-Noone's paid since the beginning of the year.
-Who? What? Since when? Noone at all?
I can't believe it. All those carefully worked out balances. Fucked beyond recognition.
-I'll make some phone calls when I get back to the office.
I do as well, I'm so pissed off. ‘Out today.’ ‘We'll check what's happened.’ ‘She'll get back to you tomorrow.’
I get home and the 'elenco movimenti eseguiti' is there with all its minus signs. Thank god the woman at the bank we work for was out today because they’re the only ones who've actually paid.
Marta's in the bath telling a variation on a Harry Potter story to herself. Giacomo wants to tell me something about one of his fantastic friends. He has a figure from a cereal packet standing on its head in the filled bidet.
-He can stand his head, his head!
Valentina's on the phone. Davide is walking around with those balloons that annoying faux clowns make shapes out of on street corners on Saturdays; he's complaining that there are no swords in the instruction manual.
-Well, I know how to do swords anyway, says his mum, between calls. But Davide seems to have found something else to complain about in life and he's off to find the right person to lodge it to. Valentina's back on the phone, this time to Mago Titix for Marta's birthday party Monday next.
It appears Mago Titix himself can't get to us before 5 next Monday but he can send an 'animatrice' (a warm-up artist), at no extra cost, until he gets there. Everything's fine then. I only have to print out the invitations I stole from Microsoft.
Mago Titix is probably in a very good line of business. The relief we felt when we found out he could come was similar to discovering that the pharmacy on the corner was open late at night when all the children had bad coughs and we'd run out of linctus. The price wasn't that important, having the thing was what counted.
I saw an interview in a series of articles in one of the more conservative papers about how young people are rejecting conventional career structures. This piece was with the son of an Italian 'industrialist' and a Spanish 'diplomat'; he'd become a magician and did parties. It was presented as a rejection of a certain lifestyle but when you thought about it he was very much following in his parents' footsteps. Neither of his parents' titles stood close scrutiny (what did their working days consist of exactly?), and left much to be interpreted. Here he was, working in the 'black' economy, making a fortune, and having time to be with his young family. Milan rejects Milan but remains as Milan as it is.
Milan always seems much worse when you’ve been away from it for than 48 hours, as we have. Perhaps it’s the least Italian city in Italy, while at the same time having something of the entire country in it: it’s like one of those miniature villages or countries that you walk round like Gulliver in Lilliput, striding the length of the place in a breath. You know that what you’re experiencing isn’t real but at least it gives you an idea of what it must be like.
We’ve been in Friuli this past weekend, visiting Valentina’s cousin and her family at their mountain house. We went skiing in Tarvisio. Okay, eight hours driving for 4 hours skiing might not seem a very good ROI but we all enjoyed it immensely (despite my sneaking cynicism). Giacomo got a cough within 12 hours of getting there; the fresh air must have been such a shock to his polluted system that his lungs started trying to get rid of all the rubbish. Davide asked ‘Are we really going skiing?’ every ten minutes in the car and didn’t seem to believe that we really were even when we were fitting him with his boots. Marta stated she wouldn’t have lessons but when her aunt took her with her cousins and told her what to do, she did it (not quite doing the curves as wide as Franci required, preferring to go headlong down the slope, but pretty much following instructions). We realised how stupid we’ve been this year in not going to Limone at the weekends to ski.
Francesca and Paolo are in the shit though. It’s slightly too complicated for me to follow exactly but Paolo’s insurance business has been ripped off by one of his employees, a salesman who sold policy guarantees that weren’t valid for cash and then spent all the money in casinos. It’s not clear how much he’s ripped Paolo off for and he’s probably not aware of it himself but it’s around €100000. How does he manage to sleep at night? How does Calisto Tanzi sleep at night? He ripped off his company for about €15 billion.
The crimes seem similar to me in some ways. The people involved didn’t really see what they were doing as ‘wrong’ – not like we would see blatant robbery as wrong. They were trying to make things better for people as far as they were concerned; they were aspirational, not evil. They wanted to be able to do the things that they had in mind. In one case it was flying priests round South America, in the other it was gambling. Crimes of selfishness.
This morning the motorway that runs round Milan was completely blocked and I lost a morning at work. Why was it blocked? Because of an accident between two cars. In other words, because of someone driving stupidly and selfishly. Another crime of selfishness but portrayed as an accident.
After the election in Spain news programmes are starting to discuss the possibility of the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq.
-Well, we didn’t really mean it anyway, we never meant to be there. Now someone else has walked out, so can we.
The nation acting selfishly, acting as a family, not as a state, not as part of a community. Thatcher must have spent some time in Italy when she made her ‘no such thing as society’ comment.
So what’s Aznar going to do next? What does he have planned for himself? Surely not some quiet retirement on the Galician coast? Is there going to be this clique of ex-prime ministers and presidents doing the rounds of self-justification within the next five years? I still can’t believe Tony Blair is in with Aznar, Putin, Bush and Berlusconi, but he must be. How does he manage it? What’s he going to say to a Socialist prime minister of Spain?
-Remind me, please… socialism, how would you define it? Principles? What exactly are they?
I shall go and plunge myself into further despair by watching Italian TV.
