The removal of twenty four billion euros from Italian public expenditure has had no effect whatsoever in Monculi. Zilch. Everyone is out and about as usual, working gold, making clothes, gardening the countryside, entertaining paying guests in farms (agriturismo is a huge wealth creator) as far as the eye can see. And speaking of sea, everyone has spruced-up their mobile home or renovated their seaside flat/villa in time for the annual mass migration to the coast at the end of the school year.
They are also tending their tomatoes. We are to have four sorts this year, up from three last: large, ribbed salad; small, on-the-vine, salad and posh cookery, for those who can be bothered; smooth round, and smooth elongated (sort of soccer and football really) for bottling.
I am well on the way to bottling already - not the sterilising of the jars and lids, scrubbing out of giant brushed steel vats, checking-through of outdoor gas rings variety; more the familiar bottling of British political cowardice variety. My kitchen garden is very like the European Union: I supply land, seed (well, little plants), water, and the men grow what they want and ignore pleas for radishes, carrots, jerusalem artichokes, brussels sprouts, and potatoes. Not even spinach will they grow, they prefer rape.
My lovely apple tree (planted, nb, by an Australian) flourishes; all other proposals (other than the loving pruning and feeding of scattered, ancient figs) for fruit and nut trees have been nixed on the argument that the birds/deer/boar/scrumpers will get them.
Mr Cameron does not begin to grasp the mountain of immovable cultural obstruction he must climb. What was once grown here has not been forgotten, despite the half-century hiatus, and folk wisdom reigns over modern decision-taking. Meanwhile, as Prime Minister Berlusconi knows, no-one gives a hoot about so-called cuts. They aren't cuts, they're just using a different model for allocating resources.
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