Now it's official: every palermitano who drives - and that's most adults - spent 147 hours stuck in traffic during 2015. Thus the city earns the dubious honour of being the worst in Italy for traffic congestion, according to the TomTom Traffic Index. Rome comes second, Messina third, Naples fourth, Milan fifth and Catania sixth.
In the table for Europe, Palermo is fourth, after Łódź, Moscow and Bucharest and Rome is in ninth position.
Mexico City "wins" first place for congestion in the world table and is followed by Bangkok, Łódź, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro. Rome is 15th, London 16th, Manchester 25th and Athens 29th.
Dear old Cardiff, for those of you who are interested, has no world ranking - presumably because of its size - but was 121st in the "all cities" congestion index.
I'm sure you're wondering, as I am, what the palermitani do with all this time that they spend in traffic jams: Do they read their smartphones or newspapers? Do they occasionally dart out of their stationary vehicles to consume a quick espresso? I rather think they watch each other and the world around them and indulge in the occasional good-natured shouting match.
So after visiting the UK for the first time in eight years, what changes did I note? I tend to notice weird, often insignificant things, so here are my weird observations, in no particular order:
Handbags are still on the small side.
Eateries are noisier than Italian ones but at least they are free of the ubiquitous televisions you find in the latter.
Why did I get a separate "glass of ice" every time I asked for ice in my mineral water?
There is a craze for sweet potato chips.
Halloween has become a more pleasant festival than I remembered.
When did people start saying "See you later" to mean "soon/sometime/never"?
I was interested to see what kind of shops have survived the recession and was surprised to find several novelty shops in the centre of Cardiff still there.
I was negatively flabbergasted at the cost of public transport and positively so at its efficiency [after 10 years in Modica].
I was relieved that most people I talked to were more sympathetic to refugees than when I left and than the media would lead one to believe now. I was also relieved that most people I met did not think the UK will leave the EU.
Et plus ça ne change pas.....
As a post scriptum on my trip home, here is a note to Comiso Airport, a clean and efficient facility that we are justly proud of in these parts: I know Sicilians don't like to be comfortable, but the rest of the world does, so please can we have some seating outside the airport? Weary travellers waiting to be picked up after you close need somewhere to sit!
As regular readers will know, I have enjoyed all three series of MasterChef Italiaand have written about the programme several times, the most recent post being this one.
It had been a long time since I'd watched MasterChef UK but this year - thanks to the wonders of technology - I managed it and what a series it has been! Last night's episode from Barcelona was a joy to watch and tonight's final kept everyone guessing until the very last minute. For those of you who are not in the UK, the deserving winner was this lady.
I must say I found the series very refreshing and calm after the noise and clamour of the Italian version! That is not to imply that the contestants do not work flat out in the UK version, because they do. They just don't let their inner panic show and, although a few tears of relief and exhaustion are not unheard of at the end of particularly challenging rounds, emotion is largely contained.
The British contestants do not argue with the judges, make bitchy or near-racist remarks about each other, clap themselves or sulk and, strangely enough, the programme's twitter commenters do not generally tweet their observations about the contestants' or judges' appearance or clothes [and here I must confess that I couldn't help asking where Spanish guest judge Christian Escribà got his spectacles last night]. It would also be hard to imagine the UK judges throwing dishes they don't like across the studio, à la Joe Bastianich.
From watching the series, I have learnt that in my own country there is a fashion for "deconstructing" classic dishes, a concept which would be incomprehensible to an Italian, to whom a tiramisù, for instance, is a tiramisù and if it is deconstructed, it is something, or several things, else. The British cooks, inspired by some of their country's top chefs, also have a penchant for precariously leaning one piece of food against another, creating dishes with at least seventeen component parts [ or "throwing too much at a plate", as a series catchphrase goes] and for serving dishes which consist of just one piece of pasta - beautifully filled, admittedly, but horrifying to an Italian cook.
On this programme, no one can pronounce pistacchio, bruschetta or gnocchi and chefs and voice-over lady alike have trouble with the concept that pasta types are plural.
But what has really surprised me is the extent to which the British chefs use their bare hands during the cooking process and in "plating up". [Incidentally , the Italian equivalent of this word, impiattare, has just entered the dictionary.] They even use their hands to press down food that is in a hot pan and there is never a catering glove in sight! Yes, I know you have to use your bare hands sometimes and my own mother used to say, "A good cook uses her hands" but there are some limits! I suppose this has struck me because Italians are very fussy about not touching food with their hands, especially when they're eating in public. If you are served a croissant with jam in a bar, for instance, it won't come on a plate with a knife and a little pot of jam; the jam will have been injected in and the croissant will be part-wrapped in a paper napkin so that you don't have to touch it with your hands. The only exception to this "no hands" rule is, of course, pizza.
