Lady codgers

I’ve already gone on about the very active elderly male population of Piacenza. They ride around on mopeds, they smoke, heckle argue and gamble in pretty much any bar in the village. But I thought I should probably mention the female equivalent.

In Italy while the older men act like children, the older women look after them – men, children and grandchildren alike, while making ever more complicated pasta dishes, the recipes of which die out with them. And of course they share gossip, too.

When I was growing up, R was the centre of village life. Her house was opposite the bar and also happened to be the local shop. If you wanted to catch the bus, the stop was just outside her front door, and if you wanted to post a letter, the postbox was screwed into the side of her house. To go anywhere in the village you had to go past her, so as a result she knew EVERYTHING.

At night, she would hold court. She and her cronies would gather round swap gossip, and sympathise with R about her zillions of health problems. She is of the “I’m must waiting to die” school of Italian grandmas, where they live life to the full and have a brilliant time but if you ask them how they are, they’ll always say “terrible – I suffer, oh my legs, oh my back, life is such a heavy burden.”

But then earlier this year, R’s husband O died. That’s his picture above. O was such a cool bloke, an active, tanned outdoorsman (the picture shows he was one of Mussolini’s top parachutists – god only knows what the skull and crossbones medal signifies) he’d cared for R right up until he got sick himself. And now when you ask R how she is, she doesn’t say ‘terrible,’ she just bursts into tears.

Her friends are gone and she stays at home alone, talking through her window to whoever happens to be waiting for the bus. But so, so sad. I’ve dropped in on her every time I’ve caught the bus and every time we have the same conversation, about how nice my dad is and what a lovely family we have and how 'brava' I am – she’s lost the will to gossip.

Sorry that this particular entry ended up sad, but I kind of wanted to pay tribute to R, how she was and how she is now. And to O too, who was really lovely (if you don’t think too much about the skull and crossbones.)

More perils of Penelope Pitstop

(the scene of the non-crime)

Every now and then, I do something spectacularly stupid, and today was a corker.

Anyway, these stories always start with me feeling happy, complacent and in control. I had a pleasant journey on the bus, chatting to V and stroking the crap guide dog with my feet, remembering to cough and fidget as often as possible to remind V I was there (I don’t think she ever figured out that I was still on the bus that time) When I got to town, I settled on a step outside the wi-fi centre (which had closed half an hour early just because they can) did some searches for my feature and chatted to my friend. As lunch loomed, I did one more round of the market then went to the Christina Aguilera café and ordered a salad. It had just turned up, and looked delicious, when I suddenly thought…. Hmm, when did I last see my mobile phone?

I’d left it on the steps of the wi-fi centre.

Frantically, I set up Skype and phoned it – it rang once and went straight to answerphone. I felt sick. Someone had picked it up – someone who didn’t want to speak to me. My mind filled up with panicky calculations about how long it would take me to get another phone, how much it would cost me. All the calls to Australia the phone stealing bastard must be making. Everyone in the café started fussing around me, giving me their own phones to use to call mine or to cut it off, muttering darkly about how you could't trust anyone these days and how all kinds of dodgy types hung around the wi-fi centre.

Then my Skype rang. It was the phone stealing bastard!

“Where are you?” he said. “I’ll bring your phone back to you.”

God, the relief. Me and Niccolo, a random café customer who’d decided to make sure phone stealing bastard wasn’t phone stealing rapist, met him under the equestrian statue in Piazza Cavalli. He refused all reward and seemed a genuinely nice bloke. I returned to the café, and a big cheer went up as I held my phone aloft.

He hadn’t made a single call – the only thing he’d done is changed my wallpaper photo to one of a row of beach huts. His reasons for doing this remain a mystery but I’ll keep it that way from now on, as a tribute to the kindness of strangers, and to remind me to be less crap in future.

Paper bag required

I remember reading somewhere that mosquitoes have a kind of soothing anaesthetic in them, so that you don’t actually feel them biting you until they’ve done their dirty work and made their escape. I think the same might be true of hairdressers.

