Il Ritorno di Pat in Patria.

Pat came back yesterday evening from an eleven day visit to Candy. On the 16th it looked as though the reappearance of the ash-cloud might have prevented  her going. And it seemed almost certain that flights would be cancelled the following day when Dave was due to come over to keep me out of mischief. Fortunately ‘God blew’ and like the armada it ‘was scattered’. Despite the crap weather Dave and I had a good time: having lunch in Ascoli the Wednesday before last - an excellent tagliatelle with a duck sugo, followed by a sea-food lunch in Cupra Marittima at La Perla’s beach restaurant on Thursday. And, unlike the other days Dave was here, it was warm,  and the sun shone in a cloudless sky. 

   The Friday before Pat went to England we had dinner with Jane and David at Le Selve agriturismo in Piane di Comunanza. Excellent food with some Sardinian dishes. This Wednesday had a meal with Jane and David at Le Logge. David found his steak rather tough! Eva managed to escape from the house and go walkabout when we came back for coffee. She eventually made her way home when she felt like it. 

Podgy Paddy Pasted.

I’m delighted that yesterday the appeal court threw out BA’s injunction against Unite’s strike, though sadly only by a two to one majority. Today it was announced that the airline had made its biggest loss since it was privatised. I feel sorry for the shareholders. The only figure that has gone up since the podgy paddy took over is the size of  his bonus. 

Back to the eighteenth century.

“In the trial of persons accused for crimes against the state, the method is much more short and commendable: the judge first sends to sound the disposition of those in power, after which he can easily hang or save a criminal, strictly preserving all due forms of law,” reported Gulliver to his Houyhnhnm  master as part of his description of  the English  legal system in the early 18th century. 

  Things don’t appear to have changed much. In the preamble to his interview with Unite's joint-General Secretary Derek Simpson, John Humphrys suggested that under Thatcher the politicians had taken the initiative in clipping the Trades Unions’ powers, now it was business undertaking that task. As though there were a distinction. If the Whigs were the political arm of business in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, the Tories have long since taken over that role. With the advent of Blairism the Labour Party ceased to be the political wing of the Trades Unions and the necessary counterbalance to the employers’ power was lost. For all practical purposes the state and business  are the same, or more accurately the state is the local embodiment of international business. 

  In March 1933 a coalition government took power in Germany. On May 3rd the unions were dissolved and their leaders arrested.  The German Labour  Front was set up to replace it. Its leader declared: ‘… I  know the exploitation of anonymous capitalism ,… we will build up the protection and the rights of the workers still further.’ Within three weeks a law was introduced to end collective bargaining and, in effect, to outlaw strikes. Our coalition government is more subtle in its approach - the BA strike has been grounded on a technicality - but  the effect  is the same.  Derek Simpson eloquently spells out its absurdity in the link in the previous paragraph. 

Misplaced accents.

Russell Crowe has been taking a lot of stick recently for the accent he employs in his latest film, Robin Hood. Though, interestingly, the commentators differ on whether it’s supposed to be a Yorkshire accent, an Irish accent or even in one scribe’s opinion a Salford accent like that of the Gallagher brothers. Not, one notes, one from Nottinghamshire which, according to the version of the legend I was brought up  on, is the county from which he hailed. Most, however, dismiss his speech as a mish-mash of regional accents. And that I would have thought is the point. The vast majority of the film’s prospective audience won’t be living in the UK. As long as the actor has an ‘English’ as opposed to an American, Australian, or South African accent that’ll be good enough.    

    Owing to the Americanisation of  British culture, like most English people  I can distinguish between, say, an accent from the southern states and one from the Bronx. But I imagine there are as many different accents in Australia as there are in the US or the UK. Am I aware of them? No. Is any non-Australian? I very much doubt it. Having lived in Italy for seven years I notice the difference in the way people sound when we venture out of Marche to Lazio. But before I moved here I thought all Italians spoke like Gordon Richards playing Captain Bertorelli in ‘Allo, ‘Allo. 

    What do Australia, Italy and the UK have in common? They’re all minor players on the world stage. How do they differ? Australia was never a world power, both Italy and Britain in their day were the most powerful countries in the world. But only the British think they are  still of much importance to anyone living outside their foggy little islands. Because its eastern seaboard was once ruled from London for a couple of  hundred years, we imagine that we have a special relationship with the US which extends beyond fellating the President of the day. The Italians ruled Britain for twice that length of time; does that entitle them to special consideration by HMG? No merely abuse for being part of ‘the continentals’ conspiracy’ to threaten Britain’s mythical independence. So although the world would think there was something wrong if Tennessee Williams’ Big Daddy were played by an actor speaking with a Californian accent, it’s unaware that Eton educated Bond should sound like Boris Johnson rather than a Scottish milkman. America’s culture has a global reach, Britain’s doesn’t.

   A final thought. If Russell Crowe were to use the authentic accent these critics claim he should,  he’d be speaking a northern variant of Middle English and no-one apart from English Lit graduates would understand a word he said. Somehow I don’t think: ‘I is ful wight, god waat, as is a raa; By goddes herte he sal nat scape us bathe. Why nadstow pit the capul in the lathe?  Il-​hayl, by god, Aleyn, thou is a fonne!’ would pull the punters in.