Anyway, the British series is over for another year and I'm wondering who I can fall in love with now that lovely, knowledgeable chef John Torode and Cockney charmer Gregg Wallace will not be popping up on my screen on Wednesday - Friday nights. During the Italian series, you may remember, I was rather taken with Italy's "sexy chef" Carlo Cracco and I did start watching his Hell's Kitchen Italiaseries. I stopped, however, after an episode in which two teams of contestants were taken to a farm to "catch" the animals for the food they were to prepare. I do eat meat and that means I have to accept that animals are killed to feed me but I don't have to watch people making a game of it.
I have one suggestion for John, Gregg and the MasterChef UK team - next year, why not bring the contestants to Modica, the chocolate town?
Pets here, although loved, are often not regarded as part of the family in the way that British ones are - that is, living indoors, with the freedom to wander, investigate and yes, if they feel like it, destroy at will - and I still have friends who expect me to put Simi on the balcony during their visits.
"Sorry", I say [although I am not], "she's my baby and no one puts babies on the balcony." This usually provokes the hands-in-air gesture which means, "Ah, well, she's British - pazienza" and a sigh of surrender. Simi, meanwhile, does not understand why my Sicilian friends object to having her sit on their heads so after they've gone I , in my turn, say "Pazienza" and explain to her that they can't help it - they're Italian.
We were both pleased, therefore, to read today that Aidaa, Italy's Association for the Protection of Animals and the Environment, has suggested that pet-owners bestow their surname upon their four-legged best friends and have it added to their microchips. The main aim of this measure, says the Association, is to make our pets even more easily identifiable but also to make them officially and legally part of the family.
Simi, who on formal occasions always uses her full name of Simone Eggleton de Beauvoir, has this to say about it:
What a beautifully set table there was at a party to celebrate my friends' 50th wedding anniversary on Saturday:
The menu consisted of dishes that brought back memories of places where the couple had lived and you may be able to see the little Spoleto pizze at the top of the place settings. The antipasti were all Italian but the main course was roast beef and Yorkshire puddings!
I've mentioned before that a lot of Sicilians are reluctant to try foreign food and so it was with the Yorkshire puddings and gravy. "Peggio per loro - so much the worse for them", as this meant that there was more for the British contingent.
There were three kinds of anniversary cake - an Italian sponge, a chocolate cake and a traditional British wedding cake, which further perplexed some of the Italians. Those who did try it, though, agreed with the Brits that it was delicious.
I think you need a closer look at the cakes:
I had a lovely time and felt honoured to have been invited so "happy anniversary" again, my dear friends.
OK, own up: who's got a bidet? What do you think of them and do you use them? And who, among the Brits, does not have a friend who thinks these contraptions are for washing your feet?
Italians, of course, love their bidets and 97% of households have them. Portugal and France are second and third in the European bidet-ownership table.
Much indignation, therefore, was expressed yesterday when it was reported that Italy had received a €50,000 fine from the EU for not obeying a directive to remove bidets from public and private premises because the installations waste both water and space.
I remember a student of mine being horrified, a few years ago, when I told her that the British do not have bidets installed in their bathrooms as a matter of course. "How", she cried, "do you wash yourselves down there?!" "In the bath or the shower", I replied, causing her to sigh at this further proof of Anglo-Saxon ineptitude with regard to our private parts and I could see that she was beginning to worry about me. "What if you need to do it quickly?" she continued. "You can't have a shower five times a day!" I said there were ways.
Given the amount and variety of "intimate" gels, wipes and deodorants on sale in Italy, you would never imagine that Italians used the bidet quite so often, but there you are:
Paisi ca vai, usanzi che trovi - Places you go to, customs that you find.
Sicilian proverb
Popular politician and Mayor of Florence Matteo Renzi was reported to have said that the removal of the bidet was a first step to a Europe united by matters other than money and Lega Nord politician Roberto Calderoli that Italy's Celts weren't worried because they could wash themselves in the [aptly named] Po.
Alas, it was all a joke which began with an item on the satirical site AnsIapress but we enjoyed it while it lasted. I haven't seen my Sicilian friends so indignant since a set of traffic lights appeared at a busy Modican junction some years ago. The offending lights were regarded as an infringement of Modicans' civil liberties and, unlike the island's bidets, were soon removed.
