It all looks so...weird, actually, here in London.

Nothing seems to work the right way.

Am I an italian expatriate?

My brother would say I'm an ex patriot actually, since I once lived in Paris for a while...10 months, enough to make me get back to Rome with no italian words out of my mind, french accent when I was able again to say three italian words in a row with no french word in between, and a passion for what was not italian at all. God bless old Paris, Rome sucks. Will you ever forgive me, Paul? I swear I won't do it again when I will get back to Rome. I really miss Via Nomentana, Viale Libia, Piazza della Repubblica, Via del Corso, Piazza Venezia...God, just the idea of having a tea or coffee at Incontriamoci, walk a little around Santa Costanza and move to...I got shivers down my spine.

 

As a matter of fact, I now do live in England, and feel a little half-something.

I left all behind me in Rome and I got nothing I could do there. That doesn't mean I have a lot of things to do here, apart from looking for a postgraduate course in music composition, sending cvs by email, sending cvs by ordinary mail, leaving cvs on the spot by hand, missing Italian food and weather.

 

I'm afraid to disappoint english people with the sentence 'english weather really sucks'. Every person with average intelligence and brain volume will agree. It's not me who always says, Oh, you Italians!, the food, and the weather, how dare could you come here?!?

 

Why did people moved abroad in the past centuries? To built a better future for themselves and their offspring. I know I always look like being on the run and this appears to be the main reason for a lot of people.

I hereby declare that actually I'm still on the run, I would really love run away from here (and from somebody, if I were able to but I'm not), but I can't. Old Paul's tip of the day: homo faber fortunae suae.

 

Anyway, I admit that I met very nice people here and that the place I live in is the closest thing to Pleasantville I ever experienced.

 

The funny thing is, it happens I meet mostly non-english people and I sometimes find difficulties to understand what they say. Spaniards, Moroccans, Pakistani, Indians, Dutch men...Casablanca style indeed.

 

The place I worked in for a while was a restaurant ran by an italian man from Naple and another guy, born in England to italian parents. The main chef was from Naple, the other chefs were from Poland and Brasil. The other waiters were brazilian too. The language everyone spoke in there was neapolitan.

I was astonished to witness a polish guy talking in neapolitan dialect to a brazilian guy. They addressed to each other by Ue' fra'.

 

When I spoke in english to the waiter, he replied in neapolitan. And when he realized I could't understand him, he avoided english to use portuguese: papel, praia...I tried to speak in english with the only person whose mothertongue was the offical language of the United Kingdom, and he replied in neapolitan too.

I then found out that his parents came not even from Naple, but from Sicily. When I asked 'So why do you speak neapolitan?' the simple answer was 'Oh, I always was in the kitchen of my father's restaurant and they all talked this way'.

 

And you can't even rely on old white english people sometimes. When I first arrived, in Kent, an old man from an old 'country'  farm said: welcome to the 'kown-tree'.

 

Gotta go now.

Plan of the day: win the batlle against english rain and stop sneezing.