Many thanks to all my friends who've sent a newsletter letting me know how they fared in 2019. I'm afraid in comparison mine is very dull - no holidays to exotic locations, and only two trips abroad, both to the UK. One in March to my audiologist, the other to pick up my grandson, Quinn, in August.
Some good news: in October, in collaboration with his Danish partner, Nana, my younger son, James, presented me with a new grandson, William. I now have five grandchildren ranging in age from 34 (Matthew's son, Josh) to 2 month old William.
And speaking of Josh, and continuing the good news, he and his father came over to Montefalcone in July to help with an English course we ex-pats were running for the village children. The course was centred on a play I'd written, based on a nineteenth century historical novel, Rinaldo da Monteverde, I'd translated a couple of years previously. Matt and Josh made the props staying up late every night to do so - on one occasion until 5 o'clock the following morning. The play was filmed on location around the village and screened in the village theatre at the end of the week. If you're unable to wait until next year's Venice Film Festival, you can view the film here:
If you do view it, you may notice that a couple of the children seem rather mature! Two of them dropped out after the first day so Josh took over the part of Rinaldo and an ex-pat, Ian, the part of Friar Bartolomeo. He appears in the brief snippet below.
In early August Quinn came over to stay. In 2017 he'd started secondary school in Downham Market. Both our daughters had attended the school in the eighties and nineties and had received a decent education. Since then the school has opted out of local authority control, becoming an academy and receiving abysmal ratings from Ofsted. Quinn was unhappy there, the school claiming he was unintelligent and predicting he would end uo with few if any GCSE passes. Like the rest of us, Quinn has his faults; but after spending forty years teaching I've developed a nose for spotting whether someone has academic potential. And Quinn has - even if, like his grandfather, he's a bit of an idle chap. His mother arranged for him to sit the entrance exam to a state grammar school in Spalding in the next county After a week's preparation, he took the exam and passed.
At the end of August his mother, Candy, and her friend David joined us for a few days. There's a video of our time together on You Tube:
And now to the bad news.
First, our older dog, Eva, who will be fifteen on Christmas Eve has become a momento mori. Just as the skull on a mediaeval scholar's desk was a continual reminder of the transience of life, so Eva's decline and fall over the last twelve months is like watching a speeded up version of the fate awaiting me in my remaining decade(s). She was always extremely elegant, fastidious about her appearance, very intelligent, and scrupulous about her personal hygiene. Now she is almost blind, has dementia, and is frequently incontinent. Rather than taking her for long walks in the woods I take her about a 100 metres up the street very slowly three times a day, gathering her excrement with a poop scoop. Her younger half-sister, Meg still has all her marbles, her eyesight and bowel-control. However, since she reached 13, the woods are a step too far. She has one walk off the lead down the mediaeval pathway and two much shorter walks to wasteland to relieve herself.
Second, in late September Pat was hit by a drunken motorcyclist while taking Meg for a walk fracturing her right knee and ankle. After a week in Fermo Hospital she came home but was wheelchair bound until last week when she was able to graduate to crutches. Here she is acting as the model for Whistler's Mother:
Understandably she is rather fed up with life.
Third, we learned today that our elder daughter, Sophy, and her husband have separated after ten years of marriage.
But our misfortunes pale into insignificance when compared to the life-threatening illnesses which have affected several of our friends this year, Vivid reminders that, in Dick Blakeslee's words, we're only Passing Through.
Yesterday Brexiteers demonstrated outside a Parliament busy ‘betraying’ them by rejecting Theresa May’s deal for the third time. A journalist asked people what motivated them to attend. ‘“I am here fighting for freedom,” said one man from Hampshire. A no-deal Brexit might well lead to economic hardship but “freedom is more important than economics” ’ Freedom to do what, one might ask.
While the demonstration was taking place, ‘thousands of passengers had their travel plans thrown into chaos after Eurostar cancelled all services to and from St Pancras when a trespasser was caught brandishing a St George’s flag. The 44-year-old spent the night on the roof of a tunnel leading away from the central London station, bringing Eurostar services to a halt before he was arrested by police on Saturday morning. One of those affected described to a journalist how she was left hundreds of pounds out of pocket by the cancellations. She’d organised a weekend break for her mother in Lille, France, but the pair were eventually forced to scrap their plans. They spent four hours waiting in a lounge at St Pancras on Friday evening before finding out their train had been cancelled.She and her mother had to spend £125 for a hotel in the capital before rising with just three hours’ sleep for a rebooked train, only to find out they could not travel on Saturday morning either because of further cancellations. Although she had already spent £450 for accommodation in Lille, she and her mother were forced to scrap their plans to go to the continent and are going to spend the weekend in Brighton instead.’ So one man demonstrates his support for ‘freedom’by causing thousands of others to lose a great deal of time and money and their freedom to travel to their chosen destinations. Replace the man on the roof exercising his freedom to behave like a moron with David Cameron, and thousands of people with sixty million, and you’ve got our present situation in a nutshell.
