After a good shower I scootered into the centre of Milan, in jeans and T-shirt only (it was lovely and warm).  I had to take a longer than usual route, because the Giro d’Italia cycle race had been in Milan today (indeed, I watched it on TV whilst pounding the treadmill, picking out the route and recognising the locations), and my direct route would have crossed the route of the race.  In fact they were already packing up by 6.30 when I zipped past (two hours later there was no sign that any sort of event had taken place at all). 

I parked the scooter amongst the massed ranks of two-wheeled motorised transport that were lined up at the top end of Piazza Diaz, a small square adjacent to Piazza del Duomo.  I met my friend on the steps of the Duomo, every inch of which were occupied by people sitting down and soaking up the sun.  We strolled along Corso Vittorio Emanuele, looking at the shops, and the people.  Then through the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele, watching the tourists sitting at the outside cafés.  We ended up strolling along Via Brera until we reached the top, where there is a concentration of bars and restaurants with outside seating.  Managed to bag a table and sipped a cold beer, watching the world go by.  My friend then headed off for dinner leaving me to stroll back to the bike then scooter home through the dusk.  A few mosquitoes were out (I could feel them on my exposed skin) but there was little traffic and the cool evening air was very refreshing.  I don’t know, I experienced a sense of enormous wellbeing (to quote Blur!)  Life felt very good.

It’s always nice to get out onto the street in the morning and then ride the scooter to work.  Feels wonderful and fresh.  Then my office is air conditioned anyway, so that’s a blessed relief.  By the time I scooter home the air is much warmer, but being on the scooter makes it bearable.  I remember years ago when I worked in the centre I used to get the metro into work.  It wasn’t (and still largely isn’t) air conditioned.  Utter hell.  I don’t miss that!  Apart from the fact that I feel the heat more than the average Italian, as a north European I also sweat more than them.  This makes summer even more traumatic, especially if it happens that I go out directly after work without be able to go home to shower first (yuck!)  Actually the Italians have a tactic, which is to wear a vest beneath their shirt.  They call this “la maglietta della salute”, translatable as “the T-shirt of health”.  The theory is that if you sweat then the T-shirt will absorb this, hence avoiding unsightly wet patches.  And you can always whip the T-shirt off if necessary (and by not sweating directly onto the shirt, it will stay fresh).  Personally I can’t be doing with this.  I’m way too hot most of the time anyway; adding an extra layer would just be suicide.  This doesn’t put the Italians off; they’re obsessed about avoiding catching colds, and dress accordingly, donning a ridiculous amount of layers.  Next time you are in Italy on a sunny day, or see some film of it, check out how heavily dressed the locals seem.  OK, I’m sure I dress more heavily than I used to (I shiver when I see Brits in shirt sleeves when the temperature is barely into the high teens) but I could never go as far as the Italians.  Yet again, I find myself stuck in the middle: my habits make me feel neither all British or all Italian. 

Tonight I’ve given in and finally switched the air conditioning on in order to watch the Champions League final.  This has the added bonus of meaning I must keep the windows shut, so I don’t hear Milan fans celebrating, should they be doing any of this.  (If they win, I shall go straight to bed with earphones in…I don’t want to be kept awake by Milanisti driving around into the small hours waving flags and beeping horns…exactly as I was doing a month ago when Inter won scudetto number 15)!  Finally, thanks to my British satellite TV I’ll be watching the ITV coverage.  But the pictures and sound are delayed a couple of seconds compared to Italian terrestrial TV, and it can be very offputting to hear people from surrounding flats cheering immediately before a goal goes in!  Having the windows shut insulates me from all this. 

Actually, as kick off approaches a big storm seems to be moving in: the wind is rising and it has clouded over.  This is good if it clears the air of the humidity.  This is bad if the storm buggers up my satellite TV picture, forcing me to switch to RAI.  Disaster; I want to hear biased pro-English commentary, not biased pro-Italian commentary!

The Madeleine McCann story is being covered in Italy, but well down the running order.  Obviously if an Italian family were involved I don’t doubt that it would very much be headline news.  However, although there isn’t a lot that anybody could teach the Italians about histrionics, I just can’t see their media handling this story with the same sinister undertone of moral bullying.  I was already in Italy when the Diana nonsense unfolded nearly a decade ago.  At the time one hoped this was some sort of historical anomaly, but it seems instead merely to have marked the beginning of a new, disturbing trend in British society. 

At a more operational level, I am interested in the contrast between how the Portuguese police go about their work versus their British equivalents.  Who is to say which is the better system?  I’m sure if Portugal were blessed with fine publications like The Sun they would long since have been bullied into changing the law in order to facilitate the titillation of o homem da camionete branca (my attempt at translating White Van Man into Portuguese, though I confess to have cheated by using Babelfish) by pressuring the police into ill-advised speculation at regular press conferences. 

