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.