The best of British, and worst
It may be hard to recapture the moment describing a comedy festival, suffice to say that the final night of the Ealing Comedy Festival was a hit from go to whoa. Nine artists and not a dud among them, and then there was the MC, a woman called Jo Caulfield who was spectacularly funny and very smart when bantering with the audience. As well as taking the mickey out of a few unfortunate enough to be in the front rows or late, a number of her lines were about alcohol consumption, a favourite pastime of the British, and we noted that there were two long breaks during the performance during which the audience was encouraged to consume as much as possible.
The only other woman appearing, Shappi Khorsandi, is Iranian and a bit of a London darling at present. Her family came to London after her father was forced to flee Iran for being critical of the post-revolution regime and she told us of her childhood when the phone would ring and on the other end if the line there would be heavy breathing or death threats. “Dad, the phone’s for you,” she would say. Mind you, Dad’s not that impressed with Shappi, she hasn’t yet been threatened with death.
But for possibly the worst of Britain, we had thought the new practice of London airports charging a three pound a pop for priority access through their security queues took the opportunist-cake for capitalizing on their own inefficiency, but we have found another; Barclays Bank.
Andrea, the Moodie’s child minder was going back to Hungary for a holiday and found out by chance that, for security reasons, bank debit cards are cancelled when used abroad unless the owner has registered that they will be away. Good and sensible perhaps but here’s the rub. To do this requires calling an 0845 number which is like an 0900 number in New Zealand, the caller is charged a time-related calling fee by the bank.
Andrea phoned and was put on an automated holding pattern, and waited without further response for twenty minutes. Eventually, we decided the sensible thing was for Marty to take her by car to the actual bank and sort it out in person. There, however, she was told by the tellers that she could only undertake this transaction over the phone or by seeing a customer services officer, but because they were busy was directed to a bank phone, given a number and she called, only to be put on the holding pattern . . . and another twenty minutes went by.
By then, Marty insisted on actual human assistance and was told by a customer liaison-type person that he himself had tried to call the same number earlier that morning for his own needs and had given up waiting after fifteen minutes. We guessed this was meant to console Andrea, that banks treat their own staff as badly as their customers, particularly when told that she was lucky she wasn’t incurring costs by being permitted use the bank’s line.
After a further period of time Marty repeated his request to see a customer services officer, but was told that an appointment would be needed, but in any case Andrea would just have to keep phoning as such officers couldn’t complete this particular transaction. Thus ensued a very vigorous discussion about the incompetence of Barclays and the bare-faced cheek of customers being forced to pay phone waiting charges as a result of the bank’s own inefficiency and/or incompetence in not being able to respond promptly. The response included that no banks in the UK allow free phoning any more, they all charge. Somehow that was supposed to make it alright.
Then, the person we were now dealing with told Andrea in a sort of scolding fashion that she was phoning the wrong number and should have been using a different one for more punctual service. Her protest that she was using the number given to her (she even showed this person the piece of paper she had been given with the number) made no impact. So, she then tried the new number and held for ten minutes (we timed it), and still no answer.
More intervention was required, resulting in us having two phones going at once and, to bring this tale to a conclusion, we can report that the second attempt on the second phone was answered, quite quickly. “There,” said this bank officer, “if only you had phoned the right number from the start.”

Oxford saved
It is hard to fathom what the governing body may have been thinking in 2004 when it hired New Zealander John Hood, a so-called modernist, as the new vice-chancellor of Oxford University. Modernisation seems the antipathy of everything the university stands for, its 900-years of existence steeped in rich history and, most importantly, a place where academic excellence rather than vocational training is paramount. Hood, the former vice-chancellor of the University of Auckland and a deputy boss of Fletcher Challenge, was the first outsider appointed to the Oxford role and, despite being born in Napier, a most unpleasant man to our way of thinking. His plans to replace the university’s highly successful form of self-governance with an externally dominated council and to separate academic and financial management were crushingly defeated and while at the time Hood declared that he did not see his routing as a vote of no-confidence, he has not sought a second term as vice-chancellor. Unscathed by the likes of Hood is how the university should remain, and he is due to leave at the end of September.