The signs were there. I mean, apart from having to convey the tricky concept of “short but, y’know, not too short… long layers but not too layery, if you know what I mean” which is hard even in your mother tongue, let alone in a foreign language.

The hairdresser doesn’t do appointments, you just rock up and wait, the same way you do in a men’s barber, and instead of having that nice bit at the beginning where they offer you a cup of tea and stroke your hair in a getting-to-know-it sort of way, I told them I wanted “a cut”, then they propelled me through to the back and gave it the roughest scrubbing I’ve ever experienced.

A different person cut it, and a different person dried it, and at the end of an hour I emerged with… ringlets. Hmm. Still, I stared blankly into the mirror and thought: it’s not so bad.

“It’s very…” I struggled to find the Italian word for ‘bouncy’ and failed. Then without even thinking, a big toothy smile just spread over my face and I said. “It’s brilliant, I love it, thank you so much,” and handed over my money. It wasn’t until I got home that I looked in the mirror and wondered if I could possibly stay here for another three months, maybe with a bag over my head or something.

Later that day I ventured out on the bike to get some water in the hope that the wind might mess up the ringlets a little bit, and I found that as well as being cast-iron and wind resistant, it’s also irresistibly attractive to Codgers*. I got two beeps and a brazen stare, all from men who looked well into their 70s. Maybe I remind them of their childhood schoolteachers or something.

*NB: These were not fully fledged Codgers. Proper Codgers do not drive cars, they ride around on old bikes or 50cc motorinos at 3kph with a cigarette hanging out of their mouths and a three mile tailback behind them. It’s the only way to travel.

Best of British

Stumbled on Piacenza's very first European market on the way to the Vodafone shop today. It was all very exciting, with a bunch of men in uniforms or navy blue suits giving rambling speeches before cutting a ribbon. I'd had to throw my breakfast away this morning because there was a dried caterpillar in it (that's All Bran for you - I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference) so treated myself to some "dutch mini crepes" as a late breakfast, then marvelled at all the bizarre stuff on offer, including...

Surfboard size bread from Tuscany (strictly speaking bodyboard size, but still pretty impressive, a good four feet long.)








Giant sausage from Germany - quite frightening, but not as frightening as....








...This pig thing - not sure which country this was from but made me contemplate vegetarianism, except that in Italy I'd probably starve to death.







There were amazing things from each country - tulip bulbs and cheeses from Holland, amazing sausages and cold meats from Germany and Eastern Europe, delicious sugar laden cakes from Sicily. Ireland was represented by a giant Guinness stand, of course. And as for Britain - there was a great big stall draped with Union Jacks and emblazoned with a big slogan saying Best of British, and what did it sell?

Ah, of course, a big pile of tacky stuff!

It took about an hour to fix the dongle, which had gone wrong for absolutely no reason except to make life more challenging.

Bugger.

Like a madwoman I have accepted another commission. It's only a small one, I can deal with it.

And there are some wonderful things about freelancing abroad – like haring through the cobbled streets in a Fiat 126 with some woman I barely know from Adam, looking at random locations around Piacenza that might possibly be relevant to a story. Or like the fact that instead of sitting isolated in a London flat I can wander off for my coffee breaks and drink an espresso with my new pal V and her crap guide dog (great at detecting biscuits, not so great at detecting overhanging branches). Or that at the end of a long hard day I can go for a bike ride in the mountains or run down to the river and just plunge in. Those are the good things.

And there are some not so wonderful things, like the fact that my dongle has quit on me for absolutely no explicable reason. One minute fine, the next minute software completely kaput. Right in the middle of something really flipping important. Sigh.

The hat must go

I’m really fond of my white cap and this summer it’s gone with me practically everywhere. It’s been soaked with drizzle at Guilfest, drenched with red wine at Farmfest, then was lovingly rinsed out again in time for me to wear it as I trudged around the streets of Piacenza looking for decent wi-fi access. But it may be time to retire it.

