Final Fling & Final destination

Tube stops: Termini, London Stanstead, Victoria, Clapham Junction

The Final Fling

The word in this title is a bit of a sore point for two intrepid explorers who have visited Rome to see me on more than one pancetta-increasing, vino-fuelled adventure: my parents. Taking the opportunity to revisit their favourite homage to the luxurious, swanky, Capri-centric Sixties and Seventies era in Italy, they booked themselves in for four days at the Hotel Majestic, with its classically styled columns and marble interiors and black and white photographs capturing the social transformations of the country during the period of their childhood.

It was in these four days that the final destinations of my stay in Rome were visited - those tourist features lauded loudly from Time Out and Fodor guides that I had failed spectacularly to encounter became our ports of call.





























Clockwise from top: The view from the orangerie at the top of the Aventine Hill; the Swiss Guards manning the entrance to the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo; testing my tenacity for untruths at the Bocca della Verita; the marble statue commerating the discovery of St. Cecilia's beheaded yet intact and uncorrupted body.

We visited the Bocca della Verita, Chiesa di Santa Sabina, Castel Gandalfo and the Knights of Malta's headquarters. This was of particular interest to my dad who actually is a Knight of Malta, albeit of a branch connected with the Knights Templar order of Freemasonry. So in truth, this doesn't make my dad a Papist crusader (and therefore akin to the Opus Dei monk and zealous assassin of the 'Da Vinci Code' film) but it also means that no amount of knocking on the door of the headquarters of the order at the top of the Aventine Hill would admit him into its grounds. Apparently, you need to book a few months in advance with a member of the order to do so (a shame he wasn't just wearing his regalia on that blisteringly hot September day!) We settled for the surprise that lies inside the keyhole of those vast, iron-clad doors...

And so, unfortunately, the word 'fling' accurately denotes the very last morning of the holiday when my Mum broke her leg, tripping over a suitcase in the hotel in an attempt to switch off my Dad's beeping mobile phone. Or should that be his "%@*&ing mobile phone"?

She was not drunk (so she claims) and somehow, after fracturing her tibia, managed to not only get to the airport, come out the 'other side' at Stanstead but also travel all the way to a nearby hospital, after complaining that her leg felt a bit sore. The doctor, after confirming that she had in fact broken her shin bone, asked what painkillers she had taken. "Just a paracetemol", was the response. Hardcore, Celtic/Anglo-saxon, mother-of-three alert.

Now, we find that life back at Warrington Road is a little on the crazy side, something reminiscent of Grey Gardens, just without a penchant for head scarves and eating dinner in several inches of filth. The pressure is on for me to complete my translation a fantastic Roman recipe book given to me by Harmony & co. If I don't do so soon, Dad will probably start eating the paper, in a fever of "pasta all amatriciana" withdrawal.

The Final Destination

Originally, this post was going to be sent from Fiumicino airport on my return route to the UK, as some poignant epistle pointing out the highlights and the low points of my time in Rome.

What actually happened was that I spent the 52 minutes on board the shuttle bus to the airport believing I had left my passport at AC/DCs apartment, where I'd crashed the night before, and thus was going to miss my flight despite being three and a half hours early for it. AC/DC, actually being on the bus with me on his way to a business meeting in Puglia via Fiumicino (and therefore in need of maintaining possession of his apartment key, rather than bid it farewell on some trip to the UK), was less than impressed. After a token two minutes consoling, he then plugged into some Gleek-inspired music and I was left to marinade in my fecklessness (the taste is salty like sweat, mixed with fear pheromones and the slightest lemony tint of desperation. Tasty.)

Incidentally, this symbol doesn't represent the passport's embedded microchip
but merely shows you a handy location where feckless travelers
may wish to stable the passport to their forehead.

So, it's been almost a month since I returned home from Rome, bundling many strange items of clothing, footwear, crockery and books into just one suitcase, one travel bag and an oversized beach bag. I said goodbye to my landlord Pablos* and headed off to AC/DC's apartment for pizza and videos.

The one thing I always find strange are the adverts in each airport I arrive at. The garish combinations of font, design and size make some weird impression on my preoccupied mind as if this poster or that billboard is making some generalised statement about the country you are about to experience. An over-sized, vertical welcome mat. In Rome, pouting, long-legged sirens, bedecked in pricey garb, announce designer labels available to purchase. Barcelona advertises 'Gullivar's travels' sized ¡muffins!, ¡coffee!, ¡chorizo! and ¡tapas!

Stanstead airport provides passengers with the reminder that 10% can be saved on booking transport in advance for travelling from the airport to the centre of London. Somehow I knew I was home.

- "If it's icy, then we might as well stay on the plane until it returns to Fiumicino, then?"

- "Sir, either myself or Stanstead's security team will be removing you from your seat."
- "(Knew I should have flown B.A. - at least they'd apologise whilst doing so.)"

And so, on with the job applications and my attempt to move back to London - the scene of wild debauchment, tube strikes and bacchanalia-inspired Christmas shopping. I would turn this part of the blog into a shameless plug to ask if anyone has any contacts in editing or publishing, to please get in contact. But as potential employers may be reading this blog, as Mambo Metropolitano now features proudly on my C.V., this may not be a wise idea so I'll pretend my delete key doesn't work and leave the sentence as is.

So this is the final post for the Mambo Metropolitano blog, but not the end of my writing. I'll be launching two other blogs shortly, so there really is no escaping your online alternative to Facebook stalking.

