Words, words, words

There I am, just vacantly tootling along, thinking either about nothing at all or which bottle to open this evening and then a word just zooms along and - bang! - after years of failing to see the etymological link, there it is staring me in my face (faccia in Italian but that one's too obvious). 'To avoid' in Italian is evitare, and then I heard someone on the wireless say "inevitable" - light bulb time! But why don't we have 'evitable'? Well, we do actually but has anyone ever heard it used? I haven't, but it's there in Chambers. And then there's one of my favourites (another that no one uses), 'beaker'. And guess what Italian for glass is? Bicchiere! Bingo, another shaft of illumination that I should have clocked years ago, especially with all the beakers of Sercial I've caned in Gordon's.
Etymology is one of the few interests I managed to acquire at St. Custard's when in an early Latin class, our master 'Plum' Tucker wrote one word on the blackboard:  

peninsula 

 and then asked us how the word came about. We just sat there in our freezing Devonshire classroom, smelling of manure and Horlick's tablets, and then underneath he wrote two Latin words:

paene (almost) + insula (island)

and ecco! revelation. Thanks Plum, against all the odds something stuck.

The Tempting Table

Ah, the ineffable delight of a virgin Italian lunch table about to be deflowered!

Mind the Gap

Yesterday morning I was reminded of the huge, unbridgeable, dizzying, yawning chasm that exists between Anglo-Saxon drinking culture and the Italians' view of booze.
Andrea came for a English conversation lesson as he does every Saturday morning. He is 25, tall, slim and predictably good-looking. His manners are impeccable. He has a degree in engineering and a good job, a nice new car, a very attractive girlfriend who he will almost certainly marry and they will have two gorgeous children and a wonderful, happy, fulfilled life together. All in all he is an extremely nice, decent chap. Obviously I dislike him intensely.
Anyhoo, yesterday the conversation meandered hither and thither and talking about last weekend he happened to mention that he had had gastric flu and, returning from a day out on Sunday, ha vomitato as soon as he got home. "The English verb is vomit, yes? So I vomited?" he inquired pleasantly. "Well, you're right there but we don't use it that much. We tend to say 'I was sick' which is the word we also use for when we are ill. It takes its meaning from the context. Between friends 'though, you would probably say 'I threw up". He was busy writing down this new vocabulary. Very precise is Andrea.
"Of course Andrea, there are many slang references to being sick, the Australians in particular have many funny ways of describing the act of throwing up." "Really?" he asked innocently. "Well, one that was very popular was 'calling God on the big white telephone'. I looked at Andrea, his brow creasing with thought. "Why call God.." he asked, thinking out loud, "...to ask to make you better?" "Not really, it's more when you have had too much too drink and you have to be sick..." and here I got down on my knees and made a circle with my arms around an imaginary lavatory bowl at which his quizzical look deepened, "..ohhhhhhh God", fake retch, "ohhhhhh God", fake retch. 
 I looked up, through my tears of near laughter, at his face, blank with disbelief, as I struggled to stand up, wondering if he would be coming back next week.

Off the Wagon

That's The Intrepid One leaving this morning after 36 hours of virtually solid boozing. The Landy is full of Libyan rocks, sand and Italian wine.

This was one of the smarter bars.




 And this was a serious Barbera that we got stuck in to much later.
Now for some rest I think. Mamma mia.

Nearly there now...

...and just thinking about the first one for Monday evening. Something that kicks in straightaway. A glass of fizz would be fine and there's plenty of that in the cellar. However I am leaning towards the above, shot when the days were warmer. A cracking get-you-up-there drink that washes away a month of penitential suffering. I wonder if The Intrepid One will fancy one too after a month in the desert but he'll probably demur and demand a huge glass of Barbera d'Asti. Plenty of that too.

Only in Italy...

Meet Mike Bongiorno. Mike was the stalwart of Italian television. He was the game show king. He came over from America light years ago, changed his name and got on the box and never really left it. Towards the end of his TV career (he died in harness in 2009) there would be his rheumy face dragging out questions to some old bag at half past three in the afternoon in front of a catatonic audience both in the studio and at home. I can't think of a comparable figure on Blighty television, perhaps Brucie but without the height, hooter, talent and sense of irony. Anyhoo, he fell off his perch at the relatively young age (for an Italian) of 85 and in a display of staggering bad taste of which only the Italians are sometimes capable, he was given a State Funeral, his procession lined with thousands of weeping old biddies and arm-twisted schoolchildren endlessly texting each other for want of something better to do.
In an exquisite twist to the story, yesterday somebody nicked Mike's coffin from the family tomb near Novara up towards Milan. The family are awaiting the ransom request.

31 Days

It's that special month again when the very serious corkscrew is put away in the cutlery drawer and that special pourer gadget that means not a drop of wine is spilt onto the exquisite Irish linen tablecloth is placed reverentially on the gadget shelf.
January is a long, long month dear reader.
Normal service should resume when The Intrepid One pitches up in his Land Rover, fresh from more African Adventures. Predicted arrival date is January 31st.
There are some upsides to this ghastly annual ritual but for the life of me I can't think of one.