The first sign came last week when I got back from the Small Town 1 market day and ran into my next door neighbour, who said: “I caught a glimpse of you at the market and for a minute I thought you were your grandmother.”

“Hmm…” last time I checked, I wasn’t 89, although the sun might have aged me a bit. “How so?” I asked.

“You know, she used to wear that white cap all the time so it gave me a bit of a shock.”

Then I remembered that during her last years of freedom, Nonna never left the house in summer without her white sea captain’s hat and aviator glasses. Pretty avant garde for her generation, but not the look I was going for.

I shoved that thought to the back of my mind, but then yesterday as I was walking to the flute concert with Cousin A and her best friend, the best friend said “When I looked out of my apartment window and saw the two of you walk past I thought A had taken her father out for a stroll. You know, because he wears that white cap…”

I’d fooled myself into thinking I looked kooky and a little bit 60s in it, but it seems that I look as if I’m in my 60s. Or 70s, or 80s. Maybe it’s time to buy a new hat.

Pensioner?

Lazy Sunday afternoon

When August turned to September it’s like some kind of switch was flicked. All of a sudden the weather is warm, but it’s not like being beaten over the head with a  hammer, the way it was in August. It’s warm and gentle and lovely to lie out in. And, without sounding too poncy, the light is all soupy and golden and rich and just different to August sunlight. I don’t know why all the Italians choose this time to go back to work.

My cousin A called me halfway through the morning and said she was planning to drive out to her in-laws’ empty house on the other side of the valley and sunbathe by their swimming pool – was I in? Of course I was.

So after a morning of cleaning the house and pushing a few words around on the computer, I bikini-d up and jumped in her car. Spent the afternoon with her and her sister in law, baking in the sun, cooling off in the pool, talking about work and relationships and other normal women’s stuff. Then afterwards we went to my aunt’s for dinner, where I was force fed tortelli followed by pizza, followed by crudo, coppa bread and cheese, followed by profiteroles (note the absence of veg once again). Afterwards my cousin and I climbed the steep hill to the Chiesa Madonna Del Castello, and listened to a flute and harp recital wending its way across the valley.

There are worse ways to spend Sunday 6th September than this.

Two wheels good

Have borrowed my cousin’s bike!

Time taken to ride it from my cousin’s house to here: 30 minutes

Distance covered: About 9k

Average steepness: Bloody steep, but some fun downy bits

Amount of bugs swallowed on journey: Four (that I know of)

Amount of times nearly mown down by truck: Once (not bad for Italian road)

Amount of limbs lost: None. Yay!

I am now officially mobile, provided the temperature stays under 25 degrees and the roads aren’t too steep. This presents a bit of a problem as the temperature is solidly above 25 degrees and I’m living in a valley but hey, am happy to potter up and down the SS45 and travel only at dawn or dusk (travelling after then is way too terrifying. Italian drivers are nuts enough as it is, when it gets dark they get even worse)

The blind leading the blind (Alert: may contain non PC material)

The bus really is a wonderful place to make friends (as opposed to in London where the bus is a wonderful place to meet serial killers) although frankly I’m lucky that the person I got chatting to today feels halfway friendly towards me.

I’ve seen V around the village a couple of times, using a white stick and with a tubby Labrador trotting around her, usually off its lead, and this morning she walked past the bus stop and stood chatting to the local gossip, R, before standing by the side of the road anxiously listening to the traffic.

When I was about 12 years old someone I knew was killed on that exact spot of road, and as the traffic started haring past her the dog seemed to be dithering, and V looked nervous, so when there was a break in traffic I leapt forward and asked if I could help.

“Yes please,” she said, so I started to guide her across the street. We were halfway across when she said: “Er… I’m waiting for the bus actually.”