In 1965 the theatre critic Kenneth Tynan became the first person to use a certain four-letter word on British television. Despite the intellectual context of the remark, the incident caused a sensation and I remember, from that time, a newspaper cartoon in which a man, flicking at leisure through his own newspaper, is unmoved by reports of war, tragedy and disaster. When he comes upon a report of the Tynan incident, however, the man is so ouraged that he starts shouting and threatening all kinds of legal action and protest.
I was reminded of this cartoon when I read the other day of the 139 people who had complained to the BBC about TV presenter Holly Willoughby's attire in the final programme of this season's series of the British talent show "The Voice". In the end the BBC had to apologise and even the quality British press had a field day with "boob" puns. The dress in question is revealing and might not be very tasteful but it is hardly offensive or scandalous - or have I become Italianised?
The matter of Miss Willoughby's dress has been reported in Italy, too but with considerable puzzlement because no one can see what is wrong with it. How times have changed! When I first came to Italy in 1969 I was always being told that my dresses were "too low" [I didn't have the legs for mini-skirts but I did have boobs] and I felt I had to cover the upper part of my body wherever I went. [In a photo I've kept of myself in one of these "low-cut" dresses, there is no hint of cleavage at all to be seen.] These days, necklines are not only much lower here but you are nobody if you don't have half of your breasts exposed vertically as well. Even Sophia does it so it must be all right. [You have to have the right bra, of course, and, as I've written before, Italians are absolutely brilliant at bra manufacture.]
I've still got boobs and am getting to the age when I shouldn't show them, I know. I've got a few low-cut day dresses and every time I wear one I remind myself that I wouldn't get away with it in the UK, where men often deal with femininity by insulting it. My dresses - and my body - are nothing like Miss Willoughby's but , with the help of the Italian lingerie industry, I'm enjoying my final seasons of the "If you've got it, flaunt it" variety!
When I first saw the news on my twitter feed just before lunchtime yesterday, I decided not to retweet it or comment before I was sure it was true, as hoax tweets on this subject had been posted before. [Apparently some people who do not have a life find it amusing to spread rumours of the death of others.] It was only when Alex Crawford of Sky News tweeted the announcement that I realised it must be true and just afterwards online newspapers reported it and the news went around the world.
How, then, is it being reported in Italy? Yesterday it was, here as elsewhere, the top story and most papers used Margaret Hilda Thatcher's most famous nickname and emphasised the fact that she was Britain's "first and only" female Prime Minister. Much coverage was given to David Cameron's statement and soon collections of the lady's most famous quotes were appearing in Italian sources. Several women's pages have given space to her dress sense and the online edition of Io Donna, Corriere della Sera's women's magazine, has an article entitled Addio al tailleur più temuto del mondo - Farewell to the most feared suit in the world. I rather liked that one. [I don't remember Winston Churchill's or Ted Heath's fashion choices making the headlines when they died but those of other male world leaders might - you never know.]
Most online editions here made the funeral arrangements their top story for a few hours today but political turmoil at home has knocked Thatcher news off Italian front pages tonight and you actually have to search quite hard for it. When you do find it, you encounter Italian correspondents' puzzlement at the different grades of VIP funerals that can be held in Britain and genuine dismay that the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales was "only" what is known in Britain as a "ceremonial" one [that is, with full military honours but not a full state funeral]. Baroness Thatcher is to be accorded this type of funeral.
The other element of this story which is being reported here with puzzlement and shock is the fact that some of my compatriots are celebrating the death of Margaret Thatcher. Corriere della Sera calls this type of rejoicing "macabre". The Italian press are also picking up on the fact that the "Iron Lady", though admired for her strength around the world, was, at home, a deeply divisive figure and remains so in death. The striking differences in the way newspapers in Britain have chosen to remember her are being reported with surprise and wonderment.
Meanwhile, film maker Ken Loach's caustic comment that the funeral "should be privatised because she'd have wanted it" is receiving more coverage here than it has at home.
People I have spoken to today seem to be under the impression that Britain is plunged into national mourning on a Diana-esque scale, which is not true, and do not understand why it takes ten days to organise a funeral. I have told them that it doesn't because the funeral will have been planned years ago but that the time is probably needed to put in place the massive security that will be required.
Britons, then, continue to argue about Margaret Thatcher and the world looks on in interest and bewilderment.
