Whad'ya mean? Non capisco?

After going off-piste with yesterday’s esoteric entry, for which I was berated by Stephen for abandoning the narrative drive, I better get back on the blue run with today’s offering and our return to the offices of Giordano, your friendly local notary.

I wish I could tell you what the meeting was for, but I am no less enlightened now than I was when Stephen told me to be ready for 4pm when Flavia and he would collect me from the house. As it turned out, only Flavia came, having dropped Stephen off at the office because they were running 20 minutes late – such are the pressures of working in high-end fashion.When I walked into the meeting, I was a little surprised to find standing room only as there were already six people present, including Mario, Luigi and the man drawing up the new plans, whose name I still don’t know. Chairs were found for Flavia and me, making the quorum eight. I was also wondering why Giordano himself was standing virtually in the corner while a large, avuncular man with wild dark hair and a tattoo of Tweety Pie on his forearm was holding court, seated behind the desk. It transpired that he was Luca the Lawyer (as opposed to Luca the Factory Owner, Luca the Computer Lecturer and Luca the Butcher – is every other man called Luca in Italy?), the person charged with sorting out the paperwork for the sale/purchase of the house.

According to Stephen, I had arrived too late to hear Luca the Lawyer’s diatribe about Italy’s views on same sex marriage and its antediluvian equality laws in general. Still, it’s good to know that we have someone batting for our side, even if only as a reserve.

Anyway, to business: Flavia vouched for us (again, I’m not sure why) and generally said what wonderful people we were before heading back to the factory, leaving only seven in the room and, consequently, giving us each a bigger share of the available air. Luca expressed concern that as I was buying the house and had little Italian, I would not really understand the documentation and maybe we should have an interpreter. Well, at over €200 a throw I think I can rely on Stephen to tell me what I need to know, and if Flavia says it’s ok then that is good enough for me. Besides, judging by Luigi’s gaping mouth as he looked with bemusement from one person to another, I think even with my limited knowledge I still understood more than he did.

The meeting finished off with further discussion of our lack of permanent residency and consequent inability to purchase the car (which they all agreed, with much nodding of heads, was a good choice). It now appears that as well as having a permanent address, we need €5,000 each in a bank account as well as an insurance policy in case we fall ill. I would mention here what Stephen said, that we’d have been better off turfing up in a boat on the Adriatic coast, but that would be totally non-PC so I won’t. What really shows the absurdity of the situation though, is that if we’d just gone to the Council with our passports in the first place we would have been given an identity card, with which we could have bought the car! Oh well.

On that note, the meeting came to an amicable conclusion, with lots of smiles, handshakes and ‘Ciaos’, leaving me none the wiser as to what is going on and wondering if it was so important, why didn’t I have anything to sign?