Cringeing and apologising copiously I led her back over the road and, thank God, the bus turned up seconds later. She got on first, and I sat on the opposite side of the aisle to her. We had a lovely conversation about the dog (V’s training her up) about her daughter and her late husband. We found out we lived quite near each other, and I waffled on about London being ‘molto grande’. I even managed to do without my usual habit of gesticulating when I can't think of the right word and she seemd to understand most of what I was saying.

Eventually she asked “are we getting near Piacenza yet? Can you let me know when we get to blah street?”

Sadly I had no idea where blah street was, so I decided to just tell her roughly where we were, so she had an idea of when to get off. “Well, we’re in Via Genova now…” I said.

As we pulled up to the stop, she gathered her things together as if preparing to get off the bus and said:

“Well it’s been lovely chatting to you…”

“You too – drop in for a coffee sometime.”

“Love to!” The door of the bus opened and I waited for her to get off, but she didn’t. The door closed again, and V started humming quietly to herself while I tried to think of a way to keep the conversation going. Until slowly I realised that she hadn’t intended to get off at that stop at all – she thought I had.

I spent the next 10 minutes being as quiet and still as possible, avoiding the driver’s amused eye, and trying not to yell out when she dumped her shopping bag on my lap.

Realised I am not going to receive an award for services to the blind anytime soon.

Long live the party

Thanks to a lift from my cousin, I managed to catch the last night of the Rivergaro Annual Communist Party Party. Of course it’s not called that any more. When I was growing up it was called the Festival of Unity and involved lots of red flags, posters of Lenin and an accordion band playing polkas, waltzes and mazurkas. But these days the Party has rebranded itself the Democratic Party (isn't every party called that these days?) and renamed the festival Rivergaro Rocks. 

Polkas and politics were in hiding, instead we got The Catastrophic Band (this is actually what they’re called, not a sarky name I’ve given them.) They’re bunch of fortysomething rockers with a sexily-leather-clad-but-pregnant lady lead singer, whose belting voice was spoiled only by her not so perfect English (at one point during U2's One I swear she sang Love is a pimple, love’s the higher law) 

Then came a bunch of lads who were absolutely brilliant. Better than lots of the other bands I’ve seen this year (that’ll be you, purple tights bloke at Farmfest) and they wrote their own stuff too. I tried to film them but my camera doesn't do night. Or sound. So you'll just have to use your imaginations. 

I munched on tortelli and kebabs, chose a drink from the vast selection (beer, water or espresso) and bopped my head like a happy idiot until the end of the evening when the band signed off, and the sound system launched into the Internationale, the one reminder that this evening’s entertainment was brought to you by the Wonders of Socialism. At least that’s a song that never changes.

Silly statuary

Lovely trip to Milan this weekend. Finally after 36 years of visiting Italy (37 if you count that one trip in utero) I’ve stayed there for more than three hours and actually had a look around the place. It goes without saying the shops are great – it also goes without saying I didn’t go into many of them (see entries below re: freelance work and financial situation) but I still had a great time going from café to café, touring the castle and the Monet exhibition, and finally climbing onto the roof of the fantastical sugar-plum fairy cathedral. This was my favourite bit, not just for the views of the city but also because of the creative carvings. I know, I know, I'm a philistine but really they are very special. My favourites include:

A naked-butt boxing match that goes on for three pillars and that is Not Homoerotic In Any Way (I think the bloke on the right won in the end)

A man who obviously had a dodgy curry last night

A woman who I'm going to sign up for a "boob job nightmares" story

A punk vampire duck

Not sure what any of these things have to do with God. I’m sure if I searched online I could find the hidden meaning behind them all, but I prefer to just think the stonemasons just got a bit bored after all those angels and saints and figured “oh well, it’s on the roof, nobody’s going to see it anyway” then amused each other by making stuff up.