An article in today’s Guardian contains a list of how MPs voted in yesterday’s indicative vote. None of the measures passed. However, while the proposal to revoke Article 50 was heavily defeated by a margin of 109, the motion in favour of confirming any Brexit deal with a public vote was lost by only 27. Forty-eight Labour MPs failed to support the measure: twenty-four women and twenty-four men. Of these, twelve women and five men abstained, the others voted against. While the overwhelming majority represented constituencies which had voted to leave the European Union, two members from Remain constituencies - Kate Hoey and Jim Fitzpatrick - voted against the measure, and one - Mike Kane - abstained.
So a chance for people to reconsider their options, in the light of reality rather than the fanciful promises made in 2016, was blocked by forty-eight Labour MPs. If they had voted in accordance with party policy the motion would have passed.
Last Thursday, Sette - one of the Corriere della Sera’s weekly supplements - published an article by Beppe Severgnini, a journalist who lived in London in the nineties working for the Economist. Having spent the previous weekend in the UK visiting friends and former colleagues he came to the conclusion that ‘Brexit è uno psicodramma. È piombato sulla nazione più stabile d’Europa e l’ha trasformata in un manicomio democratico’ [Brexit is a psychodrama. It pounced on Europe’s most stable country and turned it into a democratic loony-bin].
The Brexit mindset was exemplified last Friday: Brexit Direct Action planned major disruptions to the nation’s road network as a protest against the March 29th leaving date's being postponed. The Mirror reported that ‘One driver taking part said: “We can and will bring the country to its knees”. ’ In other words, I don’t care how much inconvenience I cause to others, because all that matters is what I want. Few people took part and the effect on traffic was negligible.
In contrast, around a million people took part in the People’s Vote march in London the following day, my younger daughter, Candida, and her son, Quinn - 0n the right of the photo - amongst them.
Rather than seeking to inconvenience others, or force their opinions on them, they simply asked that the country should be given the opportunity to accept or reject Theresa May’s Brexit deal or, alternatively, rescind article 50. When the Commons rejected her deal by a crushing majority in January the Prime Minister brought it back for another vote on the 13th March. Once again it failed to pass. However, rather than accepting defeat she was planning to bring it before the House a third time if the proposal hadn’t been ruled unconstitutional by the Speaker. Despite this, she has rejected suggestions that the UK should vote in a second referendum, saying that the public has already made its decision. One rule for you, another for me.
Most political commentators consider the majority of MPs voted to remain in the EU in the 2016 referendum. The same commentators believe it highly unlikely that a motion to rescind article 50 would command a majority in Parliament. MPs of leave-voting constituencies, frightened that they would lose their seats if they supported revoking Brexit, put their own interests in front of their country's. Brexit is also supported by the USA, Russia and China. Any measures that weaken the EU are in their economic interest: it would be much easier to impose advantageous trading conditions on individual European states than it is on a trading bloc of over 512 million people. And, finally, Brexit is in the interests of the very wealthy, opening the possibility of deregulating financial institutions and watering down the employment rights enjoyed by workers under current European legislation. For everyone else Brexit is a disaster inflicted by a misinformed 27.55 percentage of the British population* not only on their fellow countrymen but on themselves as well. So it's easy to see why Beppe Severgnini thinks the inmates are running the asylum. In reality, of course, they are simply being manipulated by their warders: foreign governments promoting their countries' economic interests, and rational but utterly immoral British plutocrats.
**Although 52% of those who voted in the referendum opted to leave the European Union, only 37% of the total electorate did so. Minors, who are going to have to live with the consequences long after the majority of those who voted Leave are dead, had no say in the decision. Assuming they like their elders are 'people', the Will of the People was decided by just 27.55% of the UK's total population. In the Scottish and Welsh devolution referenda in 1979 as well as a majority 'yes' vote, a 40% majority of the electorate was needed for parliament to implement the devolution legislation. In Scotland, on a 64% turnout, 33% of the electorate voted for devolution while 31% voted against. The government did not proceed with devolution even though a majority had voted for it. In Italy the result of a legislative referendum is only valid if at least a majority of all eligible voters go to the polling station and cast their ballot. If this quorum is not met, the referendum is invalid. A case can be made for saying that an Italian referendum does express the will of its people, to a lesser extent the same holds true of the 1979 devolution referenda. But, not I think, for the Uk wide one held in June 216.
A final reflection: enacting 'the will of the people' is not a moral imperative: in the 1933 general election in Germany the Nazis won 43.9 percent of the vote and with their coalition partner, the German National People's Party obtained a working majority in the Reichstag. One assumes the 'will of the people' didn't include demanding the deaths of fifteen million armed servicemen and women and forty-five million civilians. Ordinary people suffered; big business made a fortune. Does something ring a bell?
