#32: Moving House and Outrageous Italian Headlines
Ciao Nonni!
This week has been all about sickness and moving house. What a combination.
After a surprisingly good late-winter run of no one in the house being very unwell, we've all had horrible hacking coughs the last few days. David went down hard last week. I reaped immediate comeuppance for not being more sympathetic when I followed on the weekend.
Luckily, there's been plenty of interesting and entertaining moments with the move to keep our spirits up.
I am more and more excited by the building we're moving into. The gorgeous nonna (who owns our apartment and lives downstairs) is possibly the nicest person I have ever met. And her daughter who is helping with all the logistics is an absolute cracker.
She's currently battling to register the contract with the local authorities, who ask her for different documentation each time. She calls me, exasperated, complaining about how each one is more incompetent than the next - and apologising for asking me to provide yet another obscure piece of paperwork.
I take great heart in knowing that even born and bred Lucchese suffer at the bureaucratic altar.
Our conversations are always very one-sided, being in Italian, but this doesn't seem to matter too much to them - for which I am very grateful.
I have heard from many people that Italians take everything - including the kitchen sink - with them when they move. But we were quite surprised when we realised that the previous tenants even took the light globes and shower curtain railing with them when they vacated the apartment!
They'd left a single globe in the main living room, and that was it. Luckily the apartment is very light, so during the day (which is the only time we've been there so far) it isn't an issue. But a trip to the hardware store for globes wasn't something I'd factored in...
Anyway, I started moving all of our things across today. Because of the particularities of Lucca's traffic flows around the huge walls surrounding the town, and the fact that our current apartment is in the ZTL, it is actually much faster and easier to shuttle back and forth on my bicycle. With huge bags strapped to every available bike and body part, I'm sure I look a bit like the donkey carrying the hay that Jim used to sit atop on the farm outside Cittadella, but as long as I'm balanced it is surprisingly easy.
While crossing the piazza yesterday morning, I glanced across at the newspaper stands that are often placed out the front of the local newsagent. Unusually, I saw a headline that made me stop dead in my tracks. This was surprising for two reasons. One, it meant that I had actually understood what was written on the front page. And two, that it was so incredibly shocking that, even against the backdrop of Italy's wild media landscape, it stood out.
The Mysteries of Giorgia
MELONI: BLONDE ON TOP
BUT UNDERNEATH SHE IS
BLACK!
Now Europe wants to see!
What hidden depth could I possibly be missing in this outrageous front page? Surely these words at face value could not ever constitute an actual headline? I decided that, surely, this must be satire.
In the end I had to ask an Italian speaking friend who was highly amused to confirm that, yes, this is a famous satirical publication from Livorno. I have resolved to buy this paper from now on to practice my reading, and keep alive my deeply ingrained Australian need for satirical humour.
All my love!