Despite several previous trips, we have never really explored Oxford, dominated in the centre by the university’s thirty-nine independent colleges and seven halls of residence, but we made up for it this time. It is simply exquisite; dubbed the city of dreaming spires there is an abundance of gothic architecture adorned with gargoyles, numerous buildings designed by Sir Christopher Wren, perfectly formed parks, gardens and playing fields, and monuments including one for the Oxford martyrs (Cranmer, Latimer and Ridley) burned at the stake for heresy in 1555 (a bricked X in the road marks the exact spot). Then there are the haunts of Inspector Morse, the covered market, punts on the Thames, the Pitt Rivers museum with its fine collection of trophy skulls and shrunken heads, the university museum with its dinosaur skeletons, and a pub called the Head of the River where we could sit in the late afternoon sun and rest our weary bones. We didn’t find the pubs frequented by Bill Clinton during his time as a Rhodes Scholar, nor did we see the Victoria Arms, the “local” of Invercargill-born writer Dan Davin and others of the New Zealand bohemian set. But we did come across the Eagle and Child (nicknamed the Bird and Baby) reputed to be the regular of JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis and other “inklings”, as they described themselves.
What amused us very much were the quirks and contradictions: The Said Business School, one of the few modern university buildings, which was controversially funded to the tune of 20 million pounds by a Syrian arms dealer, Wafic Rida Said. Although modern, the building comes complete with its own ziggaraut, an architecturally designed, copper clad stepped pyramid. Then there was Magdalene College which is pronounced maudlin, which becomes confusing when you get to Magdalene Church which is pronounced as it is spelled. And what strange tradition has students jumping into the Cherwell River to the accompaniment of Latin hymns?
Then there were the dons (senior male academics rather than mafia bosses) who in more Victorian times sunbathed naked along a particular stretch of the river. That was until a passing boat filled only with young and innocent female students chanced upon them. Startled, the dons jumped to their feet and regained their modesty by covering their private parts with towels. All except one, who covered his head so he would not be recognized. The result was that, aside from the one, these young women all knew the identities of their academic superiors who surprised them with such a bold display.
A trip to Oxford in the summertime would not be complete without a cycle ride down the Thames towpath and while it may be hard to believe we did it, from Kennington to Oxford and back again. Past the launches and narrow boats we went, over the Ifley lock, alongside the university sports fields and to the Folly Bridge. At one point Kaelene stopped to talk to a woman on board one of four narrow boats moored together. Not only do these boats look very pretty all decked out with tubs of flowers, but more importantly, they have central heating, double glazing, showers, dishwashers and even Sky TV. The owners spend six months a year exploring the waterways and then hibernate for the winter. That’s our sort of roughing it.
Such comfort was not ours however. We returned home, our inexperienced bottoms subjected to the narrow, unrelenting, hard seats of the bicycles – leaving us feeling, to coin a phrase, absolutely buggered.

School’s out
There were celebrations for many in the United Kingdom last week with the release of A-level examination results and the White household wasn’t immune. In Oxford the grades are handed out at the school at 10.00am and from then it seems to be party time, either to savour good results or to drown sorrows. To start with, champagne followed by a lunch and then 600 partygoers crush into the Bridge nightclub, never to be seen again for a day or so. These exams are apparently pretty important in securing places to university so when Finn secured two As and a B (his B being only 3 marks off an A) there was delight all round, and we were impressed.
That was until we heard on the radio that 97 percent of students who sit pass their A-levels, and that 25 percent of those who pass do so with an A mark. Whatever happened to failure? It seems that no-one really misses out unless they get a U which means unmarked, that’s when the paper is so bad the marker cannot be bothered to finish the job. As a result of all of these good marks, it is expected that thousands of A level students will miss out on university places this year, a consequence of 60,000 extra students applying for only 13,000 new funded placements. We have learned too that admissions officers at universities have been getting “disappointment training” to help them deal with worried and unhappy students.
But if we were impressed by Finn’s result, his girlfriend Lara got two As in art, and in doing so scored 600 marks out of a possible 600. Not surprising that she’s been accepted for Falmouth Art School and, even if we take in to account what must be a relatively generous marking regime, her results were exceptional.