If the M5S and the Lega embody two different faces of Italian populism, their choice of Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, the self-dubbed People’s Advocate, represents their common denominator: the apotheosis of the common man.
Grillo’s movement articulated Italy’s widespread disenchantment with the traditional parties of left and right, seen as self-serving oligarchies. If they were swept away and ‘the people’ could express their ‘will’ online all would be well. For the past two years the patent absurdity of this ingenuous belief has been conclusively demonstrated by the ever-increasing mounds of refuse, potholed streets and self-combusting buses presided over by Rome’s inept M5S administration. Like Trump’s electoral base, though, the Five Star Movement’s supporters remain unmoved by their idol’s incompetence. Their commitment is based on faith not reason.
While the M5S reflects a naive optimism- if only the corrupt politicians are swept way, all will be well, no need for experience, expertise or competence - Salvini’s Lega represents the darker face of populism: the belief that ordinary Italians have two concrete enemies seeking to destroy their identity: the European Union undermining their ability to decide their own destiny, and non-Caucasians polluting their ethnic identity. Although a moment’s reflection reveals the inherent absurdity of believing an ordinary Italian’s economic woes will trouble an Italian billionaire simply because they share a passport and skin colour, the misconception serves to deflect people’s attention from the real cause of their distress: the increasing weakness of Europe’s individual national governments in relation to global companies. The European Union, on the other hand, has had some success in calling them to heel. It also attempted to mitigate Italy’s immigration crisis by seeking to distribute the newcomers across the Union rather than leaving Italy to fend for itself. It was the other member states who opposed the move. A cynic might wonder whether, rather than the product of naivety, Salvini’s policies are actually aimed at promoting the interests of the one percent by targeting the institution capable of championing the common man against international finance and globalised companies, and reducing the profitable pool of immigrant workers available for gangmasters to exploit in southern Italy. The far right’s love affair with Putin - a strong EU would limit Russia’s political influence in the continent, used to promote the European financial operations of Russian oligarchs - gives the theory additional weight.
And then there’s Conte. Unlike Mario Monti, for example, he’s clearly been plucked from the second division of technical experts, and as such we common folk recognise one of our own. A Monti or a Prodi has no need to primp his cv - we do. When I was applying to university in the early sixties I numbered my membership of the school athletics team amongst my achievements. I didn’t feel it necessary to add that I owed my place to a flu epidemic which laid low all the school’s decent athletes, that it had happened five years previously, and that my place lasted for just one match. If I were suddenly plucked from obscurity to be offered the post of Prime Minister I would probably refer to my experience teaching undergraduates - and feel it unnecessary to mention I did so at an FE college, rather than at Oxford or Harvard. I might allude to my managerial role as Head of Humanities and Course Director of the BA degree, without revealing that the Humanities section consisted of fewer than a dozen staff, and the undergraduate degree had only twenty students. However, I hope I would have the good sense to reject the offer and suggest they seek someone with outstanding achievements and proven competence.
I’m not suggesting that I’m in the same league as Conte: if he’s in the Championship, I belong in the second division of the Southern League. He may prove to have exceptional political skills but someone from the Premiership would be a safer bet. But, if his role is merely to provide a mask for Salvini and Di Maio, who better than someone whose very mediocrity embodies populism’s rejection of ‘elites’ and ‘experts’?
I've just re-read last year's cheery newsletter, and was interested to see how my gloomy predictions for 2017 compared with the way things actually turned out. As is customary for soothsayers with cloudy balls, some things went better than I'd foreseen, others worse.
To begin with the upside: neither Fillon nor Marie Le Pen won the French election. Although I'm not an admirer of his economic policies, I am heartened by Macron's commitment to greater European political unity. Admittedly his refusal to accept France's due quota of refugees raises some questions about his willingness to subordinate perceived national interests to the greater European good; however, it was very refreshing to hear a charismatic leader clearly identify the steps necessary to provide a secure future for Europe's citizens. Are you listening, Jeremy? More good news came from Holland with Wilders' defeat. And that's about it.
The AfD's support grew at the German elections and that of the two mainstream parties declined. At the time of posting, the attempt to form a "Jamaican coalition" having failed, Germany is still lacking a stable government. The only glimmer of hope is the rumour that Schulz may make a firm commitment by Merkel to greater European integration a necessary condition for the SPD's participation in a coalition government. Brexit staggers on and, despite Juncker offering to allow the UK to rescind clause 50, Sergio Romano's view that an EU without the English offers a real opportunity to move the European project forward is widely shared in continental Europe.
Last year I lamented the fact that our income had fallen by 13% owing to the fall in value of sterling thanks to Brexit. Now, because of the British negotiators' comical incompetence, and the consequent declining confidence in the pound, it's down by 20%.
