Strangers in Paradise

The Comune and our visits there seem to have been absent from these pages for too long, giving the impression that all is ticking along nicely. That all changed this last week when we had, once again, recourse to pop in and spend quality time with our old friend, Fiorenza – not for anything very serious (yet), but to sort out one or two little matters.

I said ‘we’, but in the first instance it was only Stephen who graced the offices when, on Monday morning, he took my form to register for the forthcoming European elections. I’d received this a couple of weeks ago but, as is the nature of these things, it had been left to the last day. As the letter had only been addressed to me, as the householder, Stephen also took the opportunity to complete a form for himself, though what use this is going to be is, as you will easily appreciate, very much a moot point.

I had commented on this when filling it in over the previous weekend. The elections are being held at the end of May, almost two months after the UK is due to leap off the cliff into the post-Brexit (there, I’ve used the hated word at last) abyss. This timing was also at the forefront of Fiorenza’s mind; she told Stephen that while she would file the forms, she had received a letter from the powers that be to say that she hadn’t to process them until it was known what was happening on 29thMarch. She’d also been informed by the said powers that after this date, if nothing had been agreed regarding British nationals in Italy, then we would have to be considered as stateless, making us even lower down the pecking order than the illegal immigrants. Thanks, Theresa.

Fiorenza comforted Stephen by telling him not to worry, and that it would be all right – and why did people want to leave anyway. The latter being a concept she found hard to understand, he could only make acquiescent noises. Her mind, however, was soon diverted when, during the form filling, she discovered that Stephen’s current carta d’identita was in two parts, having been accidently torn in half by some enthusiastic official on one of his journeys north. As this is illegal, and as new identity cards are now available the size and shape of a credit card, we both returned the next day to see about switching to the new form.

This was a relatively smooth process, though there was one moment when Fiorenza threw up her verbal hands as she realised that in the photos we had taken for the new identity card (only a couple of years old; well, you don’t change that much when you get to our age if you stay clear of Botox and the surgeon’s knife) we were both wearing glasses. After a few moments debate, when we assured her we wouldn’t be using them to travel outside of Italy, she processed the forms. And here is where we realised that MSP is indeed entering the modern world when we had to give prints from both index fingers via an electronic reader attached to Fiorenza’s new machine.

While she was doing all this, she returned to the knotty problem that must have been worrying her since yesterday, and again wanted to know why the British people wanted to leave the EU, and couldn’t the Queen do anything about it. It was, Stephen felt, about time to speak plainly: because they are stupid, he said. Brexit, he explained, was voted for by the old and the stupid, a clarification she considered for a moment and seemed to accept. No doubt she scanned through various ancient locals who would have the same narrow outlook, including those who think that life would be better if only Italy got the lire back, just like Britain will be great again when the blue passports return.

My week continued its current default pattern, teaching, interrupted by a visit to the dentist on Thursday morning. I had a bit of a surprise on Wednesday when I went, happily clutching my coursework resources for the PET class and blithely thinking that all was now sorted. Not quite, for when I enquired where the pupils’ books were I was told by the nice young assistant that I had the only copies and that if I needed anything from them she could photocopy the relevant pages. I was a little taken aback, in my naivety I had assumed that in offering a course they would also have the books to run it, or at least have told me that they were adopting a minimal approach. When I voiced my concerns about this via e-mail, I was given a virtual pat on the head and told not to worry and not to over-react, so at least three weeks in I now know where I, and the school, stand with regard to this course.

The weather continued fine and increasingly warm towards the end of the week, when I again managed 8 hours of teaching over Friday and Saturday, just when your metabolism thinks you should be winding down for the weekend. This meant that today was needed to catch up with bits and pieces and give some thought to how to fill lesson time next week. It wasn’t all work and no play, though, as yesterday evening we took a long-overdue trip over to Sant’Elpidio al Mare for aperitivo at Totò for, shockingly enough, the first time this year. To make up for our wilful neglect we splashed out on two glasses of wine each with our stuzzichini (consecutively, of course), bread for the freezer and a tray of Carnevale goodies. Well, with the busy life we are leading at the moment, we need to make sure we keep up our energy levels somehow.