Thank you for reading this and to my Roman/Rome-based friends: thank you for your generosity, humour, patience and understanding: Rome will always have a place in my heart and I hope I will remain in its affection. "In bucco al lupo per tutti" ;) (...finally, I managed to get some Italian conversation in edgeways!)

To all those thinking about taking a year out to travel or become a resident in another country: Just Do It. Nike style.

Over and Out.

*It is with some regret that I never found the time to blog about the goings-on between me and Pablos at number 86c, Via Principe Amedeo. This was due, in part, to the level of respect I have for the people I met and later wanted to feature in the blog (names were disguised rather unsuccessfully, perhaps) but also because of the sheer licentious nature of what occurred, hence my current use of small font size. (Shhhh.)

Pablos owned the three bed flat as previously mentioned. He always maintained, in the face of offers of further tenants moving in, that the perfect number of housemates was two with a spare bedroom for guests to use on their arrival. What I didn't realise was that frequent visits to the gayromeo.com website resulted in more than enough guests for the spareroom, that later came to be dubbed the 'Red Room'; so many, in fact, that I questionned whether about five of them might be sharing the same room at the same time, such was the sheer number of strangers, half-dressed, helping themselves to our Bialetti coffee machine in the early hours of a weekday morning.

Only by logging on to Facebook via my phone application by chance did I discover that, in the absence of Pablos (who had gone on holiday for a week to Mykonos), someone called Tiziano had taken up temporary residence in the room next door and was requesting friendship, albeit entirely anonymous friendship. A polite invitation to tea/espresso was declined: I was only later formerly introduced when Tiziano stubbled in drunk at 4am, complaining in broken Italian, that that you shouldn't see the sights of Rome on an empty stomach. Quite.

Fin.

Anecdote 3

Tube stops: The One. The Only. Termini.

Life seems to centre around Termini: it is the centre of Rome as far as transport is concerned: it's futuristic, modern facade concealing mille-feuille layers upon layers of shops and boutiques in it's murky depths. It's a love-hate relationship on an epic scale: I needed the location of Via Principe Amedeo so that I could travel anywhere at a moment's notice - albeit, feeling like I arrived with a thin layer of poverty covering my clothes. At the drop of a hat/alarm clock, I could tumble out of my pit, onto the tube or a bus and be at a lesson by 09:14. Which is usually when my students amble into the class-room, gripping plastic cups full of coffee, insistent on speaking Italian for at least the first ten minutes of the lesson.*

The plastic future

On the walls of the station, pasted up alongside the construction work barriers masking broken escalators, torn-down sections of building and blocked-up exits, are numerous propaganda posters with futuristic depictions of what Termini will look like once it's completed. (In the year "dot", as work on the mysterious Line C has been delayed by some time as excavations in Rome unearth yet more treasures.)

In the posters, 2-D people in bright Summery clothes go about their business in a metallic, space-age hyper-terminal, gliding past plastic facades with the greatest of ease, their progress towards their destination uninhibited. Their joy at efficient public transport, palpable. The truth? A bunfight of thousands running for the exits before 10+ elderly people start a conversation across the platform, blocking all pathways. A family, all armed with trolleys gets stuck on the one working escalator. The temperature akin to that of being 2cm from the centre of the earth, causes, seizures, fainting spells and an argument bubbling over between some tourists and the indifferent transport staff who seem their days standing in the way, watching people. And let's mention the gypsies...

So, myself, Date and Donna, having seen these amusing tributes to a perfect society one to many times, decided to create our own versions:

Frozen smiles of the future, anyone?

There's room for everyone on the
escalators in "New Termini" TM

I actually got a tourist to take this photo.
He was so nervous he hadn't taken a good shot,
he took another two just in case. Much lol.

P.S. This is One Big In-Joke. Apologies.

.............

*On a massive aside, I was sad to say goodbye to one of my favourite classes the other day: Antonio, Massimo and Emmanuelle. Antonio was a an owl-like, quietly stated married man with a burning passion to learn English. Massimo, the cheekiest, most smiley guy I have every met and intent on winding up everyone in the class, and Emmanuelle, a soft, podgy guy in his twenties from the South of Italy, shy, full of pretended macho bravado but very, very genuine.

Anyway, it turned out in one of my lessons that we, or I should say I discovered that Emmanuelle might be gay. He declared during an especially dull exercise entitled "I like this, I dislike that" (imagine my attempts at trying to get the class engaged in talking about stamp-collecting at 09:30 on a Monday morning...) Emmanuelle proudly declared that he loved cooking, for his girlfriend - nothing unusual in that: men from the South take great pride in taking over their kitchens in Italy. Massimo, taking this opportunity for slightly misplaced humour, declared that Emmanuelle actually likes to cook for his boyfriend, at which Emmanuelle turned bright pink, attempted to laugh it off but couldn't make eye-contact with me for the rest of the lesson. We both knew what the truth was and all I could think to say at the time was "Cooking for whoever, it's just important to be proud of your creations."

I remember dying in class at school if anyone mentioned being gay in any context, which for hormonal teenagers in an all-boys school, was every day. My teachers had numerous opportunities to stop the kind of language that resulted from these 'discussions' or at least suggest that being gay didn't necessarily mean becoming a shunned, social pariah in adult life. And they didn't.