To turn from misery caused by human folly to that bestowed by indifferent Nature: heavy snow falling continuously from January 15th to the 19th resulted in the deepest snow we have ever experienced. In our courtyard it almost reached the first floor windows of out neighbour Polonio's house, a drift around three metres deep:
The snow was too deep in the centro storico for the village snowplough to cope so all the residents had to dig a trench along the street:
Our car transformed itself into an igloo:
On the 22nd the Civil Defence arrived with heavy snowploughs and cleared the main roads whilst armies of young volunteers dug out the cars and cleared the snow from the centro storico by hand.
The snow was accompanied by a power cut which lasted for eighteen and a half hours, and 144 shocks above 2.0 on the Richter scale in one day, four of which were over 5 in the space of an hour causing the house to shake once again. We also had a day without running water: not a major problem as one only needed to go into the courtyard to scoop up a bucket of snow! Finally, a tornado blew the church clock from the tower.
Fortunately our friends Tony and Shona, who had come over to help us celebrate Pat's se***tieth birthday on the 30th December, left for England on the 5th of January the day the preceding snow fall arrived and so escaped being trapped. The birthday itself was very enjoyable. Together with Sophy and Adam, Candy and Quinn, Pat's sister, Deborah, and friends Tony and Shona and John and Jean we had an excellent meal at the Villa Funari in Servigliano:
As well as monthly get-to-gethers with local ex-pats in the village restaurant our lives have been brightened by vists from friends. My former colleague, Chris Bell stayed with us in May. We had an abortive trip together to Osimo to see an art exhibition: I'd managed to pick the gallery's closing day!
Our trip to Urbino three days later was more successful.
In October my old schoolfellow, Stephen Burrough and his charming French partner, Maryvonne., came to stay. I last saw Steve in 1961 when we studied A Level English together and were joint editors of the school magazine. Their visit coincided with the annual chestnut festival at a neighbouring village, Smerillo. I'd heard that one of its attractions, the Fesso - a dramatic cleft in a rock face dating back several million years - had been closed to the public since last year's earthquakes. However, I took Maryvonne down to see it on the off-chance it might be open. It was:
As we returned, making our way past the throng of people walking down the cliff towards the cleft, I noticed a placard lying on its side just before the footpath reached the Fesso. It read, 'By order of the mayor, it is strictly forbidden to proceed beyond this point.'
Their visit was immediately followed by one from our old friends Phil and Maggie who used to live in Smerillo before moving first to the Dordogne and then Nottinghamshire, before finally settling in Spain. Finally, Jane Fineren stayed with us for a few days in late November. Her holiday home had been declared unsafe after the earthquake and she came over to discuss its renovation with her architect and the local council.
I went over to the UK at the beginning of August to bring our grandson, Quinn, back for a holiday. His mother, Candy, joined us for the final week of the month accompanied by a friend, David. Contrary to our hopes - and James Duffy's maxim in Dubliners - their friendship is purely platonic. We had an excellent time including several trips to the seaside:
and events in the village:
But for Quinn the undoubted highlights were a trip to the tree-top walk at Ripatransone - he produced this film from the footage I shot -
and a visit to MotorPark at Campofilone where he and David went kart racing:
In July, Sophy very generously paid for our holiday in Matera to celebrate our Ruby Wedding. The trip was made possible by Tony and Shona very kindly offering to look after our dogs while we were in Basilicata. Matera will be European City of Culture in 2019 and deservedly so. We stayed in the district known as the Sassi which consists of gentrified cave-dwellings. In 1952, horrified by the inhabitants' living conditions - he declared the whole country should be ashamed - the then prime minister, De Gasperi, took steps to move them from their squalid homes into newly built council flats. Today, the caves have been rehabilitated and, furnished with mains drainage, running water and electricity have become extremely desirable residences. They give Matera a unique character. Le Marche, where we live, is full of beautiful towns and villages but they are all fairly similar to one another. To visit Matera is to experience something utterly different; paradoxically, the same effect that Dubai had on us on when we first visited the city.
A few weeks ago the clock was replaced in the San Pietro's church tower and its half hourly chimes ring out across the village once again. Repair work has begun on San Michele, the parish church damaged in last year's earthquake; Westminster has belatedly begun to exercise its sovereignty regarding Brexit's terms; and Sophy and Adam are spending Christmas with us this year. At last I begin to feel some glimmers of the hope traditionally associated with the season of goodwill. I hope you do too!
Apologies to all the faithful followers of my blog - two at the last count - who may have wondered why there have been no posts since December 2014. One reason was that most of my fading energy over the last two years went into my translation of Liverotto Uffreducci*; the other that I became tired of ineffectually brandishing my pen like a downmarket Lear and asking the winds to blow and crack their cheeks at the follies of ingrateful man.
However, having received many Christmas newsletters from friends detailing the interesting things they've been getting up to over the last twelve months I felt it would be churlish not to respond with a brief account of how Pat and I spent 2016.
