Well, summer has truly started. Not only is it hot, and I mean hot all the time, even during the night, but the mozzies are well and truly back – big time.
Mozzies; on holiday all the time; ice-cream; Wimbledon and weather
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Category Archives: Outside Italy
A Grand Day Out
In the UK, if someone suggests a trip out, where you were going to travel for two hours to get there and two to get back, you would tend to make a day of it. So, for instance, when we lived in Herefordshire and you decided to go to, let’s say Aberystwyth, you would set of at, say, 10 a.m., reach Aberystwyth, have lunch, enjoy the afternoon having a walk around and set off home at 6 or 7 p.m.
(Italian) Words of the Day
This could be subtitled ‘Essential words when you come to Italy’.
In this case there are two. Cazzo and Vafanculo. I hear them quite often. They are not such polite words but, it seems, essential to daily life here.
At least in my office. The Commercial Manager, in whose office I reside, came back from a three-day trip yesterday. He normally sprinkles most sentences with the odd cazzo and, very occasionally, the odd vafanculo.
But, yesterday, once Si had left, he needed to find some documentation. He couldn’t find it. I have never heard so many cazzos and vafanculos in all the time I have been here, as I did in two hours yesterday afternoon.
At one point, every other word in the sentence was cazzo. Really, I mean it.
I shouldn’t really take against it so. After all, my language is not squeaky clean, as people who know me will attest to, but, really.
It also seems that, last night, for some very strange reason, he switched round the battery cables on his car resulting in a burn-out of at least one of them. Something to do with his daughter – so maybe he was trying to get her car started. Anyway, he’s not in right now (hurrah) and the damage will, apparently, cost him €500.
It couldn’t happen to a nicer guy!
A heavy weekend; too much to drink; too tired; SLTG
On driving in Italy, red lights, rain, irony, sarcasm
Yesterday morning it rained on my way to work. Not particularly heavy, but it would have made the roads potentially greasy. For that reason I tend to be a bit slower, try to give myself more time for braking by positioning myself further from the car in front, etc.
But why, I ask, that when it rains, people do the strangest of things. I mean, it’s as if it’s not raining when they pull out in front of you. This also happens when it snows.
On being ‘obviously’ not a national – racists and bigots
We were catching a plane and I quite like certain airlines. My favourite is Lufthansa followed by Alitalia. For about 9 months I flew Lufthansa every week to Cologne and I found them to be great. So, although this time we were not going to Germany, we were using Lufthansa and that meant a connection in Frankfurt.
Changing the air: no plants in the bedroom: soap on the plates
I have mentioned before about the Italians need to ‘change the air’. This is a requirement from birth, I think. Si, bless her, no longer opens the window first thing in the morning, in the office, because I am there. She used to come in, open the window, go and have a coffee, and then come back and close it. I only learnt this fact this week.
Court – it’s a lottery; learning to drive – whose fault is it anyway?
I remember a court case that a company (C), was involved in. They were providing software for an organisation (TO) which didn’t think that they had done a good job and the statistics (which was the point of the software) weren’t good. C wanted their money, of course.
The Hay Festival is nearly over and I got run over!
Well, it’s been a few days since my last post and a few things have been happening.
UK Bank Holiday weather and the Hay Festival, Confirmation, Hot Sweaty Priest
So, it’s Bank Holiday in the UK with cold, wet weather – there’s a surprise! If it’s any consolation to you, we too have colder and very, very wet weather as I write this. The difference is that it is not a Bank Holiday weekend so I am at work.