Zpeak ve-ry-zlo-li

About 10 years ago, my Italian reached caveman level and stopped. For some reason, no matter how hard I try I can’t seem to get any better. OK, I occasionally pick up an interesting word or two (did you know that finocchio, which is Italian for fennel, is also slang for gay? I haven’t worked out yet whether it’s a homophobic insult or an affectionate nickname.) I understand most of what goes on around me and sometimes I can communicate some quite complicated ideas. But I’m still limited to the sort of sentences Tarzan would use: “Me Like Italy. Me Go In Milan. Me Make Fire, Fire Pretty.”

For a long time I found this really frustrating, but I recently realised there are advantages to the fact that everyone assumes you’re a moron. In other words, when you do something wrong, nobody’s very surprised or disappointed, and when you do something right – something really intelligent like remembering your door key or getting on the right train – everyone is overwhelmingly proud of you. Low expectations can be quite liberating.

For example this morning I dropped a parcel and a couple of letters off at the post office. I then mooched across the road to the tabaccheria where I was queuing for bus tickets when suddenly there was a tap on my shoulder – it was the bloke from the post office, holding out one of the cards I’d given him. I realised that in a stroke of genius I had forgotten to put the address on. In England this would have been the cue for much apologising and explanation but there was no way my language skills could stretch to it. I settled for “I regret. I forgot the address.”

I then had to grit my teeth through a friendly lecture, in which he patiently revealed that “if you don’t put an address on the envelope, it won’t get there.” But I could see he didn’t think I was a moron, just an innocent foreign babe in the dark scary woods of the international postal service. I flashed him a grateful smile, and with a friendly wave he headed back to the post office. He had the warm glowing feeling of having done a good deed – I got two seconds of humiliation in exchange for not having sent a birthday card to nowhere – everyone was a winner.

Of course I have to add a special PS – when would a London post office worker ever even cross a room to help you, let alone a whole street…

Codgerology

I love market day, it’s one of the few things about Italian country life that hasn’t changed at all since I was a kid, especially the day in Small Town 1, the only town within walking distance of where I live (internet reception: nil). It’s a market untroubled by knockoff DVDs or mobile phone accessory stalls, preferring to concentrate instead on the widest selection of tablecloths and kitchenware known to man, boxy shoulder padded blouses for elderly women, fruit, cheese, salami and agricultural machinery. And it’s here that I see one of my favourite examples of Italian wildlife: The Codger.

When he was alive, my grandfather was a codger par excellence. The moment he stepped off the plane from London, after kissing the ground and downing half a bottle of red wine that is, he’d kit himself out in the regulation codger uniform: bellywarmer trousers that would make even Simon Cowell shrink away, vest and/or shirt, braces (Nonno’s were a colourful red and green) and a trilby hat of dubious age and condition.

If you have a huge roman nose, no hair and no teeth, that helps complete the look perfectly. You then deposit yourself in the same bar you’ve been going to since 1927 with all your cronies, and proceed to argue in dialect, play cards for high steaks (or salami, or coppa, or other meat products) and gesticulate wildly at everyone around you. I have no idea what they talk about, but I think a lot of it involves the war, ogling young women and how nobody these days has any respect.

But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend recently. The old-style Codger is dying out, to be replaced by Codger v2.0. These men have no respect for their traditional heritage. They flaunt themselves in polo-shirts and designer shades pushed up onto their heads. Their trousers, instead of skimming high over the pasta-belly, skirt under it. Some of them even have the effrontery to wear denim shorts.

I propose the founding of a SNPCI – Societa Nazionale per la Preservazione del Codger Italiano. This will involve special Codger Fridays in which every man over 65 is legally obliged to wear a vest and braces, tax incentives for people to let their teeth go, and a special discount on hats. Believe me, there are weirder laws in Italy.

But sadly I don’t think it’s going to catch on, and I can imagine years into the future when the boys I swooned over as a teenager become Codgers v3.0. They’ll still be gathered outside the same bar, but instead of trilby hats and toothlessness, the look will be all about wrinkly celtic armband tattoos, battered birkenstocks and gadgety watches. Occasionally they’ll break into an old-time tune: sono il Firestarter, twisted Firestarter and sigh with the nostalgia of it. Meanwhile young Italian twentysomethings will file past them on the way to the trendier bar in the square, shake their heads and swear: “I’ll never end up like that.”