Near here, in Croydon, it seems there has been something of a storm in a swimming pool following a notice on the local council’s website that there will be specific times for Muslim-friendly swimming at its Thornton Health Leisure Centre. The council had introduced new rules requiring all swimmers to cover up in order that Muslims were not offended, the notice reading: “During special Muslim sessions, male costumes must cover the body from the navel to the knee and females must be covered from the neck to the ankles and wrists. When attending please adhere to the Islamic dress code (otherwise you will be denied entry)”. In the face of protest, the Council claimed this was an error and no dress code existed. The leisure centre does, however, maintain its programme of single-sex sessions for women on a Saturday afternoons and men on Sunday afternoons. “These are for people who may not feel comfortable swimming in a mixed-gender group,” a council spokesperson told the Croydon Guardian. “There is no dress code enforced by our staff at either of these sessions.”
Meanwhile, back in Oxford, authorities have rebranded their local airport as London Oxford, apparently hoping to cash in on the success of other landing strips such as Luton and Stanstead which are used as gateways in and out of London, particularly for the budget airlines. Telegraph columnist India Lenon describes Oxford’s move as shameless but nothing new as nine airports have now adopted the London prefix. The difference here being that Oxford is more than sixty miles from London whereas most of the others are within a thirty mile radius (Yes, miles - imperial measurements have not been sullied by metrics in this part of the world). To describe Oxford as part of London is drawing something of a long bow, a little like describing Ashburton as a suburb of Christchurch.
As for us, we have mostly been preparing and painting long-neglected windows at cousins Jani and Rob’s house, but plan to explore Oxford when they head away for a few days in Cambridge. While they have kindly prepared bicycles for the twenty minute ride down the scenic Thames towpath into town, we have popped over the road and checked out the bus timetable for the less strenuous option.

Hi-de-hi
The sign behind the bar in the Riverside Pub in Lechlade has a sign which reads: “Prices may vary according to customer attitude.” If it were the other way around, that meals and drink prices were set according to bar staff attitude, we could have dined and drunk free for a week. After setting up camp near this lovely Cotswold town, we arrived at the Riverside at precisely 7.47pm intent on dinner but as Marty went to pick up a menu it was whisked from his grasp and he was told, abruptly so, that last orders were taken at 7.45. Apparently the kitchen had been open from 12.00 noon and if we had wanted food we should have come then. Undaunted (or perhaps suffering a lack of choice), we returned the next day where Rob asked if they had Kronenberg beer on tap. The monosyllabic response of “no” was uttered without suggestion, recommendation or inclination that something else could be on offer or available. On a trip later that day up the Thames River on the Cotswold Canals Trust’s sightseeing boat, we were told that the pub had improved greatly under recent new management. It can only have been awful previously.
Lechlade, population 3,000, was our destination with Marty’s cousin Jani and her husband Rob, having evacuated their home in Oxfordshire while their son Finn and about sixty friends celebrated his eighteenth birthday. Jani and Kaelene travelled by car laden with camping equipment and dogs, Marty and Rob on a motorbike for what could best be described as a white knuckle ride. Camping, it must be noted, is not a natural activity for us; there seems little point in spending a day preparing and packing, and then hours setting up a campsite in order to be completely exposed to the elements and subject to every form of deprivation (not to mention wasps and stinging nettle) known to humankind when you could be elsewhere with all the comforts of home. There is nothing remotely attractive about 1950s-style concrete and polite (the building material, not the behavior) ablution blocks, not to mention early morning hikes through dew-damp, mown grass getting to them. Living under canvas (or whatever the latest material of tent manufacture) could possibly be more attractive if there was a specific purpose in mind, such as for a rock music festival or if the location was a nice beach or somewhere picturesque, but the benefits are lost on us when the destination is a featureless rectangular field, particularly so when you are decamping and going through the reverse packing process the very next day.
