My fellow Temp Major Bonehead is in Italy at the moment, on the same work placement scheme i did back in 2003. i worked for a fortnight as a waiter in Venice, got an inflamed tendon from walking about 3 hours to and from work each day in that heatwave, then ended up doing tedious-beyond-belief clerical duties for the host organisation. Bonehead has ended up working as an oddjob man/killer in a hotel run by Brazilian gangsters, whom he describes as being “like a comedy Mafia family from The Sopranos.” Here are two highlights from his latest dispatch:
Fat people don’t like me and vice versa. They usually have personal issues that they transplant onto you, anger, suspicion, fat rage.
Fat rage, that well known condition, alas.
Got some babe in a cafe to teach me how to make a really good milk scuma for capuccinos. Just went in and said to her , vuol parlare italiano con me bella.
i love how one can be utterly shameless in another language, ‘vuol parlare italiano con me bella’ meaning ‘do you want to speak Italian with me, beautiful?’. It’s as well to note, however, that the Italians i met had a curiosity and openness to things one doesn’t find in England, where everyone is rigid with fear of some kind. If you tried saying, in a comedy Mediterranean accent, ‘do you want to speak English with me, beautiful?’ to the average English girl, you would i fear get a stare of stupefied incomprehension.
