Getting up in the morning

Getting up in the morning has become a major drag

Come on, Gazza!

Reading about Paul Gascoigne being sectioned for three months under the Mental Health Act is distressful for any football fan, but for those of us who saw him play it is positively heartbreaking. His sheer commitment and joie de vivre on the pitch was a joy to behold. He was in my opinion, apart from being one of the greats at the game, Mister Entertainment himself.
When he played for Lazio here in Rome, he was adored, his antics (footballing and non) talked about in the bars and cafés all week. If he was fouled, Paul thought perhaps the other player wanted his shirt so he’d take it off and hand it over, much to the amusement of the fans, or if he was the culprit, he’d simply apologize and then rush to shake the ref’s hand. He’d make faces at the camera. He brought laughter to the stadium.

When he left Lazio to return to England, I remember the barman of a supporters’ café wearing a black armband, his eyes welling with tears as he spoke of life without his beloved ‘Gazza’.
Now the lad from Newcastle is in serious trouble, his main problem possibly being the lack of competition in his life, the charge of adrenalin he felt every time he pulled on his football shirt and ran out onto the pitch to the roar of the crowds.
Don’t tell me Gazza has nothing left to offer the game. Why can’t one of the Premier League’s top teams make him a coach at their youth academies, have him pass on his exquisite skills to the next generation? Surely he could glean vicarious excitement and his need of competition by watching his charges race up and down the field, the ball at their feet, the goal in sight.

There are obscene amounts of money in the sport today (its players paid outrageous salaries); let's put some of it to a decent use.  How about a different kind of profit?  Like a feel-good profit.
Gazza gave football so much; it’s time football gave some of it back.

Read All About it: English Girl Saves Her Dog

I woke up this morning to a series of phone calls and messages from friends to tell me that Edie’s daring rescue of Lola was in all the papers (La Repubblica, Il Tempo, Il Messaggero...). I immediately raced out to buy the various newspapers and, sitting at a pavement table in the Campo enjoying my cappuccino and cornetto, read all about our au pair girl's heroics. Apart from spelling her name ‘Eddy’, the articles were really complimentary.
How modest can you get? Edie hadn’t told us the half of it. Speedboats, divers, a high speed ride home in a Fire Brigade's rubber dinghy, crowds of onlookers… Her escapade was far more touch and go than she had let on, almost as though she were embarrassed by all the fuss. Don’t be so modest, Edie; you saved my dog! And for that I shall be forever grateful.

I read some of the articles to Lola, who didn’t even raise her head.
“Want to go for a walk, Lola?” Edie called out from the entrance hall. “Come on!”
That got Lola’s attention; her head shot up and off she went.
“Stay away from water, Edie!” I called out moments before I heard the front door shut.

Lola Does It Again

“Don’t forget my cigarettes, Daddy,” my little daughter shouted out as she raced into the school.
“I won’t,” I shouted back. What? Buying cigarettes for my baby? No! She needed them for her school play the next day, as a stage prop, so I promised I would buy her a pack of chocolate ones. She was delighted. Little did I know what that promise would entail, how difficult it would be, and how many cafés and sweet shops I would have to visit.
However, while I was out scouring the city for chocolate cigarettes, unbeknownst to me Edie was bravely fighting to save Lola’s life and her own!
She had taken Lola for a walk along the banks of the River Tiber, the perfect place for such an exercise. Well, Lola loves water (as the photo of her on the right testifies) and an insignificant little detail like ‘collar and lead’ wasn’t going to stop her going for a swim. Somehow she broke free of Edie and leaped straight into the river, the currents quickly carrying her away. Edie ran about half a mile, slid down a muddy bank and, after some very scary moments, managed to grab Lola, but was unable to climb back up again, the slope far too slippery. Before her strength ebbed completely, one hand stubbornly preventing my dog from floating away again (to who knew what fate), a passerby spotted them and called the Fire Brigade, who pulled them to safety watched by an applauding crowd on the bridge above.
The first I knew of it was, when returning home proudly clutching the chocolate cigarettes (already wallowing in my daughter’s hero-worship), I bumped into Edie and Lola, both looking as though they’d been dragged through a very muddy hedge backwards!