Labour: ?1; Britain & Europe: 0

Mervyn King predicted before the election that whichever party ended up winning would have to impose such savage cuts that it wouldn’t return to office for a generation. If he’s right, yesterday’s events could prove a double blessing for Labour: both of its competitors may end up shafted.  It certainly won’t be one for Britain, or for the already faltering European project which offers the only, if increasingly faint,  hope of a secure future for our grandchildren. 

  I read recently that an Italian baby survived for two days after being aborted. That’s nothing: a British fœtus has survived for almost 50 years and - God help us - has just been appointed foreign secretary. The poisonous abortion, pictured above with puppet-master Ashcroft, is more than the token pleb in the posh-boys’ government. Nor is the worst thing about him the permanent chuckle in his voice which makes you want to hit him. It’s his ghastly Little Englanderism. An ‘independent’ Britain doesn’t have the clout to stand up to globalised business; a federal Europe might. Who forced telecom companies to bring down mobile phone roaming charges? The EU. Who forced Ryan Air to compensate passengers stranded by the ash-cloud? The EU. Who are the principal beneficiaries: Sun and Daily Mail readers or international businessmen travelling on expenses? It’s a no-brainer really. Or would be if  the fœtus and his friends didn’t bang the patriotic drum - aptly described by  Dr Johnson as ‘the last refuge of a scoundrel’ - to drown out the truth.

Fat boy bursts; Ranter fined.

Last Thursday, the exit polls having shown that Labour had lost, I prepared a post lamenting the fact. I was going to publish it as soon as the Cameroons and Cleggites had reached an agreement. Late yesterday afternoon, when I received a text from Pat while I was walking the dogs saying ‘Gordon has resigned’, that moment seemed to have arrived. However, by the time I got home everything had changed: Gordon’s resignation was not with immediate effect and it looks as though a Lib-Lab pact is a real rather than a merely theoretical possibility. Unfortunately I’d missed seeing fat-boy Boulton being wound up by Campbell on Sky News: it had reduced Pat to tears of hysterical laughter. However, thanks to the Guardian I was able to read a transcript this morning and, even better, thanks to You Tube  I was able to see a recording of the interview. 

   We watch quite a lot of Sky News and it’s a fairly depressing experience. First there’s the underlying Murdoch agenda: there was a good example the Monday before last. I got home from walking the dogs to find Pat very excited by Gordon’s barnstorming speech at the Methodist Central Hall she’d just watched on Sky. Unfortunately, the next, and every subsequent, time it was reported all we saw was a shot of a heckler. The initial report was at 5pm BST when hardly anyone would have seen it. But this will have allowed  Sky to reject any claim of anti-Labour bias: we showed the speech in full - it’s not our fault if no one was watching. 

  Secondly there are the dismal production values. Thirdly, there’s the collection of weirdos who present it. Martin Stanford, a cross between Mr Pastry and an ineffectual Classics master, is the least objectionable.  Jeremy Thompson, perpetually narrowing his eyes as he pauses portentously between syllables is merely amusing. But then there are the zombie lookalikes: Jeff (sic) -pity his parents couldn’t spell - Randall, all synthetic anger, and the genuinely terrifying sports presenter whose name I can’t recall so sparing the reader the traumatic experience of a googled photo.

 I don’t normally have much sympathy for people who use Twitter. They have taken narcissism to a whole new level beyond us sad folk who blog. At least we know that our bowel movements and how much marmite we put on our toast today is unlikely to be of interest to anyone. And we have the ability to expand an idea beyond a hundred and forty characters. The only time I’ve ever agreed with Cameron is when he described someone who tweets as a twat, though I suspect, despite his expensive education, he had no more idea than Browning of  the word’s dictionary definition. However,this morning I was astonished to read of some poor bloke getting fined, and consequently losing his job, for sending a tweet saying he’d like to blow up the airport where he was stranded. The nanny state in a good mood is bad enough but when she’s lost her sense of humour she’s a monster. All Paul Chambers was doing was having a very brief rant. Heaven help me if the authorities ever find their way to this site.

Bless this house.

Yesterday evening the parish priest called round to offer to bless the house. Fortunately Mrs Oates was upstairs in the kitchen cooking dinner, so I was able to usher don Marco into the sitting-room to do the business with no danger of his being hauled before Star Chamber.

Aloe! Aloe! The Remake: Extras.

One of the advantages of our house stems from its being situated on two parallel roads, Via San Pietro and Via Roma: all the village’s facilities are within easy reach.  Via San Pietro hosts the baker’s, the post-office, the chemist’s, the town-hall, the hairdresser’s, the doctor’s and Luisa’s bar; Via Roma has the grocer’s, the parish church, the museum, the nearest set of dust and recycling bins,  and Pompeo’s bar. It also has the theatre (I guess you’d call it the village hall in Ambridge). 

   If one’s life were a series of DVDs then certain annually recurring events would be remade each year with a slightly different twist. Last year’s annual march in support of ALOE was rather disappointing: a week of wet weather had led to its avoiding the woods. This year the DVD contained an Extra: the march was preceded on Saturday by a concert of mediæval, folk and celtic music in the theatre. It was scheduled to begin at 9 pm. Old habits die hard and being British that’s when we turned up: nearly a decade of living in Italy should have taught us better. The photo above shows the audience at nine. At ten, when the show at last got going, the house was packed.

   Yesterday’s march was a distinct improvement on the previous year’s. For the first time Pat able to come and the route not only avoided the roads, but began with a completely different itinerary from all the other occasions I’ve gone on the march. It went via Smerillo’s fessa - or fissure in the rocks - a local attraction of which we’d previously been completely unaware.