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 :)