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.

So Much Beauty

We sped across the Ponte della Liberta (with Venice in the near distance) to the docks to catch the ferry to the Lido, which was due to sail in about ten minutes. What great timing! Hopefully there’d be room for our car.  The ferry in sight, just a couple of hundred yards to go… and suddenly a traffic cop appeared out of nowhere and waved us to the side of the road. “Just a routine check…” he started.
“No! You’ll make us miss the ferry!” I interrupted.
“Oh,” he stammered, possibly taken aback by my effrontery and my English accent. “Uh… when does it leave?”
“In ten minutes,” I said as I whipped out my drivers licence, the gesture meant to placate his ego. You don’t shout at cops; I couldn’t believe I had.
He studied my licence, casting the occasional glance toward the ferry. “Mmm… expires 2010…” We could see he didn’t want us to miss the ferry, but neither could he just let us go. Then Fate lent him a hand in the shape of another car coming up behind us.  He handed me my licence and waved us on, his dignity restored.
“Thank you,” I smiled, as I put the car in gear and raced away.
Standing on the ferry’s gently humming deck as we sailed up the Canale della Giudecca, I stared in wonder at the wonderful sights – the Molino Stucky Hilton (an old flour mill), Le Zattare, where Venetians like to sunbathe and enjoy their ice cream, the Punta Della Dogana, the Bacino di San Marco with its bell tower, the Palazzo Ducale, the church of San Giorgio, the Riva degli Schiavoni, the Biennale….
I was woken from my reverie by an angry blast of the ferry’s horn, a warning to a smaller craft that was drifting into our path as we approached the Lido.

No Room At The Inn

It was a glorious sunny day, perfect conditions for a six-hour drive to Venice – via Florence (the dome of the Santa Croce cathedral visible in the distance), Bologna and Padova. Nice easy drive, the traffic not too heavy.

Halfway into the trip (to deliver a friend’s furniture to his apartment on the Lido), Andrea and I decided we’d like a slap-up meal (with a good bottle of red wine) to celebrate the start of a three day sojourn from reality (work, bills…). So, turning our noses up at the motorway grills, their greasy fare way beneath our sophisticated palates, we ventured onto secondary roads in search of culinary delights.

Following sign posts proudly indicating the name of a restaurant in the commune of Malalbergo, we got there to find it had just closed (the village, too), like every other restaurant within a fifty kilometre radius. It was too beautiful a day to be discouraged, and we were in no hurry. What we hadn’t taken into account was that, once out of the city, village restaurants do not serve food at all hours; they don’t conjure up enough business.
Hungry (cannibalism a distinct possibility), thirsty, on the verge of collapse, we eventually found and surrendered to the Bar Nirvana (?!?) situated at the end of a long, winding dirt road out in the middle of nowhere (how we got there, neither of us can remember). Andrea had a sandwich with ‘something’ unidentifiable between what he swears were two slices of bread, and I had what bore a distant resemblance to... Could it have been a hamburger?  Thank God for the beer!
On the return trip, will we subject our ‘sophisticated palates’ to a little greasy motorway fare? YES, YES, YES!!!

Singing Nuns...

Apart from having the extreme good fortune of living in Rome, the eternal city, I wake up every morning to the sound of the most exquisite harmonies coming from the terrace opposite my bedroom window. The apartment is inhabited by Spanish nuns who, weather permitting, gather on the terrace to say their prayers and sing a couple of hymns. Religious or not, you can’t help being moved. It makes you want to go out into the world and conquer new horizons.
The atmosphere here is already so romantic: the sun-drenched roofs and ochre coloured buildings, the window boxes filled with flowers, the shouts from the market, a cat sunbathing on someone’s sill, the towering palm tree in the courtyard below, the young couple sitting at a table drinking their morning coffee, the laughter and voices from people unseen, even the washing hanging out to dry…
The singing is the icing on the cake.
You get the feeling that God, when creating the Earth, lingered here, possibly reluctant to leave...

Chalk That One Up To The Black Cat

There’s a rumour going around, actually it’s more than a rumour, that Figo, Inter Milan’s Portuguese star, deliberately ran over a black cat, a resident at the team’s training grounds, because he and some other members of the team blamed it for their current string of bad results, which has allowed second placed Roma to move within just three points of them in Serie A – Italy’s first division.

In Italy, the sight of a black cat - considered the harbinger of bad karma - has everyone running for cover, so there’s no love lost, but Inter fans are incensed that one of their players could do such a thing. Figo vehemently denies the accusation, and is threatening legal action, but his accuser is unrepentant and only too willing to see the ex-Real Madrid footballer in court.
However, the cat’s untimely death has done nothing to end Inter’s run of bad results. On the contrary, Figo was injured in the next match, and today’s game against Siena ended in a 2-2 draw, allowing Roma, who won their match against Atalanta, to come within one point of Inter, who must now win their last game or lose ‘lo scudetto’ - the Serie A championship - and if that happens I know one black cat who’ll be laughing his head off, albeit in cat heaven.

Ammazza Quant'é Bella!

It was a beautiful day, the Campo de’ Fiori basking in warm sunlight, the market awash with colour, people strolling this way and that and weighed down with bags of fresh produce, the cafés packed with tourists (their faces turned to the sun; can’t go home without a serious tan) and locals alike, all enjoying coffee, wine or whatever. Smiling and knowing how lucky I was to have this to look forward to every morning, I sipped my cappuccino and returned to my newspaper.
“Ammazza quant’é bella!” a male voice suddenly cried out. ‘Wow, she is so beautiful!’
I looked up in time to see a man walk straight into one of the Campo’s handful of lampposts. I laughed, thinking it only happened in films. Then I noticed a group of men staring in the same direction. I turned to look and… No! It can’t be!  As star-struck as the rest of the Campo’s male population, I got up and walked over to get a closer look.   It really was her.  Gwyneth Paltrow! Listening to director Dennis Hopper (they were shooting a commercial), she happened to glance my way, see me and smile. Yes, all right, the smile was probably induced by the place, the atmosphere, and was meant for all the men there, but I smiled back, fantasizing for the briefest of moments that her smile was meant for me...

... and me alone.