Teachers of the future: just remember that you're not only teaching children/teenagers/adults facts and figures, but you're showing them how to use their education, and more importantly their language, to have respect for each other.

Bonnie Tyler had some sense

Tube stops: Termini, Tiburtina and a reaaallllyyy long bus ride home

Today, it's T -2, yesterday T-3 and on the day that shall always be known as T-5, or commonly as 'The Day Bonnie Tyler's legacy was bastardised', I held my leaving bash. You'd have thought I'd have learnt my lessons after the last party: what with playlist censorship (my theory is that the DJ took it personally when he read Em's slip requesting 'Fuck You' by Ceelo Green) and a random assortment of silk knapkins that were donated to us being used as gangsta bandanas (see evidence above.)

But no, new venue I thought, new opportunities to belt out some classic numbers and prove that we're all superstars at heart (except not in some tacky High School Musical way, which you suspect is purely just televised paedophile fodder. No-one is that happy at high school singing show tunes, unless you're regularly exposed to those school art projects held together with certain types of glue.) That's why we prefer Glee...those kids know how to be emotional rejects.

"I'm on my way to schooooolll...where I'm failing all
my GCSE's....but people think I'm cooooollll
despite the fact this large zit's hhheerrrrPPEESSS..." etc.etc.etc.

So the venue this time was the Vecchio Franklyn, located in the middle of what seemed to be on the crossroads of Heroin Alley and the Local Waste Disposal Unit's headquarters, i.e., the middle of Via Tiburtina and half-way along "where the hell are we?" We arrived: me, Date and G n T, three old afficionados of the musical theatre scene. Harmonia was already there and we were swiftly joined by S, Shaz, M and M, after a few phone calls to guide people to our location, up the flashing rainbow lights leading up to the second floor level of the car-park that was our location. Glamour simply out of control. Ahem.

These people are true superstars: M, M and Shaz

What was amusing to start with was the fact that a football match was playing on a massive projector screen, an important Roma vs. Inter match, which was getting several Italian punters hot under the collar. We were told that karoake would begin when the match finished: I was praying I wouldn't be subjecting my friends, and those arriving with KM to celebrate her birthday on our joint-venture, to a true British Wetherspoons experience, complete with shouting matches, broken glass and the local law enforcers.

Eventually, the karaoke began, the lights went off, replaced by glaring, primary colour flashes of light and the pub was full of groups of people crowded round tiny, square wooden chairs and tables and crumbling folders full of song titles were avidly scanned for the perfect song. I had already agreed with Shaz, we were drinking this evening, like only an Anglo-American alliance could: first the Long Island Ice Teas (as are traditional in...Long Island, America) and then, A LOT OF TEQUILA (which is traditional wherever there are people looking for a good time.)

Date, G n T: we feared their expansive
musical-theatre resumés.

And so the credits:

G singing Alanis Morrisette's "You outta know" as a (ahem) tribute to an ex. And nothing says "I'm now 100% fucking amazing" than "cause the love that you gave that we made wasn't able
To make it enough for you to be open wide". NB: no-one realises how fucked up the tempo of this song truly is as a karaoke classic - kudos to the G!

Date choosing the unfrozen cryogenic version of Dean Martin: Michel Bubble (sorry Bublé) singing "Everything" and pretty much nailing the swagger of the Deanster himself.

Date and T letting rip with a good, old fashioned, "bring the house down" number:
("Grazie perché" - IT version = much, much better) and ("We've got tonight" - UK cover with quite a profound change of lyrics!) Perfect harmonies falling out all over the place: the rest of the pub didn't know what him them - which we were planning to do having been given just one song folder for the thirty of us!

(Jupard arrived to join the festivities, having driven across town and almost across country, I'm sure he said it felt like, and was ready to join in the carnage. I was touched that people had really made the effort to reach a destination that was, quite simply, undetectable by the latest satnavs. Em and Sam had also turned up with KM, the place flooded with these new UK arrivals in Italy, fresh-faced, eager to find out what this country could offer them. Dirty karaoke, the answer!)

And finally, after prompting the ever-smiling DJ to play my song choice - as I wasn't going to be able to escape the persistent demands of my friends to sing by hiding under the bar in a puddle of booze - I sang Bonnie Tyler's "Total Eclipse of the heart", with help from Jupard and Shaz.

M displaying his mutant 'Bright Eyes' ability, learned
from none other than Bonnie herself.

I don't actually remember an awful lot about singing the song, apart from trying to keep up with an impossible tempo and changing key somewhat dramatically half way through, when I realised that if I persisted with singing in a higher key, dogs and canaries for miles around would simultaneously explode with the sonic vibrations I was emitting. The microphone was thrust towards Shaz and Jupard at various points for them to sing, which to give them credit for, they did. Just maybe the words to another song. How the hell Rachel from Glee does it, I do know now but then I suspect she is part android. It's the squinty face for the high notes she systematically pulls.

It's enough to say the lyrics of the song had more than enough meaning.

So at this point of the evening, Shaz and I had drunk our own body weight in Tequila and Long Islands, attempted to share anecdotes with the more than amused bar staff (who actually treated me and Shaz to some free drinks when everyone else had left!) and flirt with the newcomers brought in by KM and her birthday crew.

