Mamma Mia... That's Life!

by Valerie Barona

  “With a bit of luck, it won’t be long before chain stores open then I’ll be able to buy clothes here without spending a fortune and feeling pressurised by assistants wanting to make sure I buy something,” I told Diane as we walked out of the new Iperal supermarket.

  I usually stocked up on clothes when we went to Poole in the summer because we arrived with the sales and always found great bargains. The sheer elation of being able to look freely at the garments without someone cajoling and complimenting on how well the garment fitted me regardless of whether the colour or style suited me, made me almost lightheaded. Not to mention the fact that shops didn’t close for lunch and a siesta and you never saw a sign outside saying: Back soon! There was no denying it, I missed shopping in England.

  13

  Pass-the-Parcel

  “Posso chiederle una cosa?” Alex’s teacher called out to me as I chatted to Elisa during their break-time. I often saw them playing outside when I walked to the butcher’s and usually had a few words with the teachers, too.

  “Certo,” I replied, wondering what she wanted.

  “Lei sarebbe disposta a insegnare ai bambini inglese a scuola?”

  I could hardly believe my ears. Alex’s teacher was asking me if I’d be willing to give English lessons to the children at primary school at Mantello. She explained that if I was interested, the principal had suggested one afternoon a week when I could take two lessons, one after the other. Naturally, I jumped at the chance. Alex wasn’t too keen on the idea when I told everyone over lunch.

  “What do I have to call you if I want to answer a question: Mum or teacher?” He wanted to get things in perspective straightaway.

  “Well, perhaps it would be better if you call me teacher or just nothing.”

  “What if I forget and call you Mummy?” Elisa asked.

  “I expect everyone will laugh,” I smiled at her serious face. “But it really doesn’t matter. If you want to speak, just put your hand up like you usually do at school.”

  Despite their worries, the lessons went well, although several of Alex’s friends remarked that I behaved like a teacher as soon as I walked into the classroom which made me smile. They were used to seeing me as Alex and Elisa’s mum at home, not in teacher mode at school. I chose a text book with lots of games and songs as well as easy exercises, making the lessons as interesting and fun as possible and the children responded enthusiastically. It felt good to be back in the classroom and even though it only lasted a couple of hours, once a week for a few months, I hoped that one day, I’d find myself on the staff of a school once more. For the time being, I had to make do with sporadic English courses and the hope that one day, my teaching certificate would be acknowledged by the Italian educational authorities.

  Alex, who was in the fourth year, didn’t mind his mum standing at the front of the class after all. In fact, if anything, it made him even more Anglo-Italian.

  “Mum, can I have a party like children in England?” he asked, a month before his birthday.

  “I don’t see why not,” I replied, happy to think his English roots didn’t lie forgotten.

  “Can we have jelly and crisps and play games like Musical Chairs and Pass-the-Parcel?”

  “If you want to,” I said, wondering if Gaetana would be willing to give me a hand.

  Elisa celebrated her birthday in England every year with a party in true English style, so it was only fair to let Alex have one, too.

  I always had a few packets of jelly in the cupboard and I also found a trifle hidden away. Alex made invitations for his whole class and came home ecstatic when all the children accepted. His birthday was on a Thursday and as they had afternoon school, we decided to have the party afterwards and Gaetana said she’d be only too happy to help me.

  I spent the morning of Alex’s 10th birthday, making jellies and a trifle.

  “Oh, Mum, it’s going to be the first real English party in Piussogno,” he smiled happily, sitting at the table. “I can’t wait for my friends to come and see how we do it. Is dinner ready? I’m really hungry.”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re not too excited to eat,” I smiled back.

  I drove them to school in the afternoon and then went to fetch Gaetana and Luana. We hung balloons around the house and then wrapped up prizes for Pass-the-parcel. At 4.30pm, the children arrived and after giving the Birthday Boy his presents, they sat round the table and sampled the English desserts I’d prepared. I have to admit to feeling slightly apprehensive as to whether his classmates would like the spread – I needn’t have worried – they scoffed the lot.

  The games proved a novelty, and although the actual task of sitting quietly and passing the parcel until the music stopped was a feat in itself for some children, they managed it.

  “I should have done more parcels,” I whispered to Gaetana.

  “No, I think three are quite enough,” she whispered back.

  The noise level rose as they played Musical Statues – I decided that Musical Chairs might be too dangerous for the more boisterous guests – and then we played Stick-the-tail-on-the-Dog which was a huge success. Nearly two hours later, clutching their Party Bags, I took the children home. Nobody wanted to leave until I recklessly promised them a repeat performance the following year on Alex’s next birthday.

  “Thanks, Mum. It was great!” Alex’s face mirrored his words. I couldn’t have felt happier myself especially as an after-thought he said, “It’s good being Anglo-Italian.”