I went to the UK three times: in April during Quinn's Easter holidays, in early August to bring Quinn over for three weeks' holiday, and in September for Matthew's fiftieth birthday party. As usual, I managed to lose something. In April I left my jacket and wallet at Matthew and Charlie's and Matthew had to make a trip to Candy's the following day to bring them back. In September I excelled myself by managing to lose my passport at Matthew's party. Fortunately, a friend found it in his car and I was able to pick it up the following day. James and his son Ollie came over from Australia for the party. His daughter, Ruby, who is on a French exchange, was also there as was Matthew's son, Josh. As Candy and Quinn were also at the party I was able to spend the evening with all four of my grandchildren. James and Ollie came over to spend a few days with us before heading back to Australia.
Although it was late September it was still warm enough for them to go swimming in the Adriatic. Candy came over for the last week of August to take Quinn home. He had a few riding lessons while he was here, but the undoubted highlight was the tree-walk at Ripatransone.
Pat went to visit Sophy and Adam in Dubai in March and Candy and Quinn twice: once in October and again in late November.
In July, together with seven English friends who live, or have holiday homes here, we helped run a week's English course for a dozen of the local children. The kids were great and we all had a good time. Whether they learned much is another matter! As always we've spent many an enjoyable evening with our friends who have holiday homes here although sadly, unlike last year when my old university friend, Mike, and my friend and former colleague, Chris, stayed with us, we haven't had any friends over from the UK. An English friend, Sue, who like us lives permanently in Montefalcone will be sharing Christmas lunch with us. Sophy and Adam arrive on the 28th ready for Pat's seventieth birthday celebrations, followed by Candy, Quinn, Pat's sister Deborah, and our friends Tony and Shona on the 29th.
In December, thanks to a very generous contribution at Christmas from Sophy and Adam, I bought an Apple Watch. Most purchasers are attracted by its fitness apps; I was interested in its enabling me to avoid pulling out my phone in situations - walking the dogs, shopping etc - where I'm likely to drop it. So I have my shopping list on my wrist, can control the music I listen to while walking the dogs from my wrist, and can set timers which vibrate on my wrist when I'm cooking: my increasing deafness means I rarely hear the inbuilt timer on the cooker. I can also send Pat a message from the watch asking her to put the kettle on when I'm about to return with the dogs from their afternoon walk. It also notifies me about major events and, on those rare occasions when they send one, about messages from friends or family. So I would recommend a smart watch to any of you who find advancing age brings advancing clumsiness. We also replaced the car this year. It was beginning to show its age, costing us almost €2,000 last year to have the clutch replaced. Although it's still a Subaru Forester, unlike its predecessor it has an automatic gearbox which took me some considerable time to get used to as, unlike Pat, I'd never driven an automatic before. I find it better than a manual for negotiating hairpin bends when going up hill as there's no danger of stalling, worse when going downhill as you can't control the speed via the gearbox (well you can if you select manual drive, but that's a step too far at present).
That's the good stuff; now for the bad. To begin with the trivial: in January I went to my GP to arrange a hearing test at the local hospital. When I arrived in Amandola the hospital seemed strangely deserted. On reaching reception I found a notice saying that the outpatient department was closed for the hospital's patronal festival! I returned in February and was told that the specialist wouldn't be available until March. I returned in March and was told the computer system for was down and it was therefore impossible to book a test. Foolishly, I gave up at that point. To move on to the serious: on June 26th, Brexit - causing our income to depreciate by around 13% thanks to sterling's fall in value against the euro, and probably heralding the collapse of the EU, our one chance of security in an increasingly unstable world; on August 24th, woken up in the night by the house being violently shaken by the earthquake which destroyed Amatrice and other villages, damaged the local hospital and killed 297 people; on 26th October while I was watching television in the evening, Pat was in the U.K., the metal anti-seismic ties in the sitting room began to writhe violently as the house was shaken by another powerful earthquake; on 30th October we had just woken up when an earthquake struck again, this time destroying Castelluccio, our local hospital and Saint Benedict's Basilica in Norcia; November 8th, Trump wins the US presidential election. 2016 is undoubtedly the worst year of my life since the end of the Second World War.
Sadly, 2017 may well be even worse, if not for me personally providing there are no more tremors and the pound stabilises, almost certainly for the world at large. In next year's elections France has a choice between Fillon, an avowed admirer of Thatcher whose economic plans include sacking half a million public sector workers, and Marie Le Pen who wishes to take France out of the EU.; Italy's leading contenders for power are the foul-mouthed Grillo, who wants Italy to ditch the euro, and Salvini, who shares Mussolini and Putin's penchant for being photographed half-naked and wants Italy to leave the EU; then there's Wilders in Holland; a threat to Merkel from the extreme right and so on. Trump will have assumed office and may well renege on NATO, leaving Europe's collection of petty 'sovereign' states to Putin's tender mercies. As Yeats put itso presciently, this Christmas instead of the Prince of Peace we're waiting for the rough beast to slouch towards Bethlehem to be born.
