Coronachan has withdrawn but people still wear masks here in Italy, often as a fashion accessory. I hate the mask. Perhaps in time people will choose to wear the mask at all hours, even when the government admit there is no further risk of contagion.
I readily imagine a future where everyone wears the mask, all the time. What special etiquette and caution must attend the removal, to eat and drink, to kiss. How to die in a mask. A city of men & women who wear increasingly decorative masks, ingeniously adorned & festooned; and then there will come the time when the masked citizens adopt a sponsor, when Audi or Bacardi or Siemens will pay people to wear a branded mask, when one can make a living walking about all day with a corporate insignia covering one’s mouth.
Lousy weather here in North Italy, overcast and windy. It now seems mandatory to wear a mask and gloves outside, previously it was only in the few open shops; I would rather stay indoors than go out with a mask and gloves just to get some exercise, and since it’s too cold to sit on my balcony with a book I am becoming increasingly a pale hermit in my cavern.
It is typical of Italy that no one is really sure if you need a mask & gloves to go outdoors; the government change the regulations every few days, so I’ve now filled in three different autodichiarazione (self-declaration) forms in case I’m stopped by the police – each has the same basic info (my address, where I’m going, why I’m going there, and that I haven’t had Coronavirus) but with pointless variations. Probably the latest version is now out of date and I can be arrested and imprisoned for not filling in an almost identical update.
A contrast between German and Italian bureaucracy: both are heavy, but the former eventually makes some sense, as the Hun are a race of engineers in search of function and efficiency; Italian bureaucracy is more akin to a building made up of randomly hurled pasta and old wine bottles and dead prostitutes: it is inefficient, burdensome, and incoherent to the point of insanity. It is as if the Italians wondered at the Germans: “Mario! Come see! The Germana they have-a so many a-moneys! How is possibile? Maybe because of-a all-a tha paperaworka! If-a we have-a many bureacracia we have-a money like-a the Germana!”
Waiting in the local town hall back in early March, the ticket system screen inoperative (someone had probably stolen a cable to sell the copper), the Italian staff wandering slowly around looking grumpy and baffled to be at work, I thought, This is what happens when a low-IQ, low-conscientiousness nation adopts a high-IQ/conscientiousness technology and system. While it wasn’t quite as bad as e.g. some African shithole, it explains the prevalent corruption in Italy: over the last few months I have been repeatedly tempted to just say, Do you want a bribe? Can I pay you 100 Euros and you do your job the way you should, instead of losing all my documents for the third time?
Strangely, some ice cream shops are now open. I’d be curious to know the reasoning behind such a choice, a government office somewhere with a group of grumpy, baffled Italian bureaucrats indolently pushing papers about a big table, then one says, Mario! I ‘ave an idea! We can open the gelaterie! and they then spend two weeks creating bureaucracy to this effect. I suppose it might be a good idea to have a phased return to normalcy, and why not begin with ice cream, especially since the weather is so shitty no one would want to stand about eating anything cold anyway.
The Italians seem to accept the dictates of lockdown with their usual cynical equanimity, they don’t like it but then everything the government does is insane anyway, so who cares.
1. The Italians are beginning to take this seriously. I went to Despar and it was almost sold out of Vitamin C. I bought the last two packs with a sense of glee.
2. There is a curious sense of simultaneous wariness and solidarity. Everyone except me is wearing a mask – I don’t bother, as I left it too late to get a real one, and I would only submit to wearing the Bane:
The few people I see on the street naturally steer to give each other as wide a berth as possible; and yet, there is a sense of “we’re in this together” for all there is an undeniable frisson of “don’t fucking infect me!”
I went into my usual supermarket and the usual young chap on the counter – wearing a mask and gloves – gave me a nod of comradely recognition, as to say “we both may be dead soon, perchance we shall meet in Hades among the shades bereft of glory”.
And twice as I crossed roads, cars simply stopped to let me walk. This has never ever happened to me before in Italy – the Italian driving custom is to drive and fast and as wildly as possible, one hand dangling out of the window with a bottle of beer and/or cigarette, while screaming, “vai! vai! stronzo! cazzo!” at everyone.
An Audi of all cars actually stopped, on a deserted empty road in the late evening, to let me cross. I smiled and gave the driver a wave, as to say, “I shall remember you when we meet again in Valhalla.”
Living in one of the Northern Italian epicentres of Coronavirus, I’ve decided to provide occasional updates to the situation for English-speakers who, for whatever reason, are interested.
There was little reporting about Coronavirus until it really hit Italy – most people I talked to hadn’t even heard about it, but then Italians are an incurious people. It is now a daily event in the media.
I went shopping on Sunday evening (8th March) and although most bars were closed, people were strolling merrily down the narrow city streets, in groups, laughing and kissing and dancing and basically being as Italian as possible.
The next day, I was advised that the police were arresting people for being outdoors without a good reason. On that evening I could hear birdsong in the city centre.
When I went out just now (Tuesday 10th March) the streets were almost totally empty.
I went to a Despar for wine etc. and found the vitamin supplement shelf totally full, so people aren’t panic-buying Vitamin C/D/etc.
In general, the Italians are a feckless childish people who will ignore warnings until the police threaten them with 3 months’ prison.
An Italian TV drama from 2008-10, based on a true story of some 70s thugs in Rome, I loved it from start to finish, and I normally don’t have much interest in Mafia/crime stories. It is technically proficient, with beautiful visuals, an especially imaginative and well-chosen soundtrack, an almost perfect script, and great acting. The series delineates the rise to power, and later in-fighting & disintegration, of a band of friends in 70s/80s Rome.
The story itself isn’t very interesting (to me) but I loved the character arcs, as some become increasingly grandiose and paranoid, some increasingly introverted and ruthless, some scornful and unpleasant, some kind of pitiful and much put-on by typical Italian wives.
It’s fairly brutal but most of the violence is, by my standards, low-key; the exception is the beating one character endures, which I found a bit grimacerous, but was probably necessary for the story.
Perhaps surprisingly, almost all the characters are quite likeable, I especially enjoyed Freddo (cold & pent-up) and Dandi (beautifully-dressed and increasingly nasty, while somehow remaining mesmerisingly charismatic).
My woman looks, oddly, like a female version of Dandi, with a very similar facial structure and mannerisms, which added a certain piquancy to it all.
If I had to describe it, it’s like Terrence Malick and Scorsese made a TV show together, with input from Michael Mann. There are some indescribably beautiful scenes, e.g. when one of the main characters is gunned down at the end of Season 1, and the gang arrive, one by one, staring at the body in the rain & dark, from the police cordon, as the copper in charge of their case stares, as it were ticking them all off from his list of Wanted photos. It’s a scene of such visual loveliness, I felt the series had gone beyond mere crime drama and become something from The Thin Red Line.
Certainly, one of the best TV shows I’ve ever seen.
After a decade in Germany, I am forced to move to Italy. It is purely for financial reasons but being a positive-thinking-Quigg, I am mustering some reasons for optimism. One: I’m hoping to watch some historical football:
Actually that’s it for now. Watching this, I am strongly reminded of rugby. At my 500-year-old school we had massive rugger matches with 50+ players one each side, the Games teachers usually on the edges paying little attention, and so there was ample opportunity for brawling, settling of the usual school scores, maiming, mutilation, gang rape, japes and jollity etc.
I early on opted for “cross country running”, a grim but solitary sport through the red light districts and stews. It taught self-reliance and stoicism; but sometimes I wish I had stuck with rugger.
Remainders 