-Who? What? Since when? Noone at all?
I can't believe it. All those carefully worked out balances. Fucked beyond recognition.
-I'll make some phone calls when I get back to the office.
I do as well, I'm so pissed off. ‘Out today.’ ‘We'll check what's happened.’ ‘She'll get back to you tomorrow.’
I get home and the 'elenco movimenti eseguiti' is there with all its minus signs. Thank god the woman at the bank we work for was out today because they’re the only ones who've actually paid.
Marta's in the bath telling a variation on a Harry Potter story to herself. Giacomo wants to tell me something about one of his fantastic friends. He has a figure from a cereal packet standing on its head in the filled bidet.
-He can stand his head, his head!
Valentina's on the phone. Davide is walking around with those balloons that annoying faux clowns make shapes out of on street corners on Saturdays; he's complaining that there are no swords in the instruction manual.
-Well, I know how to do swords anyway, says his mum, between calls. But Davide seems to have found something else to complain about in life and he's off to find the right person to lodge it to. Valentina's back on the phone, this time to Mago Titix for Marta's birthday party Monday next.
It appears Mago Titix himself can't get to us before 5 next Monday but he can send an 'animatrice' (a warm-up artist), at no extra cost, until he gets there. Everything's fine then. I only have to print out the invitations I stole from Microsoft.
Mago Titix is probably in a very good line of business. The relief we felt when we found out he could come was similar to discovering that the pharmacy on the corner was open late at night when all the children had bad coughs and we'd run out of linctus. The price wasn't that important, having the thing was what counted.
I saw an interview in a series of articles in one of the more conservative papers about how young people are rejecting conventional career structures. This piece was with the son of an Italian 'industrialist' and a Spanish 'diplomat'; he'd become a magician and did parties. It was presented as a rejection of a certain lifestyle but when you thought about it he was very much following in his parents' footsteps. Neither of his parents' titles stood close scrutiny (what did their working days consist of exactly?), and left much to be interpreted. Here he was, working in the 'black' economy, making a fortune, and having time to be with his young family. Milan rejects Milan but remains as Milan as it is.
Milan always seems much worse when you’ve been away from it for than 48 hours, as we have. Perhaps it’s the least Italian city in Italy, while at the same time having something of the entire country in it: it’s like one of those miniature villages or countries that you walk round like Gulliver in Lilliput, striding the length of the place in a breath. You know that what you’re experiencing isn’t real but at least it gives you an idea of what it must be like.
We’ve been in Friuli this past weekend, visiting Valentina’s cousin and her family at their mountain house. We went skiing in Tarvisio. Okay, eight hours driving for 4 hours skiing might not seem a very good ROI but we all enjoyed it immensely (despite my sneaking cynicism). Giacomo got a cough within 12 hours of getting there; the fresh air must have been such a shock to his polluted system that his lungs started trying to get rid of all the rubbish. Davide asked ‘Are we really going skiing?’ every ten minutes in the car and didn’t seem to believe that we really were even when we were fitting him with his boots. Marta stated she wouldn’t have lessons but when her aunt took her with her cousins and told her what to do, she did it (not quite doing the curves as wide as Franci required, preferring to go headlong down the slope, but pretty much following instructions). We realised how stupid we’ve been this year in not going to Limone at the weekends to ski.
Francesca and Paolo are in the shit though. It’s slightly too complicated for me to follow exactly but Paolo’s insurance business has been ripped off by one of his employees, a salesman who sold policy guarantees that weren’t valid for cash and then spent all the money in casinos. It’s not clear how much he’s ripped Paolo off for and he’s probably not aware of it himself but it’s around €100000. How does he manage to sleep at night? How does Calisto Tanzi sleep at night? He ripped off his company for about €15 billion.
The crimes seem similar to me in some ways. The people involved didn’t really see what they were doing as ‘wrong’ – not like we would see blatant robbery as wrong. They were trying to make things better for people as far as they were concerned; they were aspirational, not evil. They wanted to be able to do the things that they had in mind. In one case it was flying priests round South America, in the other it was gambling. Crimes of selfishness.
This morning the motorway that runs round Milan was completely blocked and I lost a morning at work. Why was it blocked? Because of an accident between two cars. In other words, because of someone driving stupidly and selfishly. Another crime of selfishness but portrayed as an accident.
After the election in Spain news programmes are starting to discuss the possibility of the withdrawal of Italian troops from Iraq.
-Well, we didn’t really mean it anyway, we never meant to be there. Now someone else has walked out, so can we.
The nation acting selfishly, acting as a family, not as a state, not as part of a community. Thatcher must have spent some time in Italy when she made her ‘no such thing as society’ comment.
So what’s Aznar going to do next? What does he have planned for himself? Surely not some quiet retirement on the Galician coast? Is there going to be this clique of ex-prime ministers and presidents doing the rounds of self-justification within the next five years? I still can’t believe Tony Blair is in with Aznar, Putin, Bush and Berlusconi, but he must be. How does he manage it? What’s he going to say to a Socialist prime minister of Spain?
-Remind me, please… socialism, how would you define it? Principles? What exactly are they?
I shall go and plunge myself into further despair by watching Italian TV.