* Also available from the Apple iBook Store. Royalties go to Montefalcone's cultural association, Pro Loco 2000
Regular readers of this blog will have noticed, with relief, that I've posted far fewer items than usual this year. Paradoxically this is due to my logorrhea having increased rather than diminished. My translation of two texts about the Apennine Sibyl having been finally published this July, I've turned my attention to writing a history of Montefalcone and have got as far as 1849. As the market for this is even smaller than that for a book about the Sibyl I am intending to publish it as an ebook, using Apple's iBooks Author app. Once that's done, I'll think about doing a Kindle version for those sad souls who don't possess an iPad.
Pat as usual visited the UK several times: in November she saw a performance by the Vienna Riding School at Wembley Arena. In September she stayed with Laurie and Steve at their home in Boston, Massachusetts. In contrast, I've steered clear of John Bull's island - and his former north american colony - completely this year, though I guess I'll have to venture over next year to get some new glasses. In July Pat and I went to Ravenna for a couple of days to celebrate our third-seventh wedding anniversary. The mosaics were marvellous, the ubiquitous cyclists a pain in the backside.
However the lack of travel has been more than compensated by our having visitors. Chris Bell came over in June, lured by my promise that the month is always sunny in Italy. It rained most of the time he was here; maybe I should have gone into politics or advertising. Candy & Quinn fared better when they came over in August. Maggie and Phil came to stay in September, and kept me company while Pat was on one of her trips to England. As always, the day boys - Tony and Shona, John and Judy, and Jane - were entertaining company. Our neighbours Norman and Jayne have sold their holiday flat to another English couple, Keith and Elaine, who seem very pleasant. They both worked in FE - Keith ending up as principal of Bristol College, a large FE conglomerate in the eponymous city.
On a sadder note, our friend and builder, Peppe Alessandroni, passed away in July. And, as I write, Sophy and Adam, having spent a few days with us, are on their way to his sister's in England for Christmas. Candy, who has just started a new job as Marketing Manager for a housing association, and Quinn are unable to come over this year, so Pat and I will spend Christmas on our own for the first time for many years.
This year we're having a traditional English Christmas dinner - a goose, not a turkey as the semi-literate idiots who are currently writing and producing the Archers seem to believe. One of the soap's characters having stated erroneously that A Christmas Carol featured a turkey, I was interested to see how Carol Tregorran's reading from the story at the Grundys' Christmas Turkey Pardon would pan out. Obviously someone alerted them in time, as the reading stopped short before we got to Scrooge ordering a goose for the Cratchetts. Which, of course, made the reading pointless.
And, of course, folly is widespread as this year's European elections showed. And the europhobic poison is spreading to Italy. The potty-mouthed comedian, Grillo's, anti-euro Five Star Movement attracted a fair number of votes. The racist Northern League, under its new leader Salvini has changed from working for a federal Italy or an independent northern Italy within the EU, to wanting to withdraw from the EU. He's allied himself with Marie Le Pen in the European Parliament. Fortunately, anti-EU sentiment is not endemic in Italy and the pro-EU PD increased its share of the vote at the European elections. I note that Cameron has pulled a masterstroke in The UK by proposing that Scottish MPs should no longer have a vote on matters relating solely to England. So a Tory majority for ever: kiss goodbye to the NHS and the BBC as those two organisations, subject to constant vilification in the tabloid press, are sold of to his chums. At least in Italy corruption is out in the open, in the UK unless you subscribe to Private Eye you think it doesn't exist.
On second thoughts, perhaps I'll pass on next year's visit to the UK.
Although my heart quite liked the idea of Scottish independence, my head told me it would be disastrous for the interests of the ordinary Englishman or Englishwoman. Without its Scottish contingent Labour would never have sufficient MPs to form a Westminster government.
A few months ago some political commentators claimed that Assad quietly supported Islamic State terrorists infiltrating the Syrian opposition forces, counting on their presence to weaken American opposition to his regime. The volte-face has occurred, whether or not Assad was actually engaged in the machiavellian manoeuvres attributed to him. I naively wondered whether Cameron had a similar strategy: secretly working for Scottish independence, whilst publicly opposing it, in order to ensure a permanent Tory majority at Westminster.
His speech, this morning, welcoming the Scottish voters' rejection of independence, stripped the wool from my eyes as I realised that he was playing a far deeper game. One which involved Labour and the Lib Dems as his unwitting stooges. As part of the attempt to persuade the Scots to say no to independence, all three English parliamentary parties promised greater devolution of powers to Edinburgh. And the logical quid pro quo? Cameron revealed it this morning: acting to settle the West Lothian question. If the Scots are to control their internal affairs without English interference, justice requires that they can't interfere in ours. The undercover privatisation of the English NHS can continue apace without the Tories having to worry about Labour having sufficient English MPs to resist the process - ever.