Far be it from me to defend a Tory but if British Chancellor of the Exchequer [Finance Minister] George Osborne is feeling put upon, he could do worse than spend a few days in Italy, where he might find himself rather popular or, at the very least, a phenomenon.
For those of you who don't know the story, Mr Osborne found himself at the centre of a media storm last week when he got on a British train and sat in a first class compartment whilst in possession of only a standard class ticket. What actually happened after that is a little hazy as according to some reports he or an aide immediately offered to pay the difference whilst others claim that they only did so when challenged by a railway company employee. What caused media glee was the fact that the Chancellor's aide reportedly said that he "couldn't possibly" travel in standard class. Whether she actually said this, or said it in the superior way reported, is still in doubt but either way the twitter feeds went wild and an army of reporters greeted the hapless Mr Osborne at his London destination.
I thought the incident might lead to an interesting discussion with some advanced students and I guessed at what their reaction would be but not at the strength of it: in Italy politicians take the concept of parliamentary privilege to what would be unimagined levels in Britain and deputati enjoy the highest salaries in Europe as well as ridiculously cheap lunches, subsidised haircuts and free rail and domestic air travel. My students were open-mouthed at the idea that a member of parliament, particularly a minister, would pay for any part of a rail journey and declared that we are "lucky" to be governed by such self-effacing folk in Britain.
Come and see the students, George because they don't believe you're real. Don't let them down, now - make sure you pay for your own first-class flight to Rome....
Comedian-turned-politician Beppe Grillo's Sicilian tour has set me thinking about roles for, if he has a problem here other than convincing Sicilians to abandon the status quo, it is a particularly Italian view of people and their roles. It works like this:
If you are a lawyer you will be expected to behave like a lawyer at all times and it will occur to no one that you might ever need to relax, so you will have to dispense legal advice wherever you are - on the beach, at a café table or from your car window as you speed past another driver that you know. In exchange, you will be addressed as avvocato by everyone for the rest of your life, even in the unlikely event that you give up the law to become a shoeshine boy. And talking of shoes, if you happen to sell them, it would be regarded as eccentric, if not mad, to sell clothes as well. Thus small towns like Modica have no department stores and no one [except me] misses them. This conformity, then, goes for places too, so the pharmacy doesn't sell perfumes, the supermarkets don't have pharmacies [though some deregulation has been mooted, to widespread protest] and when the underwear store started selling jumpers a few years ago it was regarded as a revolution.
A revolution, of course, is exactly what Italy needs, preferably with a 21st century economic miracle thrown in. If we think back to another economic miracle, that of Japan in the post-war years, we may remember that one of the ways in which it was achieved was to put everybody, from managing director to apprentice, in company uniform and, when necessary but also in order to boost morale, chief executives worked on the shop floor.
Could such a thing ever happen in Italy? In a country where, even during their busiest periods, bank and post office managers would not dream of taking their turn at the counters to reduce queues, it would require a sea change in attitudes. Managers are supposed to manage and to do that it is assumed that they must wear a suit and walk around looking important. Only in extreme circumstances would they suggest to their employees that they should try to complete transactions more quickly and I have seen this happen only once in my seven years of interminable waiting in such institutions.
In An Italian in Britainthe Corriere della Sera journalist Beppe Severgniniobserves, with some surprise, that in Britain,
"On weekends you can dress as you please. A politician will let himself be interviewed walking his dog in the countryside wearing an ancient jumper and everyone seems to find this perfectly normal."
So there you have it, Mr Grillo: a politician is not to be photographed doing mundane tasks like walking the dog, he wears a suit all the time and he probably shouldn't be a comedian too - well, not intentionally, anyway. However, it is just possible that the sea change began when you swam the Strait of Messina last week . For all our sakes, I hope so.
"Bisogna adunque essere golpe a conoscere e lacci, e lione a sbigottire e lupi."
"It is nescessary, therefore, to be a fox to discover the snares and a lion to terrify the wolves."
- Niccolò Machiavelli: Il Principe
It's been a great week for British humour - unless, that is, you happen to be a Windsor - and it's set me thinking about the differences between Italian and British humour.