I bet you didn't know I manage an 80's tribute
band called "The Blue Steelers" - this is the
cover of our first album "Indigo Sex Dream Beast (Yeah)"

And there was dancing. Dancing can be something of a social protocol in Italy. Reserved purely for clubbing, it would be deemed a tad bizarre if you got up in the middle of a pub, threw a few shapes around, cut some rug up and returned to your seat (we're assuming music is playing whilst this is happening.) But that's exactly what we did: in between songs, the DJ was spinning some tunes and when Mr. Saxobeat came on, we all got up when several people weren't sure whether to clap or stay put. Without dancing, I can't tell you what life for me would be like - nothing gives me greater pleasure that opening up your body to rhythm and music and just release all that energy. It's like a work-out for the soul.

The part of the evening I hated was the end: saying goodbye. The Italians never really make farewells so final: a "ciao" means I'm meeting you again or saying goodbye, in the same breath (a causal loop!) and "arrivederci" merely "we will come back to each other again." "Goodbye" or "bye" seems like "go well" and then just "go" - that's it, finito. And of course I had/have doubts about what I would be leaving behind: these people changed me in ways I'm only just understanding, they showed how to live fearlessly yet with caution, proudly yet without arrogance, kindly yet without losing yourself and that to cook for someone is to open up your heart and your home to that person. Things I might never have been privileged enough to learn.

The Day After...the night before

Arising, like the long deceased brother of King Tutankhamen: I emerged out of my cell at about 11:00, parched, confused, mumbling fragments of karaoke hits. My head "told me so" through a thousand percussive beats - hello long forgotten British hangover!

Saved by great cooking and excellent company

I was saved, by coffee, the mana of Italia, but also by S's curry-fuelled lunch, an amazingly spicy feast cooked up in the New York, 1950's deli kitchen of the apartment she shares off Piazza Vittoria Emmanuelle. I was back on the vino and chatting to Harmonia, S & Em, and over Earl Grey, I felt Englishified, the conversation turning to religion, politics and life in general. From the bacchanalia of the previous night to the cerebral communion of Sunday lunch. S & Em are returning to Bristol after another year in Italy, and S may return to the UK at some point: just by talking, a wave of finality came over me - the remembered urban traditions of drinking tea after a meal feeling familiar, beckoning. The "expat Dream" could end well, we could choose when to depart and not be left at sea in a realm of unfulfilled wishes and expectations. 'Leave on a high', my Mum always used to say. How high, how high...

Italian superheroes, every one

Tube stops: Lepanto, driving, Tiburtina, Termini

Superheroes, superheroes, superheroes. Something that I've had in common with most of the friends I've met, since I stepped off the plane back in March 2010 was the superhero multiverse of Marvel and DC comics. Each person has a particular superhero or heroine at the core of their slightly indulgent but very necessary reminiscing about their childhood that they have brought with them into the present day. For yours truly, the Uncanny Xmen formed such an integral part of growing up at school: battles to regain the planet were enacted across the school yard and the common storylines about being discriminated against by mankind for reasons of genetic differences was obviously something that resonated with millions of fans around the world.

And so to Italy, the land where revelling in the pastimes of youth is simply fun, not a refusal to become an adult; a regression into carefree nostalgia. Women may complain that Italian men act too much like little boys, needing a replacement mother figure. Not so - it's just that being young again is rejuvenating, a reminder that if you take life too seriously, you're heading in the "wrong direction", i.e., towards the grave rather than taking a few steps back from it.

So many superhero films came out since I came to Rome: X-Men First Class, Green Lantern, Thor, Captain America...the list goes on. Maybe the world has caught on and we are all seeing the world through new, young eyes? (As an aside, a new film is coming out that looks at one man's explanation of the world's collective mythologies as mapping the eternal quest of the hero/man in vanquishing his demons/problems - definitely one to watch!)

We had our own 'mini-adventure' recently, trying to see Green Lantern at the cinema. I even think the adventure involved a mini, but due to there having been a personal injury at the time, my memory is hazy! Meeting up with Date, we took the tube to Lepanto one evening, heading towards the cinema in Piazza Cavour. The film however had been cancelled, replaced by screening films from a recent film festival. By this time, I had met F, an officianado of the Italian film dubbing scene, whose last house was paid for by the Smurfs (not literally, because they...ahem...aren't real.) Also M, whose infectious passion for DC comics made me wary: here I was, a Marvel comics guy through and through, about to be exposed to a DC superhero film alongside DC fans (Date incidentally is a massive fan of Wonder Woman (also DC), although he too would suspect that recent tv portrayals of WW have gone somewhat amiss. After all, a tv adaptation starring Liz Hurley as a villain and a revamped costume that looks more 99p drag-queen Halloween costume than crime-fighter would never have done that well.)

2011 and 1975: to be honest,

neither wins in terms of practicality.
Unless it's easy to keep loose change in your bra.
(I wouldn't know, I've never tried.)

So we call M and his friend who have left, to see if other cinemas are showing the film. After half an hour's frantic phone calls on the street, at which time I'm arranging for A to come and join us for dinner at a yet unknown location, we decide to go to F's car to drive somewhere. We drive around the block: no other showings, we hear. We park the car back where we started and whilst Date is getting out of the car, the car seat hits my thumb, smashing the nail up and causing it to bleed quite a bit. Pain. Disappointment. A lack of spandex: we're in trouble.