My despair was complete when the BBC followed their broadcast of Cameron's speech by interviewing Farage, the leader of the "Turkeys, Vote for Christmas" party. My sole consolation: as it's still part of the UK, the English can always protect themselves from Dave and Nick's Brave New World by moving to Scotland.
Europhobes claim to be opposed to rule by 'unelected bureaucrats from Brussels'. In reality, of course, those bureaucrats are answerable to the European Commission and the European Council: the former made up of commissioners nominated by the democratically elected governments of the EU's member states, the latter composed of the heads of those self-same governments. However the most directly democratic European institution is the European Parliament, elected by universal suffrage across the EU. And, after the 2014 election, it was the democratically elected parliament, rather than the European Council, which was supposed to choose the next President of the European Commission. A step towards greater democratic accountability one would have thought.
Here's David Cameron's take on the change as reported in Tuesday's Corriere della Sera - strangely, I could find no mention of his statement in the British press, so can't quote him in the original English. I guess its logical absurdity would have been apparent to even the dimmest eurosceptic:
… cedere potere al Parlamento europeo, riconoscendogli la possibilità di esprimere un suo candidato, vuol dire innescare un processo irreversible. [… to cede power to the European Parliament, allowing it the possibility of choosing its own candidate, means sparking off an irreversible process.]
One which would lead to greater democracy, but which is fiercely opposed by Cameron and the other self-proclaimed opponents of rule by unelected Brussels bureaucrats.
A clue to what lay behind his topsey-turvey logic can be found in yesterday's Corriere which contained the following statement by the former Vice-President of the European Commission, Antonio Tajani:
Nell’Europarlamento non c’è mai stata una maggioranza precostituita, ma una la si è sempre trovata. E l’Europarlamento, come unica istituzione Ue eletta dai cittadini, ha una grande responsabilità: quella di consolidare appunto l’Europa dei cittadini, non dei banchieri, delle lobby. [There has never been a pre-established majority in the European Parliament, but one is always found eventually. And the European Parliament, the only one of the EU's institutions to be directly elected by its citizens, has a great responsibility: that of strengthening a Europe which represents its citizens rather than bankers or lobbyists.]
It's no wonder that Cameron, Farage, Le Pen and Salvini are opposed to a European Parliament which could threaten the interests they front. The pity is that they have persuaded so many ordinary people to reject the one European institution which could possibly protect their interests.
Yesterday I voted for the first time since moving to Italy. I've never bothered registering to vote in the council elections and, as an immigrant, I'm ineligible to vote in national elections. However, given the rise of anti-EU sentiment, fomented by the far right in order to deflect people's attention from the real source of our economic problems, I felt it was a moral duty to vote in the European election. My reason for doing so can be summarised by the columnist Sergio Romano's succinct reply to a reader's letter in yesterday's Corriere della Sera about why he felt it was important to vote in the European election:
Aggiungo una sola considerazione. Se gli Stati nazionali europei affrontassero in ordine sparso i problemi dell'economia e della sicurezza in un mondo ormai «globalizzato», saremmo tutti condannati a subire la volontà degli Stati Uniti e della Cina oggi, del Brasile e dell'India domani.
[I'd add one further consideration. If the nation states of Europe were to try to tackle the economic and security problems they face in a 'globalised' world in an uncoordinated way , we would all be condemned to submit to the will of the United States and China today, and Brasil and India's tomorrow.]
A simple and basic truth which is never offered for consideration to those poor souls who naively believe that withdrawing from the EU would restore national independence.
This morning David Cameron was interviewed by Evan Davis on the Today programme about Ukip's challenge to the Tories. His comment that people were protesting against the financial hardship they were suffering as a result of Gordon Brown and the last Labour government's mismanagement of the economy was left unchallenged. To have countered this by stating that the crisis was in fact caused by unregulated banks would not have been politically biased but a plain statement of fact. That Davis failed to do so was a gross dereliction of duty, although perhaps understandable in the light of Conservative claims that the BBC is biased against them.
The anti-European parties made significant gains throughout the EU, but their triumph wasn't quite as sweeping as the headline to Martin Kettle's article in today's Guardian would have us believe:
True, his article does include the adjective 'most' to qualify his statement that:
.... as they voted against Europe, British voters have never seemed more part of the European mainstream than they do this morning. Across Europe, in one way or another, voters in most countries did very much the same thing
but it scarcely impacts on the message his readers will take away: the whole of Europe is against the EU.