But generally speaking I think the British police probably strike a reasonable balance between informing the public and protecting the integrity of their enquiries.  Their relative skill in this area generally only becomes apparent when compared directly with that of possibly less media-savvy police forces elsewhere.  As for where I live, I have always hated the way Italian police seem to have no compunction in releasing the names of the people they arrest, without any pretence of maintaining the privacy of the arrestees.  Their names are then splashed across the newspapers, television and radio.  There’s something so much more dignified and ‘old school’ about the statements made by the British police in similar circumstances.  It wasn’t “Chris Tarrant was arrested for assault”, it was “A 60-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of assault and taken into custody for questioning”.  You have to love that. 

Mind you, given the glacial speed at which Italian justice operates, where the statute of limitations plus the moveable feast that is the definition of what constitutes a criminal offence are every crook’s best friends (particularly when you are the Prime Minister and can tinker with them at will…) it could well be the case that a good pillorying in the papers (during that brief window of time before they morph into tomorrow’s fish and chip paper) is the only comeuppance that many high-profile wrongdoers are ever going to get.

But there is a growing movement of beer lovers in Italy promoting serious appreciation of the stuff (see http://www.unionbirrai.com/ for details…the site is partially in English) and it’s nice to see that they are presumably making progress, given that they feel confident enough to be able to stage proper beer festival events. 

I have to say I preferred the first festival to the second.  Maybe it was because at that one the various breweries each had their own stands, with the more committed brewery-owners manning their own and chatting to the punters.  Maybe it was because I went to that one on a Sunday afternoon with my wife and son, whereas on Friday I went late at night (it was open until 2am) with a group of friends, Brits and Italians.  There were a fair few teenager tamarri (this being roughly the Italian word for chavs) on the Sunday afternoon, but on Friday evening the place was absolutely overrun by them.  Evidently having had a few too many, they threw beer mats around, made lots of noise, and generally behaved like they were in a youth club.  There also wasn’t much of an attempt to explain the beers themselves at the latter festival…you had to fight your way past the scrum near the bar in the middle of the hall (I mean, why?  The exhibition hall was enormous and was 90% empty) to peer at the pump clips, only to be told (some of the time) that the beer you wanted to sample was off. 

They were certainly very different from beer festivals I have attended in the UK, and as a lapsed CAMRA member I know what I’m talking about.  Italians are big on facial hair, so the beard count was similar, but the enormous bellies were sadly lacking.  (Regrettably I’m talking exclusively about the Italians at this point, not me and my British mates…)  We commented also that even the Italian equivalents of the stereotypical British beer festival attendee were impeccably turned out.  How do they do it?! 

Couldn’t express the same level of admiration for the organisation, which was reassuringly woeful (you do get used to this aspect of Italian life, though I wouldn’t go as far as to say that one grows to love it).  The most irritating aspect was how they’d decided not to accept cash payments for the beer.  You had to buy tokens (special bottle tops, in fact), €1 each, from the cash desk at the entrance and spend them in the festival.  (Not just for the beer, also for the food…and for bottles of water.  Who would have believed that people would buy bottles of water at a beer festival, but I saw it with my own eyes.  Only in Italy!)  Plus €3 to get in.  Plus a €2 deposit for the souvenir glass (a wine glass, with a bit of writing on the base…I kept mine, but the glass was so thin that it broke before I got home; others tried to redeem theirs to get their €2 back, only to be told “we don’t have any change!”….pathetic!)  Of course, there were no big signs up at the entrance explaining this complicated pricing system, meaning that massive queues formed as it had to be explained to everyone when they reached the front.  The final absurdity was that the beers turned out to cost €2 each (double the price at the previous festival), so the ten tokens we bought on the way in proved to be not enough, obliging us to go and queue up again in order to buy more. 

Never mind though, good on the beer-lovers of Milan.  The first festival I went to was running out of beer towards the end, always a good sign, and this one seemed to be doing a roaring trade too.  So hopefully the future of these events is assured…and hopefully the organisers will learn from their mistakes!

I left Blighty in September 1995, which means I have another three and a bit years left.  This will cover the next General Election, and that’s it.  For local and European elections I get to vote in Italy (and I have exercised my right!)  But come 2010 I will be disenfranchised vis-à-vis national elections.  This hardly seems fair.  Myself and others like me are the shock troops of European integration, yet we are denied a say in the running of our adopted countries.  I can understand the argument for reducing the length of time one can vote in one’s country of birth after leaving, but without acquiring the right to vote elsewhere the system is lop-sided.  I believe European citizens ought to be permitted to obtain the right to vote in national elections in another EU country after a given period of residence there.  Ten years might be an appropriate period of time, possibly less.  One would of course simultaneously lose the right to vote in one’s former country.  It seems such an obvious and simple remedy to such a glaring example of a democratic deficit.  However I imagine that if such a law were proposed the Daily Mail would run a campaign against the very notion of an army of Polish immigrants voting in UK parliamentary elections.  This is presumably why nobody addresses the issue: not much up-side for the politicians set against a lot of potential down-side. 