Unless you've been living on Mars, you'll know all about the Prince Harry pictures and there have been some headlines and puns worthy of the Bard himself in the British press. Many Brits have taken Harry to their hearts, regarding him as a bit of a "Jack the lad" who can at least make us laugh and a lot of the menfolk envy him. Then there is the view that this is a young man who is a serving soldier and if he wants to let off steam in this way on a private holiday, so what? I can agree with this up to a point but would add that it is not his soldier's salary that allows the young prince to stay in hotel rooms costing £5,000 per night. You could counter by arguing that he comes from a wealthy family so must have been using his own money and a response to that would depend on your attitude to inherited wealth and privilege. Either way, the prince's security detail are paid for by the British taxpayer so it's not a clear-cut matter of a "private" holiday, as it might have been had the matter involved some vacuous celebrity.
My Italian friends were surprised when I mentioned the security aspects of the affair as this had not occurred to them and some genuinely thought that the British press [until the "Sun" published the pictures] were "afraid" of the Queen. "Not the Queen but a possible new privacy law", said I and a discussion ensued in which the prince's capers were compared with those of Mr Berlusconi. The Italians felt that the Berlusconi scandals were worse as he held political office whilst I argued that the difference was that Italians could, if they wished, have voted Mr Berlusconi out [I stopped myself from adding, "But you didn't"] whereas it would take more than the franchise to oust the Windsors.
Italians do get the joke, though and have been giggling along with the rest of us at the facebook pictures of naked soldiers covering up their private parts in ever more ingenious ways as they salute one of their own. A great deal of Italian humour, you see, is pretty ribald and it is considered quite in order to ridicule a man's virility. On the Saturday and Sunday night chat show Che tempo che fa, genial host Fabio Fazio exchanges banter with comic Luciana Littizetto, who also treats us to a genuinely funny and ironic commentary on the week's news. Then there will be a little innuendo before la Littizetto tells us that "The only hard thing about Fabio is his knee" or some other such detail which the Italian audience finds hilarious.
I actually rather like la Littizetto, who in February will make a pleasant change from the Belen and Canalis type of glamour girl when she co-presents the Sanremo Song Festival with Fabio Fazio. That is to say, I like her until the moment when she curls up, legs askew, on Fabio's desk and starts sticking her chewing gum under it. This is mainly because I have an inborn antipathy to naturally thin women who can curl up on a desk, especially when they also have naturally thin legs. La Littizetto, when she is not being small and cute, can look just like a neighbour with whom you would compare prices at the supermarket - indeed she plays one in a TV advertisement - and that is part of her charm. She can act, too.
Che tempo che fa, 19.2.12 - Luciana Littizetto's take on the news [including Sanremo and Belen Rodriguez]
Italians, like the British, have the ability to be self-deprecating and laugh at themselves. [How else could they have put up with some of their awful politicians for so long?] They can also be extremely ironic and the example that comes to mind is that of Mariastella Gelmini, Minister of Education in the last Berlusconi government. Not a popular figure with many teachers and students because of swathing cuts she had made in expenditure on education, in September last year the unfortunate Minister made a gaffe for which she will probably be remembered long after her policies are forgotten: referring to the Abruzzo Gran Sasso Laboratory, where neutrinos that travel at the speed of light were recorded, she said that Italy had contributed to the building of a tunnel between the Gran Sasso and CERN in Switzerland. Any such tunnel would have had to be 750 km long and of course it didn't exist. The twitter feed filled up with tunnel jokes and the queries of worried parents who no longer felt that they could entrust the education of their precious offspring to one as uninformed as la Gelmini.
The Italian press loved the "Gelmini Tunnel" and it loved the Harry story this week but you know its journalists are perplexed by the British when they start referring to us as "i sudditi di Sua Maestà" ["Her Majesty's subjects"] and they were certainly perplexed by this week's lion story! If you are not from Britain, you may not know that campers near Clacton-on-Sea in Essex reported seeing a lion on the loose on Sunday night and people in the area were advised to stay indoors. As armed police and helicopters swarmed to the area, did my compatriots go into lockdown mode? No, they carried on much as usual and continued to go "down the pub". I couldn't help smiling as the landlady of the nearest pub was interviewed, saying she was "a bit worried" but that her customers were still coming. That's the kind of reaction that makes you strangely proud to be British! On this occasion , too, twitter came into its own: "Essex girl" and her companion "Essex man" are unflattering stereotypes in popular culture [better that you read about them here] so when, within minutes of the "lion" news breaking, a twitter account in the name of "Essex Lion" was opened, the tweeting party went on all night. This puzzled a lot of my Italian twitter friends and I reflected that, had a lion been on the prowl here, everybody would have barricaded themselves in [elegantly, with good food on the stove and packs of cards to pass the time, it must be said]. As the night wore on and Sunday merged into Monday I think someone must have called Moody's because the poor old lion was downgraded, first to a "big dog", then to a "wildcat" and finally, yesterday, to a domestic cat called "Teddy Bear". But the British are nothing if not stubborn, as many would-be invaders have found out, and as I write this on Wednesday night, there are still folk in Essex who are convinced they saw a lion despite the fact that the police called off their search yesterday morning.