My chocolate cigarette escapades paled in comparison.

Edie, my hero.

Eternal...

When the children left for school this morning, it was raining hard enough to imagine a repeat of Noah’s universal flood. But, as nearly always happens, the rain proved to be yet another reminder from the gods that we who live in Rome are spoiled, that sunshine is a gift to be cherished and not to be taken for granted (as we often do). In fact, the rain stopped and the sun came out to chase away the few remaining clouds, and bathe this extraordinary city in the most brilliant light, the signal for locals and tourists alike to come out and luxuriate in its eternal warmth.
Though I was in a perfect mood to work, I too succumbed to the pull of the atmosphere outside. I abandoned my computer, put the leash on Lola and off we went to be a part of it all, the cobblestones still wet from the earlier rain.
After it has rained, everything looks so much sharper, cleaner and brighter, like the street vendor’s flowers, the packed pavement cafés, the statues, the buildings, the colours, the faces at the windows, mothers walking their toddlers…
I like to imagine that when Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth century English diarist, said “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life…” he was also referring to Rome.

P.S. Just as the cobblestones were drying, the heavens opened up again, and it hasn't stopped raining since.  Oh, well...

Is Anyone Listening? Does Anyone Care?

Yesterday, Roma and Inter Milan played football matches that decided the outcome of the Serie A, the Italian equivalent of England’s Premier League. Had Roma won and Inter, who went into the game one point ahead, either lost or drawn, then Roma would have been crowned champions. Their opponents, respectively Catania and Parma, had to avoid defeat to escape the drop into the lower division.
The matches ended with Inter winning and becoming champions, which condemned Parma to the drop, while Roma drew, with Catania scoring the equalizer five minutes from the final whistle, a fact that saved them from going down, the second near escape in as many years.  Great news!
In fact, Catania was so happy to have avoided the drop, their substitute players and staff first insulted the Roma bench on hearing that Inter Milan had scored, and again when Catania equalized. After the game, the Catania fans were so happy that their team would be playing in the top flight again next season, they celebrated by going on the warpath against the police.  Again?  'Fraid so!
These people have the smallest brains and the shortest memories, and clearly no shame; their fans were responsible for the death of 38-year-old police officer Filippo Raciti during crowd violence at the end of the Catania-Palermo derby on February 2, 2007.  Just fifteen months ago...

Exploitation

I was sitting at the wine bar enjoying a late morning cappuccino, and the surrounding beauty and atmosphere of the Campo de’ Fiori: the pretty girls in their summer frocks, the smiling, laughing faces, the colours of the market, the lovers walking hand in hand, the shouts of the vendors, the myriad languages of the tourists, the busker singing ‘O Sole Mio’, the pastel colours of the buildings, the restaurants preparing for the lunch invasion, the sun worshippers sitting at pavement tables, their faces turned up to the sky… Perfect.
Perfect until a little girl, she can’t have been more than eight years old, came up to me with her hand out and begged me for money, her practiced eye already sweeping the other tables for potential hits. My answer was an immediate and irrevocable ‘no’, as strong as my contempt for her parents. Not even remotely affected by my refusal, her expression uncaring, unchanging, she moved on to the next target – a table of elderly foreign tourists. And just as her parents knew they would, the tourists (motivated by kindness and, no doubt, a touch of guilt) gave the child a handful of change. I cursed the child’s parents (probably sitting in a Mercedes around the corner ready to collect their pimp earnings) for depriving her of her childhood, of an education...
Don’t give these children money; it just encourages their parents to keep them on the street, exposing them to danger and abuse. It’s no wonder when you look into their eyes you see nothing, the child long gone, hopefully (if you believe in reincarnation) to a far better place.