Valentines in Italy
We've been blogging the weekly diary of Giles Cornwall, one of the GolfPunk team, who is currently trying to scrape a trade in an Italian law firm.
This week passions are rising as everyone angles for a Valentine Day partner, but will poor Giles be left lonesome....
"I'm not sure how it came about really. All I know is that I'm sat in the office feeling a tad peaky. I suppose you can trace it back to my living arrangements.
I live in an apartment with 4 other Inglese; 2 girls, a very devout Muslim who is up with the lark, and a vegetarian IT teacher. As much as I like them all, there is a distinct lack of banter flowing around the house of the sort I am used to (infantile humour in other words). The other English guys I know live on the other side of the city, and while there are plenty of japes at work, often it's over my head as not only does everyone talk Italian, they speak in dialect as well so I've got no chance. Anyway, spending a lot of time with womenfolk has done something rather worrying to me. Having no one to share my joy with when Chelsea get stuffed by Middlesborough, being obliged to suppress a blimp's worth of bodily gas and appreciating and finding cleaning therapeutic, I've gone from proudly metrosexual to full on fruity.
The final straw came when one of my housemates was hanging some of her clothes out to dry, and, spotting a pair of knickers uttered something like: "Ooh, they're a particularly lovely undergarment". Let me emphasise that not only did I not make a sleazy/lecherous/repulsive comment, I wasn't even thinking those type of thoughts. I was actually commenting on them as an item of clothing. I don't like what I've become. It wasn't until later and I was painting my toe nai... a fence... I was painting (and creosoting) a fence... that it dawned on me what I had said.
I was thinking of all this yesterday on the bus home from work, already a bit annoyed because football had been cancelled because all the Romeos in the office were busy getting their end away on Valentines Day, whilst Jonny no-date was going home to darn some socks. I had actually been sort of propositoned at work, but unfortunately by the only Italian woman in existence who resembles a Kurdish refugee. "Are you freedom tonight?" she asked, and then practically sat on my face. There's being continental and tactile and then there's being molested.
I decided that I had to get in touch with my masculine side, or at least find out if I still had one. That was why I went and asked in every tabaccheria, pasticceria, salumeria and negozo in Padova where I could find a bar showing the Liverpool v Arsenal match. As it turns out, the English PremierLeague is not the beacon of footballing we like to think, as despite a lot of advice, (including from one guy who insisted on talking in English and just kept on saying "horses!" and "Tottin-ham!") it took me an hour to track down a place, 'The Highlander', a pseudo Scottish pub where 'genuine' coats of arms of various Scottish clans and a picture of bagpipes adorn the wall. I settled in, waiting for the other guys to arrive. Forgetting that the match didn't kick off till 9pm our time, by the time the game was about to kick off I was getting well stuck into the Guinness, "like drink in Scotland!" the excited barman had told me. Yes, quite.
I say, Guinness, it was black and creamy and has threatened to come back all over my computer on a number of occasions this morning, as I sit here feeling sorry for myself after about an hour's sleep. We ended up in a club called 'Fish Market' (oh I wish I was kidding) which was as dirty as its name implies, and twice as smelly. I'm not even going to go into the clientele, except to say... no, I can't.
Ah well, Giles. Keep on plugging away, at least Liverpool won.
Golf Punks
2/15/2006 5:58:13 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00) 
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