LATIN LUNACIES

I love Italians. I really do. I am happiest when I am among them and their kindness has been saving me from despair since I was 19 years old. But here are 4 of their foibles that I will never understand:

1. In Modica we’ve been legally able to have the heating on since last Thursday. Yet Sicilians will sit around in their own homes muffled up in several jumpers, scarves and even a jacket rather than put the heating on. Why turn the winter into an endurance test?
2. Food which is meant to be hot is sometimes served stone cold here and everybody finds this perfectly normal. A lot of dishes are made hours in advance so that is one reason and the other is that ovens are a relatively recent addition to most Italian domestic kitchens so it doesn’t occur to many cooks to use them to heat dishes up. Look around any Italian kitchen and, whilst it may be spacious by British standards and there will be a table that pasta can be made on, you will see little counter space. There is certainly no room for a kettle or microwave. Italians just don’t go in for “recipe” concoctions in the way that Brits do and most preparation is quick, takes little space and then the food is usually cooked on the hob.
3. A student has just left here bearing one of those tiny, grid-ruled exercise books that Italians use as children to practise their spindly handwriting and later as adults for all notetaking. When I give this lady printouts, she just folds them and stuffs them into this exercise book. The schoolmarm in me so wants to advise her to purchase – or even purchase for her – a nice A4 file with polypockets. I grit my teeth and remind myself I am dealing with an adult.
4. The way some Italians behave around pets! I have 2 friends who are really jumpy around Simi. “Can’t you tie her up?” asked one as he entered the apartment the other day. I’m not tying up my baby!! She only wants to greet them and receive an acknowledgement of her presence. – What’s the matter with them?! This is Simi’s home as well as mine and if you can’t accept that, don’t come! Kate Fox, in Watching the English , writes: “You see, the English really are quite capable of Latin-Mediterranean warmth, enthusiasm and hospitality; we can be just as direct and approachable and emotive and tactile as any of the so-called ‘contact cultures’. It is just that these qualities are only consistently expressed in our interactions with our animals……People who object to being jumped on, climbed over, kicked, scratched and generally mauled by English animals who are ‘just being friendly’ also clearly have something wrong with them.” Quite.

It is only fair now to cite some British charcteristics that are disturbing to Italians:

1. Ever since the sad McCann affair began in May, I have found myself defending my countrymen and women and trying to convince Italians that we do not, as a matter of course, abandon our children when we go out to dinner. Admittedly, if they are very young we do not often take them with us , but we do normally employ babysitters! No one believes me on this, so convinced are they by the media criticism.
2. On a lighter note, every Italian I have ever met who has visited Britain has commented on the fact that, when washing the dishes, the British do not rinse them. The journalist Beppe Severgnini bears me out here: “No one has been able to explain to me why you insist on flavouring your meals with washing up liquid. I often rinse my plate myself before dinner with friends but I can feel the hostility around me. I wonder when it will occur to you that washing a dish without rinsing it afterwards is bizarre and actually not very good for you.” [I , on the other hand, have often concluded that Italians are “rinsing mad”.]
3. Then there is our plumbing, on which Severgnini has this to say: “No one has explained convincingly why the British persist in installing sinks with 2 widely spaced taps, one for hot water, one for cold, placed at the very edge of the sink, so that when you want to wash your hands, you either scald them or freeze them but you never manage to wash them.” And on bidets: "A more likely explanation for why the bidet has been ignored is that if the British installed them, they would have to use them.”
4. Severgnini also has an opinion on pets: “It seems that no other country in Europe consumes as much water between 7am and 9am as Britain. Now, apart from the fact that people might simply enjoy the sound of running water, remember that half of British families have pets. My theory? In the morning, they run water and bathe them.”

[All Severgnini quotes from An Italian in Britain, 1990.]

Quid pro quo.