Even more lessons from Southern Italy

We're not done with this Southern Italy business yet...

1) SECOND-HAND MEMORY CARD

I needed a memory car for my camer, so I went into a little camera shop, where an ancient man sat behind a counter chatting with a friend on the other side. I asked for a memory card, so he took one and put it in my camera.

"Let's take a picture to check that it works," he said. 
He tried taking a photo, but a message appeared on the screen: "Memory full".
"How can the memory be full?" we both said, bemused. "It's a brand new card."

He put the card in a different camera, and it worked fine.

“You have to reset the camera,” he told me.

So I took it home, and I reset it. But it still kept giving the “memory full” message. I reset it with the card, I reset it without the card, I turned it off and on again, I tried everything I could think of. No luck. So I took it to work the next day.

“There must be somebody here who will know what to do,” I reasoned.

And there was.

“The problem,” announced one of the air traffic controllers, “is that the memory is too big. It’s 4GB, and your camera can only take 2GB.”

So off I went back to the little old man in his shop, to explain that I needed a 2GB card, not a 4GB one. He shook his head regretfully.

“They don’t exist anymore,” he told me. “All cameras these days take 4GB and up.”

Then he paused, an idea appearing to occur to him. “Just one minute!” he instructed me, and marched off to the phone. He talked for a minute, then put down the phone, turned to me, and beamed.

“Problem solved!” he announced. “My wife has a 2GB card which she’ll give to you. If you come back tomorrow afternoon, we’ll exchange cards.”

Can you imagine going into a camera shop in the UK or some other country where camera shops are all big chains, and being told that the owner’s wife will give you her card?

2) PUBLIC RELATIONS

“You know why I talk so much and leave chaos in my wake everywhere I go?” said one air traffic controller, who certainly did leave a trail of pandemonium everywhere he went. “Because many years ago, when I had just become an air traffic controller, when I was working in Rome, there were 600 of us working there. And one day, one of our colleagues died. And none of us could work out who he was! We were all saying, ‘Who was the guy who died?’ And I said to myself, imagine if I were the one to die. Could I have everybody saying, ‘But who was the guy who died?’ No! So that’s why I decided that everywhere I go, I’m always going to make a noise and make sure that everyone knows who I am.”

3) ROUNDING DOWN

People kept giving discounts in the south. I went to the supermarket, and was going to get rid of some bits and pieces of change cluttering up my purse. But the bits and pieces were a little bit short of the desired amount, so I pulled out a note instead.

“It’s OK,” said the man at the till. “Just give me the coins.”

“But they’re not enough,” I said.

“Don’t worry,” he replied, and took them anyway.

"That wouldn't happen in central Italy," commented my colleague. "They won't even let you off a cent there."
He went to buy a take-away pizza one evening. It was €6, so he took out a €5 note and started looking for a coin.
“Don’t worry,” said the guy behind the counter. “Just give me €5 for it.”

Our housemate went one better. He went to buy credit for his phone, and procured himself not just a discount but an entirely free top-up, courtesy of the shop employee who had taken a shine to him. 

4) JESUS

Coming back home one evening after a walk in the town centre, we noted that the road, normally heavily trafficked, was deserted.

“Where are all the cars?” we wondered.

As if in answer to our question, an ambulance appeared and drove past at a leisurely pace. It was followed by a very relaxed police car.

Then, as we crested a bridge, a flood of humanity surged up in the other direction. Humanity wearing desert robes tied with rope at the waist. Humanity waving its hands in the air. Humanity brandishing palm fronds and riding donkeys.

“Hosanna!” cried the people in their desert robes. “Hosannaaa!”

It was like a scene straight out of the New Testament – with the addition of policemen and ambulance workers weaving through the procession, occasionally stopping to exchange greetings and gossip with some friend or family member watching on the sidelines.

As we pushed past some people who had stopped to watch the procession, and who were blocking the pavement in the most oblivious manner, I heard a man informing a child in a somewhat condescending manner, “It’s just a man dressed as Jesus. It’s not actually Jesus.”

5) LEAVING HOME

My colleague and I were sharing a flat with a 19-year-old girl and a 34-year-old guy. When we arrived, neither of them was there – they were both home for the weekend. We had a nose round the house and were astonished to find that there was no food in the kitchen. There were several bottles of water and a box of salt, but that was it.

“What do they eat?” we asked, bemused.

The guy, it turned out, had just moved into the house. He had brought some food with him, but hadn't transferred it yet from his bedroom to the kitchen. But what about the girl?
"Where do you eat?" I asked her.

She shrugged. “I don’t, really,” she smiled.

“Do you eat at the canteen at university?” I persisted.

“No,” she replied, unconcernedly. “I go home at the weekend, and my mother cooks a feast. So I eat, and then I'm OK for the week.”

Every now and then, if she had friends round, she would buy crisps and Coke, but apart from that, she really did appear to survive on fresh air.

“You know,” my colleague told her sternly, “your body needs nourishment, and if you don’t eat, you’ll get ill.”

She took fright at this, and he continued, “I am cooking a steak now, and making a salad. You must join us for one or the other or both.”

“OK,” she replied, trembling.

But she insisted on making her own salad.

“Why don’t you have some of this?” I asked, pointing to the salad on the table.

“Because there’s olive oil on it,” she said, with a worried look. “I can’t eat oil, because it gives me spots.”

So she ate her undressed salad. It was the only time she ever ate with us.

The guy didn’t cook either. He was 34, and had just become a security guard, because he needed a change from his previous job – as a chef. Restaurants, he said, were too stressful, and a chef works very unsociable hours. (A security guard, it emerges, works hours that are if anything even more unsociable.)

“But I still enjoy cooking,” he said. “I’ll cook for you sometime.”

But he never did. And he didn’t cook for himself either. Once a week or so, he would go home, and he would come back laden with a week’s worth of meals which his mother had prepared for him.

The girl had been there for six months, and she still didn’t know how to use the washing machine.

“Would you like me to show you how to use it?” I offered.

“No, it’s OK,” she said. “I just take my washing home at the weekend and my mother does it. It’s easy enough.”

Well, perhaps at the age of 19, one still has something to learn about home-making. But how do you explain a 34-year-old man who takes his washing home? Easily.

“It’s much simpler,” he explained. “I just give it to my mother, and the next day she gives it all back to me, washed, ironed and folded.”

6) FAMILY VALUES

I went to visit a friend in a nearby town. 

“I’m looking for somewhere to go,” he told me.

“What, on holiday, or to live?” I asked.

“Possibly to live,” he said. “At least for a while. I think I’ve had enough of living here for the moment. And now while I’m still young, and I don’t have commitments, this is the time to do it. After all, when I’m older, I’ll need to be here to look after my parents.”

"That's really nice," I said. "I don't know many people of our generation who are planning their futures around being near their parents to look after them when they're older."
"It's a southern Italian thing," he replied placidly. "Family is very important to us."