In the Italian press we are "i sudditi di Sua Maestà" again.
As I write, we are in the throes of anticylone Lucifero, which comes to us from the desert and follows Caligola, Nerone and four other anticyclones since June. During Nerone, the temperature one day soared to 49 C in Modica Bassa and registered 45 C in this district.
It's a myth that only the British constantly discuss the weather: the Sicilians do it too but, just as they have a different concept of holidays, so they have different ideas about what constitutes good and bad weather. Where I come from, a temperature of 20 C is regarded as a heatwave and is sufficient to set the British tabloids screeching, "Cor! What a scorcher!" in their headlines but here anything less than about 33 C in summer is dismissed as "brutto" ["bad"]. Even Sicilians, though, are apt to complain once the thermometer shows 40 C and you would think that, after three months of such extreme heat, they would greet a little rain with relief.
Not so: when the weather briefly broke ten days ago the rain and a few hailstones - admittedly the hailstones, because of the way houses are built here, sounded like a bombardment - caused widespread consternation and a friend I was with at the time even crossed herself. Somehow I don't think an autumn break in Cardiff would be for her!
As most Sicilians spend the three months of high summer at their houses by the sea or in the country, the usual afternoon greeting is "Com'era il mare stamattina?" ["How was the sea this morning?"] and if there was the slightest ripple on the surface of the water, the answer will be "brutto". A breeze will cause the sea to be described as "mosso" ["rough"]. What my Sicilian friends would make of the brave British who do daily battle with the winds in such locations as Weston-super-Mare I dread to imagine.
The serious side of all this is the spread of fire in the countryside during these heatwaves - one Sicilian firefighter has lost his life this summer - and the fact that meteorologists fear flooding in autumn because of the residual heat that will be given off by the soil.
We are promised a respite from the heat this weekend with the arrival of storm Beatrice. This rain-loving Brit awaits her as Dante awaited another Beatrice.
Henry Holiday Dante Meets Beatrice at Ponte Santa Trinità
Image: Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, UK
via Wikimedia Commons
Tomorrow is the Ferragosto [Assumption Day] holiday and Italy is already closed for business. Italians, you see, all have to go on holiday at the same time and if you suggest that maybe an institution, company, bar or store could stagger staff holidays, you are looked at with incredulity. To quote one of my favourite writers on living in Italy, Tim Parks:
"For in Italy people are remarkable above all for their conformity, for all doing the same thing at the same time."
- Tim Parks, An Italian Education
You would think that, after seven years here, I would have got used to the two-week shutdown around this holiday but I have not and this year, in particular, I find myself throwing my arms up in despair as I imagine Mrs Merkel might when she contemplates the Italian economy. Perhaps it is because this year I am trying to get quite a few things done during this period and, instead of accepting that I cannot, my anger has been boiling over for the past few days: an important item which is supposed to have been posted to me three weeks ago from Bologna has not arrived and the excuse, of course, is the "time of year"; this morning the banks not only closed one and a half hours early, "because we're prefestivo", but every ATM in Modica was down too! Come on, guys, if you are going to close the banks a day early, at least make sure the ATMs are working! The other reason that all this gets to me is that the barista or shop assistant might be the only person with whom someone without a family exchanges a few words in 24 - 48 hours and believe me, such pleasantries as are uttered in these circumstances are important.
However, what one has to come to terms with is that the Italians and the British have totally different concepts of what constitutes a holiday and the Italians actually think it is a time to relax. Tim Parks, again, explains this very well in the same book, remarking that, for the British, a holiday is more of an endurance test:
"Those were holidays that made a hero of you, that made you proud of our glorious centuries of miserable weather, holidays that made you.... English."
Well, I suppose I'd better grin and bear it, just as I must have grinned and borne sand in my sandwiches, impossible deckchairs, wasps on candyfloss and sitting on the beach in a plastic mac long ago in Britain. Only another two and a half weeks of this madness to go!
When someone has treated you badly commiserations are always welcome and at the moment, nothing cheers me up more than hearing friends and acquaintances express the opinion that the offending party should "Vaffanculo" - the Italian equivalent of "f off".