Instead, we decide on food at a nice restaurant near Lepanto where Claudio and Alessandro join us, as well as A and another friend of S. So it's deep-friend antipasti (which we were charged per person for, a BIG regret on our part), pasta courses and off to a traditional English pub for beer in pints, wood furnishings and a happy yet still bleeding Englishman.

Colonel Bulmers relaxes at sun-down.

Gurl loves her some fashun!

Put the bicep away, Claudio, you'll only
encourage more people to drink wheat beer!

I'm excited too, it's an actual pub pub!

This is easy pub conversation: my Italian has improved a lot, thanks to a combination of mind-bogglingly boring pronoun exercises and through having the courage to try and say anything: even if it is a tongue-twister in Italian or English. And though I know I'm leaving Italy, it's during conversations like these that I realise I want all my friends in the same place altogether, forever. To chat, reminisce about the memories created together, the laughter, antics and the uncomplicated simple dreams we may have. Maybe that's the real childhood superhero dream: being in two places at once.

Anecdote 2: quest physics

Tube stops: Castro Pretorio

I walked to my language school the other day, picking up some folders for my last week of teaching and bumped into a few teachers who I hadn't seen since the start of the Summer holiday period. The meeting was bittersweet: I feel uncomfortable telling people I have now decided to go back to London, as if I truly tasted the forbidden dream of escaping to an exotic land to settle down and found it wanting. The exact opposite is true - the path revealed to me the things that I needed to move onto a new period in my life, to become "myself" more, an individual in control of my destiny, becoming fearless. As the film 'Eat, Pray and Love' (take a look at the trailer) says - whilst being a frightening accurate reflection of the parts of my life leading up to, and during my stay in Italy*:

In the end, I've come to believe in something I call "The Physics of the Quest." A force in nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity.

The rule of Quest Physics goes something like this: If you're brave enough to leave behind everything familiar and comforting, which can be anything from your house to bitter, old resentments, and set out on a truth-seeking journey, either externally or internally, and if you are truly willing to regard everything that happens to you on that journey as a clue and if you accept everyone you meet along the way as a teacher and if you are prepared, most of all, to face and forgive some very difficult realities about yourself, then the truth will not be withheld from you.

* One of the milder examples of how this film seems overwhelming autobiographical is that when Liz is sitting in the bath learning Italian, she is using the exact same dictionary as me. Freaky.

...

It has been tough - I learnt things about myself that I truly did not want to acknowledge and I discovered potential I didn't know was possible, lying in the depths of my immature understanding about the journey of life we undertake every day when we wake up, get up, attempt to grow, experience pleasure, forget pain, move on and come home to relax, sleep and dream again. And hit "Repeat". Bittersweet, conflicting emotions, difficult choices but always the understanding of your own capacity to experience all these profound experiences together, which make us alive.

I left the school with my head swimming in the afternoon heat, my bag light with the only folder that I'll need in my last week of teaching. The familiar Via Po seemed like a series of cardboard shop fronts pasted against a blue plastic background.

I passed a Italian guy in the street, young, dressed casually, laughing and smiling as he attempted to lead his pet dalmatian down the street by his leash. The only problem was that this dalmatian was clearly a Great Dane cross-breed and about as big as him. Defiantly, the dog held his ground, to the amusement of passing office workers, and turned its head away as if to say: "Today, I don't go any further. I've being doing this walk for years and years and finally I'm sick and tired of it."

"Yeah", I thought as I passed by with a bemused grin, "we all get like that sometimes."

TFB

Tube Stops: (First visit) Termini, Porta San Paolo, Navigatori (bus stop), Ostiense, Barberini, Flaminio. (Second visit): Barberini, Termini & many taxis...

A return visit from one of my friends from the UK came just as the Summer was drawing towards its hottest period: obligatory dresscode? Linens and layers, tshirts and portable aqua portable. Having returned from a week in Sitges, being spoilt by endless bronzing sessions on the beach (being white, a tan is nigh on impossible without chemical enhancement and a concession towards the influence of the cosmetics industry in portraying dark skin as a beauty 'ideal') and tapas without end. Where long, happy yet clumsy saunters around the twisting cobbles of the town's night-life district resulted in revisiting the retro-pop bars and cavernous clubs of our previous visit. Being with friends who have been around at the start of each other's lives when the wildness of university's unpredictable life-style ended and careers and responsibility began meant deep conversations matched with an endless supply of in-jokes.

Alice: "Nomadi" (courtesy of 'Joe Festa')
Translated lyrics

But then the return... Rome wasn't the same. The question I'd been previously mulling over whimsically and thinking about again on the beach, whilst simultaneously toasting my body in front of a cat-walk of Atkins models, suddenly had an answer. It was time to return to London. The hushed buzz of a Rome nell'estate, devoid of locals, had become a deathly silence. The metal shutters hiding shops displaying notices of being closed for 'estiva', were sullen declarations of a reluctant community disavowing their own economy, unreliant on any form of custom. Friends were suddenly found in distant locations and I missed the sudden cold onset of Autumn that England would soon be experiencing (to everyone's chagrin.)

With TFB's arrival, it was soon time to reconnect with London albeit vicariously. We were former flatmates, now room-mates with T crashing out on the top bunk of my bed, which lead to various items falling on me in the middle of the night, accompanied by a conversation had half-waking, half-sleeping, involving T's father and a mysterious shopping list. Each night, whilst getting ready for the evening meal, we had drinks at Pimms o'clock out on my balcony, and chewed the fat about everything and anything.

