SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT ROLES

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 Britain the Corriere della Sera journalist Beppe Severgnini observes, 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.

BUONGIORNO TRISTEZZA

Poor, embattled Italy: the government is, as always, tottering on the brink of collapse; the north is paralysed by snow as I write; a truck drivers’ strike has caused chaos for most of the past week; and on Thursday the New York Times reported that Italians are the most depressed people in Europe. This has really ruffled the feathers of some politicians and newspaper columnists!

“Depressed”, of course, is not the image that the rest of the world has of this mainly sunny land where you find what is, arguably, the best cuisine in the world. “Depressed” is not the word that comes to mind as you watch Italians go about their daily business: observe them proudly wearing the latest fashion, adjusting their already perfect shop window displays, chattering in any bar, interacting with children or simply being themselves and you cannot help admiring their tolerance, openness and seemingly relaxed ways.

They have a “summer culture” of stopping work and transferring their whole lives to the sea which has led me to believe that their young people, in particular, have a wonderful existence. Yet does it mask something? An unwillingness to compete with the rest of the world by working flat out, 24/7, may be a healthy stance but is it realistic in modern times? The close-knit family life that many Italians have is the envy of Britons yet this, too, may not be all it seems: is the unmarried son or daughter who lives at home well into his / her thirties or beyond and who never travels afraid of the world outside that cocoon? Surely Italy needs its young people to be dynamic, given its ageing population?

Some time ago I concluded that what I find myself at odds with so often is basically a culture of acceptance, both of the status quo and of unfavourable situations; a prevailing mind-set of “It’s always been like this so that’s the way it always will be” and “We can’t do anything about it” . Strangely enough, I was using an article about Jane Tomlinson’s posthumous award as a reading text yesterday with a private student. When we discussed Jane’s brave efforts to raise money for cancer research, my student’s reaction was that such a negative situation is rarely turned into something positive here. Earlier this year I was talking about the McCann case with a friend whose reaction to the “Find Madeleine” campaign was, “ Why? They won’t find her now”. [This was right at the beginning.] “But they’ve got to do something!” I cried. My friend looked at me incredulously. I wonder how much of this “acceptance culture” is due to the influence of the Catholic Church and how much is a philosophy learnt the hard way by a nation that has seen so much" triumph and disaster"? I note that Beppe Severgnini is quoted at the end of the NYT article: “The [Italian] malaise is: 'I can see all that but I can’t change it. ' ”

Never mind, Italy: exasperating as you are, this ex-pat still loves you! Have a better 2008, my beloved, adopted country.

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.