A scary kind of freedom

I’m sitting on the balcony at the moment, watching the last glimmer of yellow on the hillsides opposite my house, flapping my hands pointlessly at the mosquitoes and playing my favourite twilight nature game: “bird or bat?” This morning I filed my last piece of copy until I come home. And although I am sure there will be questions on that bit of copy, the intensity of scrabbling around for phone lines and internet connections and case studies stops here.

Today I wrote an email letting someone down, saying I couldn’t do work I had hoped to be able to do. I still feel a tight ping of panic in my head as I think about it. I wonder if that person will ever employ me again. I wonder if word will get around and I will get a Reputation for Unreliability. But it can’t be avoided. I’ve realised that it’s virtually impossible to freelance from here and make a profit. Reluctantly I have to let it go before it kills me and hope and pray I can get plenty of work when I come home.

So now it’s just me, the scenery and the Manuscript. And an ever dwindling purse of monies, of course. There’s no backing out now.

Quitting (actually written on Saturday)

OK, God, Universe, Supreme being or whatever, I get the message. Freelancing long term from Italy is not an option.

I had a nice, leisurely morning seeing my sister off at the station, then I mooched over to the Palazzo Farnese to use their free broadband service. It being lunchtime on a Saturday they were about to close for half day – because who wants to go and see a tourist attraction on a Saturday afternoon? So I perched on the wall next to the drawbridge with my computer and tried not to fall into the dried out moat while I caught up with some friends via Skype and sent drivelly emails. So far, so good, the technology gods were smiling on me today. I went home for lunch. I got ready in order to catch the 3.30 bus into Rivergaro to do my interview from my cousin’s office at half past four. I lumped my rucksack up to the bus stop and waited.

And waited, and waited, until my skin sizzled in the sun.

The bus stop is situated opposite the local bar an old-school cobwebby place owned by a couple and their son. They’re not bad people, I just don’t think they’re especially fond of foreigners. Or people from outside the province. Or the village. I asked the owner whether he’d seen the bus, and got a ‘no’ shrug. I asked whether he thought the bus might be late and got a ‘how should I know’ shrug. I said I’d been waiting a while and he shrugged again, and said: “Meh, it’s the weekend. Sometimes the buses don’t come.”

I took a couple of seconds to digest this catastrophe. The next bus was at five, half an hour after my interview was due. That’s of course if it turned up at all. I asked the barman if they still had a payphone and he shrugged in the direction of the interior.

After giving the greasy, tobaccoey-smelling phone a once over with a damp tissue I tried my BT chargecard. Nothing. I tried again, nothing again. I started to cry. Pathetic, but true. It just seemed like every time I tried to get things under control, something else ridiculous happened to spoil it. Like the entire universe doesn't want me to freelance from Italy, and I was sick of fighting it.

I did a quick sum and worked out that if I talked to my interviewee on the mobile my bill would end up swallowing half my fee, so called quickly, rearranged the interview for an hour’s time. Still crying a bit I walked about half a mile up the road to the next bar along and tried their payphone. It didn’t work either and now I was rancid, shiny with sweat and my eyes looked all swollen and wrinkly like a chameleon’s. The lady who runs this bar tried to help me, but nothing worked. “I need to get to Rivergaro,” I gasped. “But there’s no buses…”

Just at that moment an unfortunate maths teacher called Nicole wanders into the bar to buy a packet of cigarettes. Within a couple of moments, she’s been roped into giving me a lift. “I don’t mind,” she says. “You don’t have a dangerous face.” By then I had a gremlin’s face more than anything. But luckily neither of us was a murderer and I made it to Rivergaro without being dismembered.

