bitful

Ciao from sunny wind-swept and pissing down with rain (once again) North-East Italy.

Landed ten minutes early after a pretty smooth flight, the highlight of which was having to eat our lovely Pret salads with our fingers, having wrongly expected the till guys at the airport (one to pick up our items, say the name out loud and bag them, one to operate the till) to slip cutlery into our takeaway bag. Ryanair flight attendants met our polite request for a plastic fork with an unsympathetic "Qué". Having paid 24 pounds each for our return flights, including tax, we decided it was not worth making a scene about it - unlike our fellow Italian passenger with ridiculous camouflage-print wraparound sunglasses, who threatened to take his custom elsewhere (all ten pounds of it) when told to join the queue like the rest of us.

Got one Euro twenty-five off our cab fare because the taxi driver did not have change for a ten Euro note. What is it about Italy that they always seem to be short of change? Do they bury sackfuls of coins in the garden for a rainy day? It used to be the same with Liras.

Dropped our luggage, put our smuggled 30 Tesco's Pork and Granny Smith Apple Sausages and 4 cheesecakes in the fridge, picked up the car and drove to see mother, who told us that a few days ago a landing plane and a servicing truck crashed at the very same airport. Dr B. quickly learned the superstitious habit of touching one's privates when hearing something like that. He misunderstood and touched mine though. In front of mother. Tried to dismiss it as a peculiar British tradition. Not sure he pulled it off (wink wink nudge nudge).

Drove to a new shopping centre, where I almost had a fit when, although patiently queuing up in a very civilised manner, had to watch three people being served before us because a) they were bearing news of the shop assistant's bed-ridden auntie, b) they crashed the queue (OK, when I say queue I actually mean "myself stubbornly insisting in exporting a British custom abroad and being ignored"), and c) the guy claimed had been assigned number 93, but had thrown the ticket away. Yeah, right.

Went for dinner with friends in their lovely new home, and Dr B. learned a new Italian word that he'd like to share with you:

Frocissima f., noun. Of effeminate individual of the homosexual orientation. From frocio (queer, and just like queer can only be used without being offensive if you are queer yourself), turned into the non-existing feminine version frocia, to which the feminine version of superlative ending -issima is added. Entirely made up on the spot, but highly descriptive for a bunch of guys who so obviously play for our team that we saw on our way here. ÜberMegaQueerette.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 25th, 2004 at 9:56 am and last modified on October 14th, 2007 at 6:30 am, and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.