Thus it was that, having related my tale of woe to the beautician on Saturday, I felt immensely comforted by the string of "Vaffanculi" she uttered whilst setting to rights both my feet and my face. I should point out that there are no chiropodists in Modica - the nearest one is in Ragusa - so the task of preparing the feet of the city's women for summer is entrusted to its many beauticians who, I must say, do a good job.
In Britain a visit to the beautician is a relaxing experience and you can drift into golden slumbers whilst being pampered in the presence of relaxing new-age music. Such sweet dreaming is but a fond memory in this particular salon, though, as any music played is usually the loudest rock 'n' roll, greetings are yelled at other customers as they arrive, gossip is exchanged at the top of everyone's voice and equipment is clanged about. The face steamer is as noisy as a Great Western locomotive - but effective - and it would be a brave blemish that defied the beautician's determined squeezing afterwards. Add to all this my own screaming as foot flaws are mercilessly dealt with and you have quite a noisy morning!
Locomotive at Acireale, Sicily
However, a face pack and thirty or so "Vaffanculi" later I feel a lot better, as fresh as a Sicilian mai flower and ready for summer. I am walking on air!
Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "If you can't afford the tip, you can't afford the meal."
The excellent Vecchia Aidone restaurant
in Enna, Sicily
Back in Britain I had a friend who refused to tip. This used to irritate and embarrass me no end whenever we were out together but over the past few years I have softened a little towards her stance.
In the UK, unlike in the US, tipping is not obligatory. You may get some surly looks in certain restaurants if you don't tip but the only person likely to yell at you for your omission is a London cabbie.
Whilst I used to round up taxi fares to the nearest pound in Britain and tip in restaurants provided the service had been good, I rarely tipped my hairdresser because the tip, added to the already high cost of his attention, would have rendered my visit to him prohibitively expensive. It is also a British convention not to tip the owner of a salon.
Not so long ago in Britain the postman, newspaper delivery boy or girl, refuse collectors and the milkman all expected tips at Christmas and these were usually given ungrudgingly by householders. I am even old enough to remember when we had coalmen and the coalman, too, got his tip. But then there came an era when all these good folk started knocking on doors to ask for their "Christmas box" and I'm not sure that people gave it quite so willingly from then on. Having been away from Britain for nearly seven years I am uncertain about the extent to which this custom continues, but it is rarer these days because there is more rotation among workers and local populations change faster than they used to.
Here in Italy, too, tipping is a matter of choice: it is appreciated but not expected as a right in bars and restaurants and I even know of waiters and barmen who will hand back a proffered tip to a customer. Why? Because taking the trouble to present even the simplest order elegantly and providing good service with a smile are regarded as routine duties and not as frills for which the customer has to pay a hidden "extra". There are, however, a few public conveniences [restrooms] in tourist spots which the unfortunate traveller will find hard to exit without leaving the "optional" tip!
My friend in Britain felt that the tipping habit was resonant of the aristocrat distributing largesse and that its continuance actually stopped workers from fighting for better remuneration. I have some sympathy with this view and regard tipping as being on a par with the boss who always buys his secretary a frivolous Christmas present rather than paying her the proper rate for her work.
To sum up, in a tipping culture I want a choice in the matter of whether I tip or not but I would really like to see the custom abolished. It is a social minefield and a throwback to the class system. Pay everyone a decent wage instead!
Below is the full list of bloggers who are participating in this week's Blog Off:
Sicily Scene's 2011 Italian logic prize goes to a twelve-year-old student of mine who, when I explained to the class the British habit of giving houses names, deduced,
"Oh, so when you come home you say 'Ciao, Michael' to your house?!"
My former house in Cardiff, which I named Le Bateau Ivre
A chance encounter with some Canadian tourists this morning reminded me how far I've come, in all sorts of ways.
Spotting the group as I was out with Simi, I would have guessed that they were not what the British still call "continentals" even if they had not been carrying cameras, speaking English and had not been paler than most of the folk we encounter on our daily walks. They were not carrying umbrellas or plastic macs so that ruled out British origin but they were dressed in shorts, sandals and sleeveless tops and that, at this time of year, betrayed them.
Nineteen years ago when I first came to Modica I, too, wore summer clothing in October, dressing, as I did then, for the weather rather than the season. Now, however, I do the opposite, as Italian women do, so today I was in autumn garb despite the fact that it is still hotter here than it would be on many a summer day in Britain.