Check out the washing in the restaurant window
behind TFB & S: 'outdoors' indoor chic!

Spend time with a Londoner and you realise they never truly sit still; whilst having been here, I've truly learnt how to savour times when moving isn't really a necessity. I was picking up an old recognised form of energy: a new position in the city was waiting for T at the end of the month and I knew I wanted a career again. But having come this far, I felt like opportunities would be there for the taking.



As the heat of Rome was at its height, we sauntered through those four days, eating outside at a restaurant in Trastevere where inside the restaurant, fake clothes hang from a decorated washing-line: the tops of villas and buildings have been painted along its walls. Another restaurant saw friend M take us to 'Romolo e Remo' where you and your friends are invited to take up the challenge of eating 28 (yes, 28) different pasta dishes and not pay a single cent. Eat 27, and it's a three-line (actually, better make that a many-line) whip. On TFB's last night, we were kindly invited to Harmony & Detto's roof-top pad at Navigatori and treated to a fantastic spread, prosecco and then rounds on a hookah, before yours truly upended the thing all over the table. Fail. I was sad to see TFB leave - we had never been roomies before, which made more sense to have happened in the UK. My mind was becoming made up, familiar ties were tugging me northwards.

The Motley crew post flavoured smoke enhancement :)

Hablas Espanol?

Tube Stops: Termini, Aeroport, El Prat de Llobregat, Espanya, Liceu, Jaume 1, Lesseps

Everyone needs a holiday, right? None more so than the Romans...again the city is empty and everyone has left town to go to their apartments by the sea. For every piece of rented or bought property in Rome, there seems to be an accompanying sea-side pied-a-terre for most Italians living in Rome.

Every year, me and my friends have tried to have a holiday away together somewhere but for the last few years, the people's choice has been Sitges, located along the coast of Spain near Barcelona. Having booked our holiday in January, I decided to head to Barcelona first, a place we visited albeit briefly on our last sojourn to Sitges.

I had arranged to stay first at an artist's studio-cum-bedsit for the weekend, via the website airbnb.com, which fell through as it was already booked. Next, one day before leaving, I booked a bed at a couple's apartment near the centre of Barcelona, only to have them try to rip me off by raising the price and asking for money 'offline'. Great. So I arrived on Saturday and hostel-hopped, eventually ending up in a cupboard above a tourist shop: just me, a 2 x 4 floor space, a bed and a fan. Occasionally-agraphobic me was happy :)


My friend Claudio & his friend Alessandro were also in town on their hols so we agreed to meet at the Espanya tube stop and check out the Eixample district. As night fell, Barcelona became surreal - tourist attractions seemed otherwordly, long vistas carried us past abstract monuments and towards the concrete grid system of Eixample. A long promenade lead to a massive fountain whose gigantic jets of water were illuminated with a rainbow of colours as they were fired into the air in time to various classic 70's disco tunes and 80's power ballads: spectacle meets child-like fun. My attention was absolutely captivated but in contrast, Eixample itself was empty, long stretches of anonymous buildings - or rather we were early, venturing out to find a meal at 22:00.



Views of Barcelona



By the end of the night, we had dined in a chic restaurant with only one or two other people, an atmosphere that whilst being stylish and chic, was monochromatic and a little cold: where was everyone? Was this the ghost-town that Rome becomes in the Summer? The masses were just waiting however, to crowd the streets in barely-there gym-wear, whilst the bars and clubs, hidden behind simply-detailed facades stretched and yawned and opened their doors. We chatted to an Amy Winehouse drag-queen about living in Rome and pushed our way through a sea of meat at 'Bim Bam Bum' (!!), long stretches of walking gym advertisements. Interestingly, I experienced homophobia earlier in the day when two guys shouted "Maria Maria!" at a gay couple holding hands. It wasn't until the two guys walked past the couple that they saw how enormous they were and promptly stopped. I smiled.

(original photo by Claudio)

A.R.T

I have a confession to make. I have never been able to stop thinking about art since I was at school. I won the art prize at school three years running and there is something in my blood that churns and gurgles whenever my hands get itchy and I see art materials hanging lifelessly in a shop window. It's like being addicted to substance that you don't need to injest but that constantly reinvigorates and nourishes you. Get me, with the profoundity there. Recent attempts to perform cartharses on a regular basis include:

1) Setting up an Istagram account
2) Experimenting with pencil and ink, analysing portraiture again (see left)
3) Visiting Barcelona

I had the very good fortune to become friends with Daniel Meakin in Barcelona, a resident artist of some ten years whose bright murals and crushingly colourful depictions of towns and city-scapes have been sold in countries all over the world. This for me was someone who 'has made it', living the dream and profiting from it. We had coffee in the Cafe del'Opera, musing about the world, followed by a tour of Barcelonetto and beers by the harbour, and all the while my head was filled with thoughts of my second cousin's gallery and how everything seemed to make sense and abstract wishes and dreams started to combine together, previously raw ingredients taking a possible shape. Galleries which host your artwork at 0% commission? No need for art qualifications or academic background? All easily swallowed with the last of my Estrella!

Some of Daniel's work (which I hope he doesn't mind me reposting!)