Of course, by then, according to the Universal Law of Case Studies, my interviewee was out.

Every vegetarian's nightmare

The only big bugbear about food in Italy is the lack of veg. Talk all you want about althose wrinkly old ladies living forever thanks to the Mediterranean diet, but that was in the days when women got up at 5am to scrub their front steps (I still see people doing this. Or hear them at least before I turn over and go back to sleep) the days before you could buy as much meat as you wanted at the local supermarket. In those old days when meat was a treat people fantasised about eating it every day - and now our dreams have come true. So why on earth would you want vegetables when you could have another helping of dead animal?

Last night I went to my cousin’s house for a barbecue, the menu for which was as follows:

Starter: Selected salami, Coppa, prosciutto crudo, bread, two small slivers of barbecued courgette

Followed by: Sausage kebab

Followed by: A big slab of steak

Followed by: Pork kebab

Followed by: Tiramisu

Followed by: Torta Crostata (a giant jam tart with a criss-cross pastry pattern on it)

Followed by: Fruit! Phew. Am not going to die of scurvy just yet.

Not complaining though – each animal fat based dish was more delicious than the last, especially the home made tiramisu. And my cousin’s place is beautiful, set high up in the mountains between two valleys, with nothing but fields and forests in view, it was incredibly peaceful. There’s also a new ‘English pub’ in the village which is about as English as Silvio Berlusconi but I didn't mind the absence of damp beer mats and sticky mahogany tables too much.

Signing off now - off to look up heart attack statistics for Emiglia Romagna.

Feeling hot hot hot

Yesterday I filed copy while wearing a bikini. That sounds like a wonderful, glamorous thing to do, but I was wearing a bikini because it’s so hot that you can almost touch the air around you. Its so hot you could probably fry an egg on the poor little Mac, which wheezes and complains but plods loyally on.

I think I’ve slid into that classic English trap of thinking that the Mediterranean siesta is just an excuse for laziness and that if they had any gumption at all they’d just press on through like any Brit would. That was before The Days Of 39 Degrees.

I’m sending emails, semi delirious with heat, god alone knows what they say. All the sensible locals are hiding away at home or cooling themselves in air conditioned offices. I’m the only one in the café barring the waitress. She looks surprised when I order a two litre bottle of water, and even more surprised when I pour half of it over my feet to try and stay cool.

On the plus side I have fixed the air conditioning in my hire car. Apparently if you want it to work you have to actually turn it on. Go figure.

My technology trials

Ever get the feeling that someone up there is telling you not to do something? This is how I have spent the last week, instead of putting smug posts on here about how sunny it is. I'm sorry if this is boring, but writing it has been very therapeutic. Living it, however, wasn't.

Thursday - arrive!

House has no electricity

The dongle doesn’t seem to be compatible with my mac

Friday:

Go to Vodafone shop and they upload some mac-type software - yay!

Wait three hours for pay-as-you-go deal to kick in feeling very positive

When I get home, it doesn’t work.

But the electricity is back on!

Saturday:

Told the dongle would never work at my house due to crap reception

Discover it works in Town

Discover wi-fi hotspot in town

Discover cannot recharge computer at wi-fi hotspot so have to move every two hours

Find out I can sneakily plug my computer into the wall of a restaurant (under the archy bit in the picture)

And it has a wi-fi network I can secretly tap into

Although Skype doesn’t work in that spot, only in the wi-fi hotspot

Skype doesn’t always work in the wi-fi hotspot, by the way just sometimes when the wind is blowing the right way and mercury is in retrograde

And have to stay indoors with increasingly hot laptop and no A/C 

Sunday:

Whole of town closed. Can’t work

Monday:

Manage to do a Skype interview in Rivergaro (nearby small town)

Out of power so have to charge up at uncle’s house and eat enormous five course meal and try to understand his dialect.

Get to Piacenza to discover Skype not working

Go to buy a mobile phone and find that the shop is closed for the rest of August

Discover that the Wi-Fi hotspot will have limited opening hours all next week due to national holiday.