But we did well. We pitched the tent, walked through paddocks of cowdung, and wandered the river banks, past small launches and narrow boats (interestingly one named Hine Te Awa), all moored, and whose owners, undeterred by inclement weather, sat at picnic tables sipping tea from thermoses or wine from plastic glasses. Down we went past the nearby St John’s lock where the keeper was working the lock for a single canoe and back over the Halfpenny Bridge, so named because that was the toll charge when the bridge replaced the ford in 1792. A pint was had at The Trout Inn, one of those fine old traditional English pubs with stone floors and low, hand-sawn timber ceilings, and next day, for Kaelene and Jani, a trip to the town’s specialist Christmas shop. At Lechlade Fishing Tackle live maggots can be purchased by anglers wanting to fish for pike, perch and other aquatic livestock, but unfortunately not the swans which are there in abundance fouling the waters and hissing at passersby.
We learned too about tent envy, the practice of gazing wistfully at the camping paraphernalia of others and longingly comparing it with your own. This form of desire apparently leads to the endless upgrading of equipment, the result being better and more sophisticated gear for some and fantastic bargains for those who buy second-hand.
This town is quite literally at the headwaters of the Thames River which, at 125 miles, is the longest waterway in England. It is also the start of the now disused Thames Severn Canal, which as the name suggests linked the Thames and Severn rivers. Twenty million pounds of lottery funding has just been given for restoration work meaning that, when finished, we could keep traveling and moor right outside the front door of Alan Moorhouse, one of Kaelene’s genealogy friends, in Stroud.
We did one very good deed, hoisting an elderly woman from a rabbit hole she had fallen into and sending her, with suspected broken ankle, to a nearby hospital for examination and repair. It was as well that she didn’t have swine flu, those with symptoms of that particular condition are denied entry to the local pharmacy in order to protect other customers and staff from possible infection. They should, an important notice to visitors reads, go home. All of which raises the question of how sufferers pick up their medicine.

Okapis and a tribe of hairy women
It is a relief to discover some things have not changed. In the local Pitshangar Village post office, a hand illustrated billboard cautions customers to beware of Royal Mail swine fever, the symptoms of which are an attack on full-time employment and public services, a disregard for employees’ terms and conditions, the closure of mail centres, the loss of and fall in basic pay, and cuts to employees’ pension schemes. Customers are asked to support their local postal workers, in consideration of which there is the defiant declaration that “we will not be silenced and we will not be bullied and we will not be defeated.” Over the last week a series of 24 hour strikes have been held in London, Birmingham, Coventry and Edinburgh over proposed cuts to job numbers and what has been described as the Royal Mail employers’ refusal to negotiate. Lorry drivers are due to join in soon and a national strike ballot is now on the cards.
We will support the local postal worker of course if for no other reason that they are always courteous and helpful when we go in, and have given us tips on how to save quite a bit of money when sending parcels back to New Zealand. This includes such things as writing “small packet” on small packets, which apparently qualifies senders for a lower postage rate. We would have thought that a small packet would have been quite evident by its weight and size but such are Royal Mail rules and regulations that if it is not correctly identified, then it could be mistaken for a large packet or an odd-shaped letter and different charges could apply. It was enough to have us consider going down to the West London Trade Union Club in Acton for eight or nine pints and a game of darts before dinner.
On the subject of dinner, the sun is out and it’s barbeque time. Londoners are confused, a little like Christchurch folk; at the first sign of a good day they will abandon all sense (and sometimes clothes) and try and stay outdoors long into the evening. Christchurch has its easterly wind to combat and in London it simply doesn’t get hot enough to justify venturing too far outdoors, but nevertheless we have bought the chops and sausages for what will be our second barbeque inside a week. But here’s a rub, we feel as though these barbeques are something of a socio-ecological contradiction. On one hand we feel good because we buy Fair Trade instant barbeques from the Co-op which use charcoal from Namibia sourced “only from unwanted trees, allowing overgrown land to become productive again”. We are told that the charcoal producers get three times the minimum wage and access to health-care and interest free loans. But on the other hand, these are throwaway barbeques with non biodegradable aluminum foil bases and grill which, after twenty or thirty minutes use, are dispatched to the local landfill. Thank goodness summer is such a brief affair in London; if not we would have to resolve this dilemma.