The evening finished with a reunion with Cas, a teacher from the school where I work in Rome who has since gone back to her native land of Barcelona. She recommended a tapas bar near the narrow streets of the Jaume tube stop, where we had amazing tapas, ripping off the heads of massive prawns, eating the greasiest but the most amazing chorizo and of course, quaffing large glasses of sangria. With Claudio and Alessandro, plus Cas' friend Julia, we had lots to catch up on, and the conversation soon turned into a U.N. conference with all the different languages being spoken!

(From left to right: yours truly, Claudio, Cas,
Natalie Portman Julia, Alessandro)

From tapas, to more drinks around La Ramblas and finally a student-esque bar, where me, Cas and Julia talked love, loss and life in general, whilst I looked around at the projector screen showing rock concerts live, the oil drum seats and hundreds of beer labels stuck to one wall and remembered London: the haphazard and the 'don't give a shit' decor. The waitress didn't serve us for what seemed like half an hour - a rockabilly attitude which made me love/hate the place even more, no pretensions. More of Julia's English accent and a double-take we were all doing, thinking that Natalie Portman Julia must have come from money, such was the silver-spoon English she had learnt at a school in the UK. It's always impressive to me when our European counterparts can speak other languages fluently: the general English populace must seem lazy by comparison! Even Cas' English had improved greatly since our days of inventing our own Esperanto mix of Italian, Spanish and English in the teacher's common-room in Rome.

Outside Moog, a club where a top floor is entirely
dedicated to dancing to 80's & 90's pop, surrounded by mirrors
under pink light. In other words, disco heaven.

Down a back-street, we passed 'Moog', a club that to all appearances appeared to be a hide-out for rock stars who have fallen from some level of grace, for tourist booze-hounds and the like. In reality, the vision of a big, curly-haired DJ, trapped behind a cage of bars, rocking out to Bananarama was more than brilliant and we danced as if no-one was watching (despite watching ourselves reflected a thousand times in the mirrors). My family nickname is 'Moog' and it seems that again, fate was telling me something in us going to what has to be one of the best clubs I've ever been too. Kudos to Cas!

The weekend was over in one heavy heartbeat and soon I was on my way to the airport to meet the others and head to Sitges...

Anecdote

I heard this through a friend of a friend: (imagine 'Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona' voice-over)

A woman is talking to her Italian confidentes over brunch, in a pleasant apartment outside of Rome, filled with unusual paintings, the smell of coffee and a large number of cats.

She is bemoaning the fact that she has become recently divorced and is fairly certain that she is 'over' men and will not find another guy to share her life with. The friends cajole her about this, claiming that of course she will meet someone.

As the cats start to climb all over the woman as she tells her story, the friends ask her if she minds this somewhat unexpected attention. Is she a dog or a cat person, they ask. Either way, they suggest, she might want one or two of either animal as companions in the future.

She replies that she is more of a dog person but that, all she really sees herself with in the future, is an apartment filled with birds and fish.

The women laugh hysterically.

.....

NB: In Italian, there are many, many, many common words which are a euphemism for reproductive organs and various secretions produced during sex. Here are a selection:

1) Uccello = "bird" or "penis"
2) Pesce = "fish" or "penis"
3) Tubelo = "potato" or "vagina"
4) Pane = "bread" or "vagina"
5) Borra = "butter" or ... I think you get the (word) picture.

Proud to be...Italian?

Tube stops: a meandering vista past Via Giovanni Giolitti, Via Cavour, Piazza dell’Esquilino, Largo Visconti Venosta, Largo Corrado Ricci, Via dei Fori Imperiali, Piazza del Colosseo, Via Celio Vibenna, Via di San Gregorio, Piazza di Porta Capena e Via del Circo Massimo.

This year was a very big year for Italian politics.

(sorry, I was tempted to use politics with a big 'P', to illustrate the magnitude by which Governmental/Parliamentary/constitutional politics in Italy has pervaded every aspect of normal everyday actions and intentions or 'politics' with a small 'p'. What with all the peeing, I'll have to keep going to lav every 5 mins, and I'm definitely not drinking enough water this Summer to afford to do that. Error.)

I'd heard about the phenomenon that is Berlusconi. Or 'He who must not be named' (in articles or reports that his media companies will just refuse to print anyway.) His comparison to Voldemort is considerably apt because in lessons, we tend to steer clear of politics or religion as topics to break the unbearable silence created, when at 6:55pm, a student has categorically refused to accept that there is no rule for when we should use the gerund of the infinitive in English. (incidentally, it has something to do with intrasitive verbs but future teachers be warned, this attempted explanation does not satisfy personalities that crave order and logic in their universe.) So Berlusconi is rarely mentioned, except in trusted company, i.e., students who aren't afraid to reveal political allegiances. Loudly.

(Silvio himself, above)
Mumble, mumble, something about knowing a person
by the company they keep, mumble, mumble

So aside from the Roman orgyesque 'Bunga Bunga' parties, which initially sounded to me like 'Jenga Jenga' parties, where sharp-suited politicians are publicly ridiculed for failing to build the highest tower of Jenga blocks and so lose their positions (party games meets Darwinism), why are a large percentage of the Italian people waiting for Berlusconi to just...die?

Despite controlling the majority of the country's media - to the extent that demonstrations against his winning a vote of 'no confidence' in the country's recent apprisal of his scandalous affair with Ruby the prostitute (et al) just never appeared in the press or on tv - Berlusconi helped usher in an era of the Italian "macho-man". (You can almost imagine a Bunga Bunga party in full swing, to the tune of 'So Macho', in which Berlusconi decides that every Italian ragazzo should aspire to being 'big' and 'strong' with 'big blue eyes'. Except that most of them are, well, not that.