Every two weeks, the blogosphere comes alive with something called a Blog Off. A Blog Off is an event where bloggers of every stripe weigh in on the same topic on the same day. The topic for this round of the Blog Off is "Privacy".
In Italy the British are famous for their supposed love of privacy and Italians even use the English term for the concept. Thus it is that I often find myself explaining that my compatriots' perceived "coldness" or lack of curiosity is really just British reserve or the Anglo-Saxon virtue of leaving the other chap alone unless he asks you to become involved in his troubles.
We are, I tell my Italian friends and students, just as interested as they are in the lives of others and I ask them if they have ever, whilst on holiday in Britain, seen a net curtain twitch. The British, after all, have some of the most intrusive media in the world and there is no tolerance for those who fall foul of it or, like the late Diana, Princess of Wales, fail to understand it.
Just a few miles away but across a significant stretch of water, things are very different, however: When it was publically revealed that President Mitterand of France had a second, "secret" family, his countrymen deemed the matter to be largely his own business. In Britain he would have been hounded and, of course, political scandals such as those being revealed almost daily in Italy would not be tolerated. In fact, whenever I hear a British Prime Minister announcing his "support" for some hapless colleague whose lustful instincts have ruled his or her head, I know that that politician will resign very shortly indeed.
Italy's privacy laws* do set out to protect the ordinary citizen, though, and a blogger in this country would have to be very reckless to publish a non-public-domain photo of someone without his or her permission. A few months ago I wrote that I had managed, using a photo editing programme, to restore a faded photo of my first Italian boyfriend to its former glory after 40 years and several commenters asked me why I hadn't published it. The answer is that I daren't.
But nowhere were my own concepts of privacy more challenged than in a Sicilian hospital, where I had to spend some time three years ago: I want to say at the outset that the medical care I received was excellent and I will always be grateful for that. However, being examined in full view of the other patients in the ward - there were no partitions or curtains that could be drawn around the beds - was somewhat disconcerting, as was having your case discussed within their hearing. Once I was in the loo when a group of doctors on the ward ruminated upon the best course of action for me and I learnt about my future medication not from them, but from the solicitous patient in the bed opposite. This lady also appointed herself as my dietician and my advice to anyone having to undergo a similar hospital stay is to surrender your privacy gracefully, for the rewards of doing so are great.
The trouble with privacy, it seems to me, is that we all have a different concept of what it entails and this can happen across or within cultures: I once had a foreign colleague who kept turning up at my home without warning at inconvenient times and I couldn't work out why he wanted to spend so much time with me, for there was no romantic interest. I was flabbergasted when he told me that he had never, until he came to Britain at the age of 31, spent as long as one minute of his life alone. I was almost as surprised when a young Sicilian friend told me that when she gets married she will move into a house situated between that of her mother and that of her mother-in-law but, as she says, what she loses in privacy she will gain in helping hands and she will certainly not lack willing babysitters when the time comes!
Another friend here, who has had six children in as many years, does not seem to need personal space at all and perhaps that is just as well! Yet, paradoxically, this friend is more capable than most of understanding that a single life with all the privacy you want - and some that you don't - is not always a joyride.
So there we have it: some have their privacy thrust upon them whilst others give it up for security, family, fame or, unintentionally, to satisfy other desires. In a world in which we are all increasingly observed, what would you give up yours for?
* Italian privacy laws are under review as I write and there is concern that they may be used to silence some bloggers. This is a political matter which I do not want to expand upon here but you can read more about it in this post at Alex's.
Below is a full list of blogs participating in this theme:
The commonly held belief that it is cheaper to live in the South of Italy than in the North may be a myth, according to a survey published this week by the consumers' association Altroconsumo:
A nationwide inquiry into prices at 949 stores in 91 cities has revealed Siracusa in Sicily to be the most expensive city in Italy in which to do a weekly family shop with Catania, Palermo and Messina being the fourth, eighth and ninth most expensive cities respectively. Sassari in Sardinia was second in the list and Aosta third.
Pietro Agen, the president of Confcommercio Sicilia, has commented that prices are, in general, lower in the South but that there are fewer chain stores and, where these exist, transport costs may be pushing up the prices of their products.
My personal observation would be that the survey does not take into account the low prices in some popular local markets in the South.
And the cheapest city in which to fill that family shopping basket, according to the survey? Verona.
I'm a sort-of retired language teacher from Cardiff, Wales, UK, now trying to make a new life in Sicily. I'm not growing vines, making olive oil or restoring a palace stone by stone!