We learned something quite new this week and that is there is an animal called an Okapis. The guidebook describes them as secretive animals, with people in the Western World only learning of their existence early in the 20th century, first in 1901. Given that we were born a little later than that, we thought we may have heard of them, but not so. They look quite like horses with a Zebra’s rear end, but are actually the closest living relative of the giraffe.
We learned this when we took the Moodie children to the London Zoo, and we learned a few other things too including that the name gorilla derives from the Greek word gorillai meaning a tribe of hairy women. We would not make this up. Also in the mix at this particular zoo was a wide range of animals we have never previously seen: Giants of the Galapagos, the largest tortoises in the word which live to 150 years of age, can weigh up to 250 kilograms and look to be about 1.2 metres across the shell; Komodo dragons; warthogs and bearded pigs; black-capped squirrel monkeys into whose enclosure the public is allowed; Toucan birds which we don’t think we’ve seen before but which look exactly like the ones on the Guinness beer ads; the Scarlett Ibis which is a stunningly vivid red but refuses to sit still to be photographed; hornbills; African hunting dogs; an anteater; and vultures, some with amazingly coloured heads. Then there were the standards: tigers and lions, the latter with some very cute little cubs, pelicans and flamingos, penguins and parrots, and the little meercats. But perhaps what caught our eye, unexpectedly so, were the otters who frolicked in their pool and showed off to the crowd. They were quite a delight.
By the time we reached home there were two more exhibits on display, the elderly couple who took the children to the zoo snoozing, exhausted, on the couch.

Bad manners and other lapses
It was not until we went to get on the bus the other afternoon that we actually comprehended how much things have changed in England. In a country whose people have previously been characterised and often mercilessly mocked for their penchant to form and wait endlessly in queues, we have noticed on this visit that barging has become more the order of the day. It may be the result of opening borders to people of nationalities more used to a survival of a fittest-type approach, but it is not a positive change. Even when armed to the gunnels with luggage when trying to get onto a tube or bus there is no courtesy or concession shown, other passengers rudely shove past or barely budge as we and others struggle with suitcases in congested aisles. It is very un-British and we do not like it one bit.
Similarly, on footpaths, groups as many as three or four people abreast maintain their trajectory, oblivious to oncomers, as though other pedestrians are completely invisible, meaning that they and other law abiding old age pensioners are forced to take evasive action. It seems that we spend half the day walking in single file, swerving to avoid people or walking on the edge of the roads narrowly dodging collisions between our heads and the wing mirrors on buses.
We have also observed other changes in behaviour on the tube, London’s leading conveyor of commuters. Once, it would have been considered rude to make eye contact with another passenger and unpardonable to try and engage in conversation. People boarded and sat down with eyes transfixed on a single spot, or they read novels and dozed off, but not anymore. Books have given way to London’s three giveaway newspaper and by mid-afternoon the tubes are awash in newsprint. People will read the ones thrust upon them outside stations and, once read, discard them. Other passengers discreetly pick up any they haven’t read themselves until they’ve consumed all three versions of the same giveaway news. Once finished the papers are dumped on the floor or behind seats, entire forests-worth each day.
One of the most interesting changes from an anthropological perspective would be that of new technology. Young people lost in a world of their own with white I-Pod buds growing from their ears jump aboard the tubes, oblivious to anything but themselves and their music. Of course none of the other passengers can hear the actual I-pod music, so they are involuntarily subjected to audible grunting accompanied by out-of-context hip swinging and foot-tapping. Self-awareness is evidently not a strong suit of the I-Pod people.
The other technology worth mentioning is that of the mobile phone. It is extraordinary the number of long, loud, meaningless conversations that occur on public transport, ones where other passengers are subjected to unrelenting banalities of extraordinary magnitude. In his book, Notes from a Small Island, author Bill Bryson, fictionalises such a conversation. “Hello, Clive here, I’m on the 10.07 and should be at HQ by 1300 hours as expected. I’m going to need a rush debrief on the Portland Square scenario. Listen, can you think of why anyone would employ a complete anus like me? What’s that? Because I’m the sort of person who’s as happy as a pig in shit just because he’s got a mobile phone?" Then a few minutes of silence and: “Clive here, I’m still on the 10.07 but we had a points failure at Grantham so I’m looking at an ETA of 13.02 rather than the forecast 1300 hours. If Phil calls, will you tell him I’m still a complete f….wit. Brill.” And so on.
