don't live in Italy, let me tell you that terrestrial TV here is aimed at (and apparently made by) 15 year old boys. Italian TV is an avalanche of breasts, bottoms and cringe-worthy Carry On-style innuendos. Nearly all the Italians I know complain about it, but it seems such an ingrained tradition that nobody is REALLY surprised to see a half-naked woman in a cage used in an advert for anti-rust paint. Absurd botoxed lips are a must if a woman wants to stay on TV beyond the age of 35. Live here for long enough and you start to lose perspective yourself.

Reading 'Io Donna' this morning though, I discovered a blog and documentary all about how women are represented on TV in Italy and the ramifications for us normal women on the street. The documentary makes very interesting viewing (there's even a version with dodgy English subtitles)and asks why we put up with such drivel on our TV sets. Watch it and send the link to your friends! Author of the blog and documentary is Lorella Zanardo, my new hero.
What bothers me is that in 'Io Donna' magazine, the interview with Lorella is only on page 55 and is next to an advert for a hair-removal cream that shows a sexy tanned woman with 3 metre long legs dancing and smiling innanely. Is there any hope?

http://www.ilcorpodelledonne.net/documentary/index.html

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