peasants part 3

And they don’t even sell soup! Oh I’m sorry they do have 3 kinds of soup: chickpea, bean or minestrone di verdura (vegetable).

Yum.

peasants part 2

At lunchtime I saw “Batman” the cat (see Fabriano Cats photo gallery) just outside my “terrace”. I opened the back door to say hello to him. He’s quite shy so I wasn’t surprised when he was reluctant to approach. I was surprised when a fucking big rat moved from behind some garden debris towards Batman. The cat backed away but the rat then turned around and came on to my terrace (the door was already closed!). It came right up to the door so I kicked the door and it sort of jumped up at the door, squeaking. Then as Batman approached the rat ran off the terrace and plunged down into the sort of yard area beneath the apartment. It’s about a 15ft drop but it was still squeaking away and scurrying about. I could tell where it was going coz the cat was eyeing it. Batman seemed to think about going down for it but changed his mind and buggered off.

I hate rats. If this was the UK I’d call the council. Here, it’s probably normal. God I hate living here.

Can you ride tandem?

On our UK intranet there is a notice board. Today someone is selling used tea bags, unboxed at 30p a go.

The seller, Brian, claims they’re good for making maps and photographs look old.

Peasants

Around 7.30-ish yesterday evening, I was parking my car in the street near my apartment and noticed an old man having a piss against the wall.

Last year in Lodz (Poland) I was with an Italian colleague when we saw a man pissing against a wall in the city. To my colleague it was emblematic of what a wretched place Lodz was (in his opinion).

Lodz is an industrial city in a poor country that suffered heavily during the war and in the post-war communist years. Fabriano is a small town in Italy.

domestic bliss

Yesterday I was even less inclined than usual to return to Italy after a wonderful weekend at home with HP and Miles. I spent most of the weekend paiting our garden furniture. It was the usual teak colour when we got it but last year it faded badly in the sun. We decided to paint it cream and the end result looks very nice – it reminds us of the hotel we stayed in last summer on Ile de Ré. On Sunday I mowed the lawn, put down some grass seed where the turf was patchy and also some feed’n'weed stuff. We also finally gave in to indecision and bought a patio heater. A pure extravagance but it was lovely and toasty sitting outside on Sunday evening.

I’m so looking forward to going home.

il temp è bello

After a lengthy spell of very wet weather it’s been gloriously sunny and warm the last two days. I hope it’s here to stay. One of the [few] things I do like about being in Italy is the distinct seasons. Certainly where I am the winters are invariably worse than in Britain but summer is brilliant. And once the weather turns good it stays good until September.

woops

My laptop keyboard has been playing up recently. Keys get momentarily stuck and the space bar intermittently inserts two spaces every time I press it. Yesterday, I was having a bad day anyway and then some f***ing idiot sent me the stupidist email ever (OK, I’m exaggerating). While I was replying my space bar played up. I was getting so annoyed with it that I thumped the keyboard (well sometimes that works). However I hit it so hard that the laptop blue-screened!

The space bar’s fixed though.

Sorrento/Capri

I was in Sorrento at the weekend for our annual IT Kick-Off meeting. It was a little late this year because a new IT Director has just been appointed and they wanted to wait until he’d arrived. Personally, I enjoyed this a lot more than last year’s meeting in Sardinia.

The weather was shite on Saturday but that made the afternoon of presentations more barable. In the evening we had a pizza-making competition which (fortunately) was the only team-building activity. It was susrprisingly difficult but great fun. Throughout the evening meal there was local dancing and some bloke singing. Harmless fun. I even allowed myself to be dragged up for a dance.

On Sunday we went to Capri. It was nice to be just left free to roam with only a meet-up time for lunch. The first thing we Brits did was sit down for a beer and try to get a pidgeon drunk.

After lunch we managed to catch the end of the Moto GP where Valentino Rossi won for Yamaha (surprisingly). The already exciting action was increased by the watching Italians reaction to events on screen.

I hope to put up some photos tomorrow.

Green and pleasant land

Steve, a colleague from the UK and a fellow Geordie, is over here for a few days so I’ve been out the last couple of nights. Last night I was trying to explain why I wouldn’t want to live here. Obviously, there are big reasons like HP (and Miles) and my mum, etc. But even without those commitments I still wouldn’t want to stay. It’s very hard to express why and the reasons that I can articulate sound very petty. Here, without much thought, are some of the things I miss about home:

• Newspapers
• Non-italian food (eating Italian every day is boring)
• British sense of humour
• Sandwiches
• Going to the cinema
• Quality TV (I don’t watch a lot of TV when I’m at home but it’s nice to have the choice. For example, I would have liked to watch the dramatisation of Steven Hawking’s early life this week. Italian TV is all shite.)
• Piss-taking
• Sarcasm
• Radio

At least I didn’t say I missed something like baked beans or fish ‘n’ chips!

chocolate teapot

With just over 3 months to go on my contract here in Italy, I am supposed to complete my performance review form. Actually, it’s already late but that’s not my fault. I’m not very good at this sort of thing at the best of times but this time it seems exceptionally pointless. Ignoring the fact that my manager’s english is as bad as my italian and brushing aside that for the last six months I have been working as part of a project team and have not had any dealings with my manager or the rest of his team (save for the odd “ciao”), just what is the point of setting performance goals when I will be returning to the UK in August.

Maybe I should mention this to my manager: I’m not 100% sure he knows I’m going home yet!