For there is another EU state with only slightly fewer inhabitants than the UK, and occupying a similarly sized territory, which produced very different results:
The governing party, the pro-European left of centre Partito Democratico, got its best election result ever - over 40% of the votes cast - whilst Beppe Grillo, Nigel Farage's potty-mouthed Italian twin, saw his party's share of the vote fall. If the result was surprising - Grillo had been boasting that his party would thrash the PD and as a consequence the government would have to resign - the irrelevance of the twitterati was less so. Only yesterday, 13,000 of Grillo's supporters were tweeting the hashtag 'vinciamonoi' [we're winning] whilst the PD's hashtag 'unoxuno' was tweeted by little more than 3,000. Clearly while fewer self-obsessed users of the 'social media' support the PD, it attracts more adults who interact with the real rather than the virtual world and actually make their way to the polling station.
As we get our English news from Radio 4 and the Guardian and our Italian news from the Corriere della Sera we use television for entertainment rather than information. And in our case that means crime drama, ranging from gripping Scandinavian thrillers - The Bridge being the most recent - to the lightweight Death in Paradise - Midsomer Murders with sunshine. Among them are two period dramas, Inspector George Gently set in the sixties, and chiefly notable for Martin Shaw's ludicrous attempt at a north country accent, and WPC 56 set in the fifties. Although a rather more engaging drama than Gently, last week's episode of WPC 56 contained two glaring anachronisms - and I think their presence says a lot about contemporary culture.
First there was the repeated reference to the 'train station'. To anyone of my generation the expression sticks out like a sore thumb. I can't really remember when it replaced 'railway station', but I guess it can't have been before the early seventies. In my childhood one listened to the wireless rather than the radio, but the fact that I've never had an objection to that particular change of terminology suggests it happened much earlier, probably in the late fifties when I was still young enough to see change as an unremarkable part of everyday life rather than as a threat to my known universe.
The second, less glaring, error was finding a covertly gay man's wedding ring in his pocket. In 1950s Britain men did not wear wedding rings. I first came across the practice when Ed Tonkyn got married in the mid-seventies. His wife, Uschi, is German, and the fact that all my married male Italian contemporaries wear wedding rings suggests the custom was well established on the continent by then. However in the UK, even today, it is far from universal: my son-in-law was quite astonished when my daughter suggested they should both wear rings. He was only persuaded to do so because she claimed, erroneously, that I wore one.
Why does all this matter? After all Shakespeare notoriously has a clock striking three in the second act of Julius Caesar. I would suggest that was an entirely different matter: Shakespeare wrote for the public at large, and I would imagine the average Elizabethan was as ignorant of the fact that the ancient Romans didn't have clocks as I was of the fact that horse chestnut trees only arrived in Britain in the 17th century. Accordingly, their appearance in Zinnemann's film of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons neither spoiled my enjoyment of the film when I first saw it, in blissful ignorance of its botanical anachronism, nor subsequently when a fellow pedant pointed out the error. For I wasn't alive in the sixteenth century and accordingly couldn't feel affronted by a false depiction of an experienced reality. More importantly, for Shakespeare and Bolt the period in which their dramas took place wasn't the central issue: they were both concerned to retell profoundly important historical events which simply happened to take place when they did. The focus in both dramas was on the character of those engaged in the events.
However, following in the footsteps of my fellow OE, Ashley Pharoah's, Life on Mars,WPC 56 foregrounds the period in which it takes place: the setting is as important as the fictional events depicted. It aims to highlight the differences between the 1950s and the present day. Unfortunately a considerable proportion of the people viewing the programme were alive during the fifties and will immediately spot the errors I referred to earlier, because they relate to the everyday life of the time, not some area of arcane knowledge.
It would have been very easy to have avoided the mistakes by simply running the programme past some seventy year olds before broadcasting it. Just as it would be easy for Italian firms to avoid publishing unidiomatic and inept English translations of their Italian guide books, apps or webpages by asking a native English speaker to check them before inflicting them on the English-speaking world. England isn't short of seventy year olds, or Italy of English ex-pats.
But today we live in a world where everyone is an 'expert', tweeting his half-baked opinion or sharing it through FaceBook or some other variety of social medium. And the traditional media in a desperate attempt at 'relevance' encourage the dumbing down by trying to 'involve' their public. So articles in the on-line version of the Guardian are followed by 'comments' in which the semi-educated favour us with their mis-spelled and ungrammatical invective. Every morning Radio Three poses a pointless 'brainteaser' to which their listeners are invited to tweet their solutions. Every Sunday a listener is interviewed about why a particular piece of music appeals to him. Who, apart from his family and friends cares? I listen to Radio Three to hear music and be informed about it by experts in the field. Just as I expect anyone producing a television programme purporting to show life in the fifties to avoid obvious howlers.
But when you can find out all you need to know about the fifties by going online and looking at Wikipedia why bother to consult a real live person? Especially as it would involve consulting the elderly, and, as we all know, anyone over forty-five is past his sell-by date in our brave new world.