The signal is still there 24/7

But would have to sit in a courtyard with my laptop on my knees.

Back to restaurant, with no Skype.

Discover last bus home is around 7pm, therefore no possibility of working late.

Discover this after I have missed it.

Tuesday:

Find rather nice café near the hotspot where wi-fi works

Skype still doesn’t work

Then when I attach the dongle and stay in the same spot, it does. I think I have found a civilised new home.

But then café owner puts on very loud Christina Aguilera medley while I am doing an interview

And two ice teas cost me eight euros

And she won’t let me plug my computer in to charge.

I leave my new home, too embarrassed to charge computer up in restaurant for a second time that day and go home

Go back to Rivergaro, computer out of power, in tears of desperation. Phone cousin to ask for help but she’s going to the opera.

Back home I walk to Travo (only small town within walking distance) sit on church steps and check reception. Niente.

Decide to hire car to have the working late in Piacenza option

Wednesday:

Manage to do successful interview in wi-fi hotspot

Out of battery power – back to restaurant

Pick car up at 3pm and drive out to Rivergaro

Work in Rivergaro café. Skype sometimes working sometimes not. Very loud Stock Aitken and Waterman music. No aircon. Battery runs down at 6pm.

Cousin offers use of her office until Monday as it’s closed for the holidays

Manage to get Skype working at 10pm in a random car park long enough to interview someone in NYC 

Thursday:

Arrive in office. Air conditioning! Internet connection on creaky PC! Water cooler! Toilet that isn’t a hole in the floor! Electricity!

Skype doesn’t work and need to do lots of interviews today

Remember have BT Chargecard number from old address. Start using that instead via cousin’s landline.

Emails start inexplicably failing to send

Can’t get hold of interviewee – v frustrating as can’t just leave her a message to call me. Have abandoned Skype number as total waste of time and money

Slowly interviews and copy pieced together and start to see light at end of tunnel

Friday:

Office! Luxury! Joy!

Then BT chargecard stops working

Ring four different helplines and nobody seems to know what’s happening

Get through to lovely David Monk on BT chargecard helpline, man with sense of humour and also just sense. Find out I’ve run out of credit because I have spent more than £60 on the chargecard in 24 hours at 50p a minute.

Get more money put on chargecard – no choice really unless I want to sit in a sun-beaten car park for two hours at a time

Skype starts working! I make the most of it by talking manically on the phone to everyone I can get hold of.

Finally it’s the weekend – and I think I have just enough info available to start writing on the balcony without having to go online or phone people.

I’m thinking of taking a bit of time off when this is done…

 

 

Time to go

The flat is quiet on my second to last morning here. Upstairs in the living room my sister is fast asleep on the inflatable air mattress, surrounded by boxed-up bits of my life. It took two carloads for me to move in here. Now, six months later, I've had to buy 25 boxes and hire a van.

There are four plastic sacks full of clothes, a huge box of beauty products I never use and an entire bag stuffed to the brim with coathangers. Just hangers, nothing else. I just seem to accumulate crap as I roll through life.

Next to my bed is the one bag that isn't going into storage, the one I'm taking with me to Italy. It's not big enough. It makes me feel wobbly not having my things around me, I keep panicking and shoving more stuff in, as if the more I have the more I'll be able to control the next eight weeks.

It's funny how everyone's reacted to the idea of me going to Italy to think about life, work, relationship breakups etc. My friends are really excited, predicting some kind of chick-lit coming-of-age romance with a totally unsuitable Italian man. Some people think I'm doing the wrong thing, abandoning my life when it's in a crisis. Interestingly my mum is supportive, even though it means I won't see her for a couple of months.

I know it's the right thing to do, though. If it doesn't work I can always come back, having tried. My whole adult life I've always known where I'm going to be this time next week, next month and next year. And for the first time I have no idea. So let's just see where it takes me.