Then there are those who have phones with the almost unnoticeable dangling microphones or voice pickups which allow their users to have loud hands-free conversations as if with themselves. This is quite unnerving; several times we’ve witnessed people screaming abuse at what appears to be other passengers or innocent shoppers only to realize that the person is actually hurling their abuse into one of these dangling microphones. Usually these calls end abruptly with the participant then continuing the tirade, leaving bystanders in no doubt of exactly what they think of the other party to the exchange. The weird thing is that people act as if this is somehow normal, showing just what a funny old world it is in which we now live.

Teddy, once was lost then was found
We knew we were back in England when just around the corner in Meadvale Road, W5 1NS, just behind the Brentham Sports Club, home to the Fred Perry Cafe, a number of trees lining the street had pinned to them computer generated posters inside plastic protective sheets announcing the safe return of Teddy, a cat previously notified as missing. What makes this so English is that, rather than it being just a notice, there was a full status report. Teddy a brown Abyssinian, neutered and micro-chipped, whose portrait featured prominently on the original poster, went missing on Wednesday 5th of August, with local residents being implored to check their garages and sheds for sightings. In the update, pasted over the “Lost” heading of the original, we were relieved to learn that Teddy was found, coming “home at 2.00am on Monday morning – skinny as a rake. He wolfed down three and a half pouches of his favourite food and is now sleeping happily”. We assumed that Teddy was either having a very long sleep after wolfing down his favourite food at 2.00am, or his relieved family was out before daylight updating the notices.
In another diversion, we have succumbed to the advertising in a travel agent’s window and have booked seven nights in the Greek Island of Zakinthos from 27 August. With almost straight faces we could claim that this will allow us to escape the variable weather of London and acclimatize to blue skies, sandy beaches and warm days before we head to Barbados in September to join Fleur. We’ve always said it was a tough life.

Bellagio.co.nz
This may or may not be a compliment to New Zealand, or it may even be that our remote island status is too insignificant to be internationally noticed, but here is a true story. In Italy there is an historic town called Bellagio right on the fork of Lake Como and in Las Vegas there is a hotel and casino of the same name. The hotel got in first and grabbed the Bellagio website domain name and registered every derivation it could find which bore any faint resemblance to it, meaning that the town was unable to promote itself on the internet using its own name. That was until it discovered one of the only names not taken by Bellagio, the hotel, was one using the New Zealand company suffix. It now happens that the official town website and the sites of many of the local businesses all use .co.nz in their names, the town’s official website being www.bellagio.co.nz. We found this out by chance, having happened upon a very nice little restaurant named Aperitivo Et Al Bar where we stopped for a meal of buckwheat pasta, the house specialty which turned out to be rather more delicimo than the name suggested. The proprietor gave Anousheh the business card and it was she who spotted the quirk in the website address. We thought we had stumbled upon some great Kiwi connection but no, the explanation was as uncomplicated as a small town’s fight against an American corporate name snatcher.
Bellagio itself is another of these towns adorned with old villas and grand hotels connected by narrow cobbled streets but distinguished from our little haven of Damaso by being busy and home to some very nice shops. It is described as the most famous of the resorts on Lake Como, accommodating 150,000 visitors a year, and a place of fascination for the cultured set ever since the Renaissance, its well known visitors including poets Shelley and Longfellow and composers Flaubert and Liszt. Love scenes from Star Wars, Part II: Attack of the Clones were filmed close by, at Villa Balbianello, as were parts of Oceans Thirteen through the George Clooney connection.
As an aside, one thing we have noticed in restaurants in Italy is that they all display no-smoking signs, but then send something of a mixed message by placing ashtrays on tables. Fortunately it is not the practice of patrons to smoke indoors, most seeming content to linger in doorways even though the habit is banned in public places. This public ban is presumably not enforced anywhere, even the young attendant in one of the local council offices, whose tenants include the local health enforcement agency and police, hung around the doorway chain smoking while we were there.
