The U.N.usual way we just get along

Tube stops: Tiburtina, Piramide & a car-ride to Trastevere

It's like Matthau and Lemmon, but without the cliche: P and I are officially the only ones left in the apartment. Big M and little M have migrated back to their homes outside of Rome and now, the apartment is filled with strange warblings from P's selection of fine Italian pop. And here, I was thinking Eurovision finished last week.

I'd say we're two peas in a pod but within a matter of minutes, our dinner-time conversation (now sat around the yellow linoleum covered table in our small but tidy affair of a kitchen) stretched from the right way to cook pasta (not with pasta in the bowl before the water; salt only added when the water is boiling) to religion and politics. P is a forthright, right-wing conservative, ex-military enthusiast of all things architectural. I am a liberal, left-wing, language and art enthusiast and of the British persuasion for excusing myself every so often. But we were breaking new international-relations ground here: once I definately admitted to P that I would eat my pasta cold the next day, despite coating it in pesto, I earnt some begrudged form of respect. I'm sure I won't, however, be invited to "Casa P" in the near future, for fear my heathen ways will drive me to bite the head off a live chicken and gargle with chocolate mousse :)

This form of foreign relations reminded me of the other night: meeting up with M, a friend of a friend in Rome who was taking pity on a stranded and Friday-night-starved-Brit by inviting him out on the Roma scene. We met in Testaccio at restaurant/club Angelica (no, not a haunt for pouty, stick-like starlets), whose roof-terrace played host to a fantastic set that would put some London bars to shame. M introduced me to two lively Iranian guys, the Twiddledum and Twiddledee of the Middle East. Glancing around the street-lamp splashed grove, it was hard to tell the Mediterranean genotype from the Mexican, Middle Eastern or Mesopotamian. I'm genuinely inspired by the efforts people can go to to "up sticks" and move over borderlines, pick up a new nationality and add it to their own fiercely held identity. Those borderlines are blurring, but not enough it seems: the two Iranians are on the look out for a european visa, so guys, if you're after a man who can make you perfect "Persian" Polow, drop me a line!

And to a crowd that seemed a little closer to home: the Hoxton Heroes! Roman legend Pi and her boyfriend pulled up outside Casa Lemmon & Matthau a few days ago, to whisk yours truly away for a cheeky "ape" (aperitivo) in the trendy Rome quarter of Trastevere. Meeting Pi's motley crew, I was straining my ears to pick up words I knew within the Italian that bubbled backwards and forwards across the stuffy night air. Some words I could understand, but Pi kindly played the interpretor and provider of key "good-luck" slang, involving whales and wolves. After filling up on the most amazing ravioli known to mankind ("Bracchio" restuarant), I was could find no words, for a different reason this time! Finally a tour through the 80's Raybans, pork-pie hats, skinny jeans and pavement-side acid jazz of Via del Pigneto, Rome's own Shoreditch, where the language was "trend", but the style "universal".

As I type, P has just invited me to tomorrow's military parade and flyover for the national holiday here. We need to get up at 7:30 it seems. Where's a peace-keeper, when I need one?