Market forces

In contrast to last week, this one started off very quietly but with a sense of anticipation, awaiting the painters’ promised arrival on Wednesday morning. Quiet, that is, if you discount the severed limbs. That may be a slight exaggeration, though the loss of a digit may happen unless we have our new knives exorcised of the demonic force that appears to have possessed them.

There are, obviously, many differences between life in Britain and life in Italy, some of which never occurred to me before coming to live here. One of the more surprising differences is in the choice of table knives, reflecting how the Italian way of eating diverges from the British. To an Italian, a traditional plate full of meat, potatoes and two veg would look very strange as they like to keep their foods separate, taking a bit of this, eating it, then taking a bit of that. Consequently, while the British dinner knife works in tandem with the fork, acting as both cutter and pusher, in Italy the fork does all the graft when actually eating. The knife, which is much smaller and sharper with a serrated blade and plastic handle, is used mostly independently to cut, slice and pare.

Having struggled with our British cutlery for a few months, the other week we took delivery (thank you Amazon) of a set of six new continental style knives. Foolishly, we chose ones made by Victorinox, of the famed Swiss army knife, thinking about their quality and not the deadliness of their blades. Yes, they cut a chunk of cheese with ease; yes, they slice through sausages with contempt; yes, they take the thinnest paring off any apple you care to throw at them… but they have also left both Stephen and me battle-scarred and weary. So far between us we’ve managed five wounds to our hands while carrying out such extreme activities as drying the dishes and cutting up Parmesan cheese. If it carries on at this rate we’ll have to eat wearing metal gauntlets, which, whilst it would be a bit cumbersome, would also be a way of dieting into our summer clothes.

Anyway, back to more important matters.

True to their word, Corrado and Beppe, the decorators, appeared early on Wednesday morning, rattling down the road to LCDDB before 8am in a flat bed truck replete with a mini crane and do-it-yourself scaffolding kit. They were followed soon afterwards by a white van driven by a surprisingly lanky youth with the even more surprising name of Davis - where he got these decidedly unItalian features is anybody’s guess. He immediately pitched in, helping Corrado and Beppe to unload and assemble the scaffolding around the three floors of the right hand side of the house. So assiduously did they work that by mid-afternoon all the necessary struts, ladders and platforms were in place, so the three called it a day with promises to see us the following morning.

When they returned the next day it was without Corrado, who, presumably, having ensured all had been set fair was deploying himself to advantage elsewhere. Beppe and Davis spent Thursday and Friday bringing the quality of the plaster up to a state where they would be able to begin painting. The outside of the house, like the inside, has lacked TLC for some time. Consequently, there was a great amount of work needed to replace crumbling plaster and to fill an extensive network of cracks – some several inches wide in places. Before this, though, they removed all the shutters, secured plastic sheeting round all the window frames and taped over anything else that didn’t need painting.

For our part, Stephen and I were faced with the challenge of having to settle on a new colour for the house. Stephen’s preference was for on-trend grey, but visions of battleships sort of prejudiced me against that. After pouring over three sets of colour cards, though, we managed to come up with a shortlist of four shades going by the fabulous names of Cortina 10, Maratha 10, Fossalta 10 and Moos 50 and each of which is, indeed, on the grey spectrum. The decorator has made due note of these and will, early next week, paint up four boards with a sample of each colour for us to make a final decision.

Which brings us to the weekend and the Sunday celebrations for George, marking both the saint’s feast day and the birthday of il mio caro sposo*. We spent a happy morning in Porto San Giorgio visiting their fiera ahead of St George’s festa on the 23rd. Those of you who have been taking notes will recall that MSP had a fiera for St Biagio back in February, in accordance with the practice to hold a market on a Sunday close to the feast day of a town’s patron saint. We knew about this one as I’d seen a poster advertising the event, which told you where it was, what time and that a free shuttle service would be in operation. This latter is a good thing as parking in Porto San Giorgio is notoriously difficult and only to be advised if you have a full tank of petrol, the patience of a saint and are taking a sabbatical from work. What the poster failed to mention was where you had to park to get the bus, just like it hadn’t occurred to anyone to put up helpful directions as you neared the town. So much of Italian life is a continuous process of osmosis.

Today’s market was similar to MSP’s, only on steroids. It comprised the same sort of stalls, but while our local fiera covered one long thoroughfare, Porto San Giorgio’s spread exponentially from the central square. It took us ninety minutes to walk around it, which was very much a triumph of hope over adversity. We kept thinking that some quaint, crafty or arty stall would be lurking on the next street but in a Groundhog Day scenario all we found was a recurring cycle of the same mixture of kitchen ware, bargain clothing and household paraphernalia. Not that I’m complaining, as there are worse ways to spend a Sunday morning than taking a gentle stroll as loitering clouds give way to blue skies and sunshine. Nor did we leave empty-handed, being now the proud owners of a dimpled silicon baking sheet.

In the evening, to mark Stephen’s birthday, we went with Marco and Maddalena to a new (to us) pizzeria highly recommended by my student Alessandro (“The best pizza I’ve ever tasted.”) Mamma Rosa’s is some thirty minutes away (well, maybe less, but Marco with true Italian machismo ignored the state of art sat nav in his Audi to follow his nose down any narrow, winding back road that presented itself. Huh, Germans…what do they know about technology…) It was more than worth the extra effort to get there. The owner and pizzaiolo has won international awards for his pizze, which include such fantasies as squid ink pizza and one topped with fresh flowers. They are made to the traditional Neapolitan code and so, unlike other pizze in the area, are puffy round the edges and ever so slightly thicker on the base. Despite the various house specialities, we were very circumspect in our selections and both Stephen and I chose a classic Margherita. Simple it may have been but with a particularly fine tomato sauce we were not disappointed. Perhaps we will be more adventurous on our next visit.

* I refer anyone unfamiliar with this expression to ‘Emma’ by Jane Austen and the character of Mrs Elton.