It was the C10 bus that picked us up from Domaso and took us to Como to bring our Italian sojourn to an end, an almost two-hour journey right down the lakeside. It is a quite spectacular drive, from the Alps in the north separating Italy from France to the West, Switzerland due North and Austria in the East, through the small towns of Dongo, Musso, Pianello, Cremia, Rezzonico, Mennagio dotted along the coast. Past village markets, churches and religious statues, and enormous villas and palaces we went. In parts the road was so narrow that two vehicles could not pass and quite an amount of time was spent inching our way past on-coming vehicles, each separated by not more than a coat of paint, or waiting for other vehicles to reverse up the road to find a patch wide enough to accommodate both.
Nearing Como we overlooked the town of Laglio from where it had by then been established that George Clooney was actually in residence at his Villa Orleandra. This had been confirmed not only by reports that fellow actors Robert Di Niro, Matt Damon and Bill Murray have all been house guests, but by newspaper headlines that Clooney was entertaining his latest love interest Elisabetta Canalis there, much to Kaelene’s disappointment. This story had occupied newspaper headlines for days, but what intrigued us was that the Mayor of Laglio introduced a new regulation last week making it unlawful for anyone to gather in groups of three or more outside the actor’s home. “Gawpers,” The Independent reported, “will face a 19 Euro fine”. Apparently this action been introduced at the request of neighbours rather than Clooney himself, thus not blemishing his reputation as something of a much loved adopted son of the town.

Je ne sais quois
The French have a saying: “Je ne sais quoi”, I know not what, which is employed to convey a particular sense of style rather than for its literal translation. A sort of haughtiness resulting from severe provocation such as, for example, asking a waiter in Montmartre if they speak English - as a travelling companion of Marty’s once did. It happens too that Italians also have a particular form of cool. Aloof, handsome waiters with designer stubble and champagne-company aprons, ties knotted loosely in line with the open top button of their white shirts, and a certain detachment that comes as more of a challenge to customers than an offer of service. But there is something quite appealing about this, and it also probably explains in part why Italians take three hour lunch breaks; they need it.
One guide book advised that the eye of a waiter needs to be caught at least three times before they will offer attention, even for locals, which may explain why many of the shops are closed from 12.15 until 3.15 in the afternoon. We thought it was to allow the owners siesta, but no, it is that it takes that long to get lunch. It is also the habit of many waiting staff to give priority to their regulars leaving casuals to wait whether for service or even to get the bill (“A person they will never see again is not a person but a chore”). This may explain why our lunch breaks have sometimes extended until dinner, but time is ours and it does not seem to matter.
There is something else we have noticed and that is that Italians have the same penchant for tattoos rising from the crevice between their backside cheeks as do the Irish, they just look better. These are not the bogan hot rod flames spreading across the small (or large of their backs as we previously described), but more elegant designs and it has to be noted that Italians have better, darker skin and generally more slender canvasses on which to display this particular art form. Italian women are also distinguished from their Irish counterparts by exhibiting significantly more panache than to have g-string underwear ride up from the back of their jeans. Similarly, never would you see an Italian man dressed in that appalling American rapper-inspired manner of low slung jeans, the baggy seats of which hang around their knees leaving most of their elastic-waisted boxer shorts exposed. Never in Italy would such fashion crimes be committed, although Kaelene has noticed a trend in some young women to have the front of their shorts undone, their hip bones employed as clothes hangers.
That modern sense of fashion style was not on display inland, a car ride up into the hills inland to a small trattoria where such delicacies as wild pig and rabbit were on the menu. This was deliverance country, Italian style, but the food so impeccable that Martin’s rabbit may well have been caught, dressed and cooked between his ordering and it being served. These were good, old-fashioned country people, as were the clientele, clearly locals who wandered in and out as we wiled away the hours.
At the foot of this hill lies the small town of Gravedona, larger than Domaso, but every bit as splendid with its old buildings, narrow streets, and cafes on the waterfront promenade. There is an old palazzo which houses the local council offices and an exhibition of sculpture and paintings we took in. Outside, the palazzo has beautiful grounds complete with buxus hedges (especially to please Kaelene) and, of all things, a kind of tree fern. There are probably more churches and religious monuments of various sorts here than people, but among all this history there was also a modern edge, an international sailing regatta, including boats from Australia, dotting the lake with the fluro-coloured sails of hobie-cats and other small vessels.