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right.  I could take Italian citizenship, by dint of both the length of my stay in this country and being married to an Italian.  But, much as I like the Italians (and obviously I do, or I wouldn’t still be here after all these years) I do not and probably never will feel I am Italian.  I’m keen to have the vote here, but for me the psychological implications of taking an Italian passport would be a bridge too far.  And frankly it shouldn’t be necessary.

On a more mundane note, I see that the form has been redesigned again.  This is the second redesign I’ve witnessed since I began filling them in.  The layout does seem clearer, and a more informal font has been used.  This is fine, but inevitably it seems that the language used has been dumbed down.  Compare this, in the space for the applicant’s signature:  

Old version: “I hereby declare that the statements made on this form are true to the best of my knowledge and belief”  

New version: “As far as I know, the details on this form are true and correct”. 

I know which version I prefer.  Which quite possibly means I may officially be classified as a grumpy old man.

These friends live in Gaggiano, a small town just to the south west of Milan.  OK, they live directly next to the railway station, and there are regular commuter trains which take under 20 minutes to reach the city centre, but living out here in the sticks wouldn’t be for me.  In fact their decision to live here is more motivated by its proximity to the business owned and managed by the husband than anything else.  For most people, it’s a question of weighing up the cheaper house prices against having bugger all to do in the evening (without driving into Milan…very few Italians would take trains in the evening, not least because the Milanese nightlife is only getting into full swing at midnight when the last trains leave) and of course the commute into Milan, which might be bearable if you live near a station (although beware the frequent strikes, see the previous post), but again most people rely at least partially on the car.  Every time I have cause to drive out of Milan in the morning rushhour I check out the endless queues in the opposite direction and count my blessings that I am not obliged to face that every day (life can be stressful enough as it is!)  Some people justify their choice by saying that they prefer to live in campagna.  This always makes me laugh, because I don’t think you can classify the sprawling, poorly-zoned (if at all) depressing mix of the residential and the industrial Milanese hinterland as countryside.  We all know what real countryside looks like, and this is not it!  For my money you have to go well beyond 20-30km outside of Milan before you start hitting real countryside, and unless you’ve gone in a northerly direction (towards Como/Lecco) everything remains boringly flat anyway.  Each to his own, I suppose. 

The food was very nice, but this was one of those meals when we were sitting at the dining table adjacent to the open-plan kitchen, and the hostess cooked each course from scratch after finishing the previous one.  (Does this only happen in Italy?  I can’t remember the last British dinner party I attended so it’s hard for me to comment).  You can just about justify waiting for guests to arrive before you “throw in the pasta” (buttare la pasta) because the last thing you want is it to go all gooey if the guests are late, but I don’t think you can use the same excuses for the secondo.  This long wait between courses would have been much more bearable had the wine been flowing freely, but it wasn’t.  Good job we had brought a couple of bottles, otherwise I seriously think they might have tried to make their one bottle last the whole meal.  A fourth bottle would have filled the gaps nicely, but it was not to be!  It will come as a surprise to non-Italian readers how little wine many Italians under 40 drink with their meals (outside of mealtimes, forget it – that’s mainly for old people, alcoholics and foreigners). 

Before we could leave there was the final ritual of the extended Italian goodbye.  You’re on your feet, you’re by the front door, your jackets are on, bags in hand, child strapped into pushchair.  And you then stand there for an inordinate amount of time talking.  We were there 20 minutes, as whole new conversational avenues were explored.  I have never understood this and always loathed it.  Why stand up to go if you still want to talk?  Perhaps it would be considered rude to stand up and bolt for the exits without acting out this charade, but it never fails to put me in a irritable mood!

There was also a public transport strike.  (As usual, it was a half hearted affair of a few hours outside of peak periods….this kind of sabre-rattling is a regular feature of Italian life, as it is an accepted negotiating tactic when discussing the renewal of the national labour contract).  Anyway, as usual they’d scheduled the strike for a Friday, presumably so the strikers could have a long weekend.  Friday is a bad traffic day anyway, and today was worsened by the effect of the strike and the rain (both factors giving rise to increased car use).  Good job my office is only a 15 minute drive away on a bad day (like today), though it would have been worse had I been caught behind the bin men (who for some reason or other are always out between 8am and 9am on my route to work on a Friday…once upon a time I would have been annoyed at this, but over a decade of living here inures one to this kind of idiocy and breeds resigned acceptance….which isn’t good, but there you go).

Would have been ideal on the scooter, cutting through the traffic like the proverbial hot knife through butter, but I didn’t fancy it in the rain.  I’d already got a drenching on the bike on Wednesday lunchtime and once per week was quite enough for me.

Why doesn’t everybody else use public transport and leave the roads empty for me?!!!