The dentist is obsequious. I'd be obsequious if I planned to inflict fear and pain on willing victims. Anyway, I walked through signorina Borri's olive groves, down to the appointment with doom, at the bottom of the hill, just like the bank. A filling efficiently consigned to target in one of the finest departments of dentristy in the UK had yielded to the finest of Tuscan meat. Chewed out, I suppose.
With Lillian Hellman's 'An Unfinished Woman ' jiggling in my hands (why did a small HG give me a book with such a title, jiggling about in my mind) I sit in the waiting room. Silence, apart from the musak, reigns; no screams, no urgent, barked orders. Perhaps it will be all right? Then a little old lady of the petit bourgeoisie enters. Nothing could direct the adrenaline better.
'O, Signora, thank Goodness it's you. I need to see the dentist. You know how it is. Cold March, I've come out without my scarf and gloves, though I have my umbrella, I was in such a rush. Do you find this a cold March? Mind you, I expect you are cared for, though of course you deserve to be, the wages being asked these days, and by people from who knows where. (By this time I am frozen wordless: with outrage that I am being queue-jumped; by the implication that I am the kind of person who condones this behaviour; by the implication that I have slaves; by the identification of her values with my own; by the fact that the door to the dentist is closing behind her and I am still in the waiting room with my book. I wish I could speak Italian like my aunties-in-law. Or at least display their calculating, extensive, local knowledge. She wouldn't have dared do it to one of them - the vengeance eaten cold would have been casual and deadly.
But my teeth are back in eating form (never try to eat with teeth out of action, I have lost pounds in the last few days); and it's a very interesting book; and books are as good a read in one place as in another.
I suppose.
Tuesday 30 March 2010
Monday 29 March 2010
No Blackout
Earth Hour came and went without a flicker of conformity from the Comune or the Monculisti. The floodlights aimed at the church and next door buildings (ie us) flooded on, into rooms that never know darkness now unless the scuri are fastened tightly inside and the shutters closed without. Not a hope of walking through the place by moonlight, or looking from darkness out at the night sky, at least in the front of the building.
Looking from the back, the whole of the valley was lit up with towns and villages glowing on their hilltops and hillsides, roads lined orange; night was made day, as usual, from all the street lights in the village itself, just in case a danger might hide behind the newsagents, or lurk near the fountain.
People resent the dark; it's a loss of control, a return to a not very distant past when being in the dark meant poverty and over-simplicity of life-style. Or external threat.
The greenies are on a loser trying to bring the dark back.
Looking from the back, the whole of the valley was lit up with towns and villages glowing on their hilltops and hillsides, roads lined orange; night was made day, as usual, from all the street lights in the village itself, just in case a danger might hide behind the newsagents, or lurk near the fountain.
People resent the dark; it's a loss of control, a return to a not very distant past when being in the dark meant poverty and over-simplicity of life-style. Or external threat.
The greenies are on a loser trying to bring the dark back.
Saturday 13 March 2010
Utterly Uteless
The mechanical collapse of two of the runabouts (both over ten years' old so that's not a surprise, they've lived a hard life) and their exclusion in the near future from entry into any city as they passed into the categories condemned by greenery, meant buying a car.
It has to be with sufficient ground clearance to go off-road - or at least on to roads that are a bit off; it has to have carrying space for trees and wine casks and bits of furniture and thus be able to be swilled out with a hose, near enough. It has to drive quietly and fast enough along the motorway. And have the latest eurogreen number.
This is it, I thought. The perfect foil to my Driza-Bone. My Ute! I was foiled at the last hurdle (which, come to think of it, was also a requirement for fitting into this wonder vehicle).
It has to carry at least five people.
That would be a Tardis, I argued. Anything less than a Tardis and it's just Ute-discrimination. AND NO GENERAL MOTORS (unless Mandelson is handing them out free, which he is until the English elections).
But lots of car-makers offer Cubes that meet these requirements which is nice - I suppose. I'll trade in the Lanci for the Ute. Once I've got the dog.
It has to be with sufficient ground clearance to go off-road - or at least on to roads that are a bit off; it has to have carrying space for trees and wine casks and bits of furniture and thus be able to be swilled out with a hose, near enough. It has to drive quietly and fast enough along the motorway. And have the latest eurogreen number.
This is it, I thought. The perfect foil to my Driza-Bone. My Ute! I was foiled at the last hurdle (which, come to think of it, was also a requirement for fitting into this wonder vehicle).
It has to carry at least five people.
That would be a Tardis, I argued. Anything less than a Tardis and it's just Ute-discrimination. AND NO GENERAL MOTORS (unless Mandelson is handing them out free, which he is until the English elections).
But lots of car-makers offer Cubes that meet these requirements which is nice - I suppose. I'll trade in the Lanci for the Ute. Once I've got the dog.
Tuesday 2 March 2010
New Mac
Driza-bone day! Chocolate brown and smelling of waxed cloth, it has arrived. It had its first outing in Florence teamed up with choccie-brown suede flat boots with thick crepe soles, and longish black underskirt with soft grey cashmere over-dress, so that the skirt swirls a bit at the hem; then the drizy - I've got the shorter one as evidently you need to be quite strong to carry the full length around particularly when wet, and you have to tie it to your legs, so it would have been hard to manage it without a horse really.
Mr HG had received a hat (but has conceded it on a long-term loan) in the same stuff. It didn't actually rain, but I didn't actually want it to get wet, just be a day when I could wear it justifiably, which it was. Galloped into Cibreo for lunch and eyed everybody who got up to leave fiercely to ensure they were in their own coats.
Many women are wearing dear little embroidered damasky coats with contrasting panels of flowers let into the back, very tight and long-sleeved then flaring from waist to hem. But you could see the thought forming that a drizy is essential for the well-dressed latest.
Mr HG had received a hat (but has conceded it on a long-term loan) in the same stuff. It didn't actually rain, but I didn't actually want it to get wet, just be a day when I could wear it justifiably, which it was. Galloped into Cibreo for lunch and eyed everybody who got up to leave fiercely to ensure they were in their own coats.
Many women are wearing dear little embroidered damasky coats with contrasting panels of flowers let into the back, very tight and long-sleeved then flaring from waist to hem. But you could see the thought forming that a drizy is essential for the well-dressed latest.
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