But for us, one of the best things about this place may be the gelato, the Italian form of ice cream which is simply beautiful and comes in a variety of flavours, the identities of which we generally have to guess at. There are the chocolate ones, those with nuts, the creamy varieties and the fruits. Then there are those described on one website (Italian Gelato Flavours Uncoded) as the oddballs, including one identified as Viagra, apparently made with herbs rather than the chemical, but which is reputed to have the same effect nevertheless. As for us, limone, a tangy lemon sorbet, is our favourite but it maybe not a lucky one for Ali Moodie who yesterday saw his two-scoop gelato, limone tempered with berry, topple off the cone just moments after the gelataria closed for its owner’s three hour siesta.

Finding George

Italians must be trusting people. Several times we have hung out at cafés and when the time came to pay the proprietor has asked what we had and then prepared the bill. No restaurateur or café bar owner in New Zealand would ever take such an approach, they would be broke within weeks, so in order not to discourage such a practice we have been accurate in our recollection of what we have consumed.
We took refuge at one of those cafes, on the shore of Lake Como during a torrential rainstorm complete with lightning and thunder and resulting in flooding across the roads. We, of course, were dressed for hot summer weather and were towing suitcases and other luggage when the heavens opened, having travelled from Milan to Colico in Northern Italy by train and then on to Domaso by local bus. We waited for a good hour drinking tea and coffee and eating croissants for the rain to subside sufficiently to continue the last 500 metres or so to the apartment we were sharing for a week’s holiday with the Moodies.
Domaso is one of those towns which ribbon out along the lakeshore with houses hundreds of years old rising from the water’s edge and up the steep hills, thinning out to be replaced by terraces of grapevines. It is a holiday region, but predominantly one for Italians as the cities close down in August and the population heads out, in this case, to the more temperate climes of the lake district. In what may seem an unusual concept for New Zealanders, our hotel in Milan closed at midday last Friday for three weeks so the staff could clean up and shut the place down for their own summer holidays. While our hotels are open during the summer break to take advantage of holiday makers, such is not the case here.
It may seem boring that we lavish superlatives on the places we visit, but this is a classic old Italian town. Away from the main road which runs along the lake shore, the streets are cobbled, barely wide enough for a vehicle to pass. Lanes narrow enough only to be walked in single file intersect these streets and rise up the hill, eventually providing commanding views up and down the lake. On each side of the streets and lanes are the old houses usually two or three floors high, including Villa Vinicia at 135 Via Regina where we are staying. This is the 400 year old family home of Sonia the proprietor, a young Italian woman, who has fitted the place out in recent years with modern plumbing, electric skylights and high speed but only sporadically reliable internet while retaining its old world charm with its heavy wooden doors and shuttered windows. She is very proud of the house, rightly so, and in the room which leads to the garden, the ceiling and parts of the wall are adorned with painted frescos which are due soon to be professionally restored. At some stage someone has wallpapered over them which has undoubtedly led to their still being in relatively good condition.
That this is a Catholic country is reinforced every half hour, even throughout the night, when the church bells rings out; loud tolls marking the hour and a supplementary ring of a different tone to note the half hour, and then at 7.00am there is a cacophony of ringing, no doubt to tell the locals it is time to get up and on with the day’s work.
When we told Marty’s mother we were heading to Italy she immediately asked whether we were coming to Lake Como. In something of an interesting twist she revealed that her father was stationed in this part of the world awaiting his return to New Zealand after the end of World War II. Much to the displeasure of his wife, he apparently wanted to bring home a couple of Italian war orphans as souvenirs, a sort of pre-Madonna Malawian exercise. He may have been ahead of his time but, as history reveals, his desire was not fulfilled so, alas, there is no Italian branch to the family.
If it was that Kaelene was determined to track down Roger Federer in Switzerland, there is fresh quarry here further down the lake. Actor George Clooney has a villa at Laglio and lives here at least three months of the year, which could be the reason that we have long walks scheduled every day, or is that several times a day?