And so to gay rights, which have become irreparably damaged by a growing culture of machoistic power-suiting and money-hoarding, where those that control the Government and the media saturate it with images of botoxed women, big-lipped women, women wearing not a lot but somehow still smiling through big-lips and botox, and the occasional advert for a gay helpline that appeared for about two months and has not been seen since. If women look beautiful, men might just sleep with them (see recent comments made about Italy having the lowest birth-rate in the EU...) If you are gay, old, young, or not pretty, you might as well have money as a form of social empowerment.

A recent Parliamentary resolution was turned down that would have, in a subtle yet significant way, created that little bit more freedom in society for gay people to exist in: any action or incident deemed anti-gay would have become prosecutable to the appropriate extent of the law. Insert plausible rationale for turning down this most basic of civil rights.

Monica Bellucci: a good example of how best to
turn attention away from a less than credible acting
career and towards what the pundits really
want to touch, stroke, feel, "respect" (ahem)!

Berlusconi's riposte to the overwhelming evidence of his soliciting the then underage "Ruby" for a night of wild depravity (and one would guess viagra - Silvio is 75 years old): "At least I'm not gay." Because being born a homosexual obviously rates at an all-time zero, whilst being adulterous in the public eye and ensuring your country becomes the laughing stock of Europe, nay the world, is somehow excusable as power-player hijinks. Where are my taxes going again?

So whilst there is an assumption that the men of Italy might not be "real" men (i.e., having copious amounts of extra-marital sex with prostitutes) and might be effeminate/gay and therefore less than 'real' men, they are somehow expected to prove their masculinity by bagging a botox beauty, raising a family when the Government no longer financially supports you with the money to buy a house, money to start a family and to support them yourself. Suddenly staying at home and being a bamboccioni sounds like your only credible, post-recession option.


Going GaGa

11th of June. I've been to many London Pride marches and one Europride event held in the capital myself but nothing prepared me for Rome's first ever Europride event: as the temperature started to soar and expectations were running high, a number of events held at Piazza Vittorio Emmanuelle were held, opening up the public's consciousness about LGBT culture. Which seemed daunting. How much exposure of the celebrating, diverse rainbow of LGBT people would this land of the Vatican be able to tolerate? I pictured bemused priests mingling with drag-nuns, labourers with lady-boys, top-less muscle Marys and ... well, the virgin Mary (again in drag.) Liberation. Fingers up at repressive tradition.

The reality? Better.

My friend TQ had come over to visit and together we met up with our American friends and ventured over to piazza dei cinquecento, which was packed with what looked like demonstrators, the torch-wielding villages but actually turned out to be citizens taking this as their opportunity to support 'the cause' whilst simultaneously defying Italy's dogmatic authoritarianism: the Vatican, the politicians, even the Carabinieri! The street quickly filled and with a reduced police presence, the crowd took formation and started to meander down Via Cavour to the chirping accompaniment of whistles and whoops. No riding on a float above the crowd or standing at the side, watching the colourful brigade of organisations pass by, everyone was together, marching down the street, dancing and celebrating freely. How very Communist.



Various people were recognised amidst the thong (or should I say thong) - hard to spot past the thrusting, gold g-string crotch of some Ancient Egyptian dressed go-go boy, making its way through the masses, a parade of Abercrombie and Fitch models, let loose for the weekend from their plastic factory. We made firm friends with one of the many barrow-boys wheeling through the madness, flogging dodgy German beer and then spraying all of us with water to keep us cool, and when we later stood in the shade of a bar to catch our breath, the surging, non-stop crowds continuing down the street meant our break was short-lived: there was dancing to be had.



We danced behind a float that wound its way in the blistering midday sun towards Circo Massimo, stopping briefly outside the Colosseo as part of a snake-like chain of party wagons. Taking the opportunity, we danced in the street and drew a crowd of Venezuelen transexuals and ravers and a friend of Date's that lived in the area, the actress from Il Pesciolino: it was her turn to see my "performance", instead of Date's which she's had the good fortune to share a stage with each time the two get together to perform the play almost every year. A thespian's thumbs up.

And finally, Circo Massimo at dusk. The stage was set and the crowd seemed to be several hundred thousand strong. We stumbled past people of all description, eyes sagging under the day's events, skin browned from the heat of the day. The atmosphere was still and then, pushing ourselves up against the bodies in front of us, we heard Lady Gaga give a speech about governments around the world that do not yet fully support gay rights. Italy was not mentioned.

Apparently, it later turned out that she didn't have permission to mention Italy as one of these governments - a condition of her appearing at Europride. And so, Gaga has become an almost empty symbol of gay rights in our modern context: money controls even the ability to express the (somewhat controversial) idea that every person on this planet has rights and that those that actively repress those rights should be named and shamed.

Date mentioned that he would have preferred to see gay families camped out in front of the Vatican, sharing a picnic, as symbol of acceptance and forward-thinking: anything but what happened earlier in the day when a gay porn star was invited on stage at Circo Massimo and showed off his arsehole to the assembled masses.

However we all choose to get the basic message of pride and a fight for equal rights across - via celebrities, sex stars or families - there has never been a more important time to push on and remind the world that whilst we've all come so far, there still remains much to be done and that money cannot take away our collective voice.