  Alex’s party was the talk of the village and those surrounding us. Parents stopped me to ask what I’d given them to eat and how to make it. They also wanted to know the games they’d played. Having moved out to the suburb of Piussogno, I was acutely aware of the villagers’ keen interest in everything I did from how I dressed the children and brought them up, to how I’d furnished the house and my own behaviour and not for the first time, I felt proud to be English. I also realised that Alex and Elisa had English blood in them; they both developed a wicked sense of humour and Alex had a flair for telling jokes.

  As they got older, they counted the days to our summer holidays in England and I quietly ignored the fact that perhaps I should also take them on holiday to the Adriatic coast with their paternal grandparents. Alex had his birthday in Italy with his Italian relations and Elisa celebrated hers in the UK with my family – it was quite fair. My sister always made a superb cake with a theme for her niece, whereas Alex had a plain sponge with castor sugar sprinkled over it – I did my best.

  Obviously, Alex and Elisa had more contact with their Italian zii but I loved hearing them talk fondly about my family, too and see them get excited when they knew they were coming to see us or it was time to pack to go to England.

  Alex was just four months old when he flew for the first time to meet my family. His big dark eyes and gummy smile won the heart of whoever looked his way and being held by people he’d only just met made him gurgle and laugh. Elisa had to wait until she was eleven months old before she took to the skies and her first flight wasn’t as quiet as her brother’s. Unfortunately for the passengers aboard, she exercised her lungs in a pitiful wail from take-off to landing. Nothing could distract her and after an hour and a half I began to have some very uncharitable thoughts regarding my daughter. However, I can happily say it proved to be an isolated case and future flights turned out to be normal, quiet ones.

  As soon as school finished, Alex and Elisa said goodbye to family and friends and helped me pack their clothes and favourite toys to take to Nanna’s. The children looked forward to seeing their English relations; their aunts and uncles spoiled them totally and absolutely, taking them for day trips to theme parks or other places of interest at weekends.

  “Mum, can we sleep at Andy and Debbie’s tonight, please?” Alex asked.

  “Please, Mum. We’ll be ever so good, honestly!” Elisa
added.

  On other occasions, they’d ask to spend the weekend with my sister and her family in Fleet.

  “Auntie Diane and Uncle Gordon said we can stay with them if we like.”

  “And we haven’t seen Lindsey and Sean for ages.” They always had an excellent reason for going and I knew they enjoyed playing with their younger cousins. Our English holidays became an annual event. I couldn’t wait for this respite and often felt guilty for the lack of enthusiasm I felt when it was time to go back to Piussogno.

  I found a job at the Anglo-Continental Language School in Bournemouth teaching English to foreign students which gave me the chance to keep up to date with the latest teaching methods and my mum looked after her grandchildren five mornings a week during July and August. Together with my aunt, they often organised a morning out for Alex and Elisa, while I enjoyed the challenges within the classroom and wished I could have found something similar in Italy.

  When I finished my teaching stint, we’d drive down to Cornwall to spend a week at the Carbis Bay Hotel, owned by my uncle. Alex and Elisa had great fun playing with their cousins in the sea and in the outdoor swimming pool, not to mention eating two fried breakfasts in the morning. They also made friends with children holidaying there and one summer they started speaking English with a Geordie accent after meeting two children from Newcastle.

  Michele couldn’t always follow us to England in the summer but my need to ‘go home’ to recharge my batteries over-rode my guilt at leaving him in Piussogno.

  Besides, the Italian climate was far too hot for me during July and August and I didn’t want Michele to see me wither in the heat. No, I much preferred the cooler alternative of an English summer.

  14

  Coffee, Please!

  Chilly November days seemed to arrive unannounced and usually after a particularly frosty night when you wake up in the early hours of the morning, teeth chattering, cold and shivering, wishing you’d had the foresight to get out the winter duvet the day before. Despite my resolution to ‘be prepared’, I never was and it always took a touch of hypothermia to remind me to change the bedding. Busy with the job in hand, the sudden ringing of the phone made me jump.

  “Pronto.”

  “Ciao, sono Emily. Vieni alla festa la settimana prossima?”

  Emily wanted to know whether I’d be going to the annual Foreigners’ get together the following week. This year, we were going to a restaurant at Traona, a village near Piussogno and I arranged to take Emily, my Spanish friend, a Venezuelan and a Mexican.

  Imagine my surprise when the first car I saw in the car park was an English one.

  “Guardate, una macchina inglese!” I felt quite excited. Perhaps I’d meet another English person. I got out of the car in record time and walked quickly into the foyer with my passengers close behind me.

  “Excuse me, but can you tell me who owns the English car in the car park?” I asked the barman without thinking.

  “It’s mine.”

  “What?” I couldn’t believe it.

  “My wife’s English. We’ve just come over with our four daughters.”

  Well, that was it. I forgot about the meal and my friends – I wanted to know more about his wife. Gino gave me their phone number and the next day I rang Julie. We agreed to meet up in Morbegno.

  “How will you recognise each other?” asked Alex after I’d regaled the family with the latest piece of news.

  “We’re English, we won’t have any trouble finding each other.”

  And we didn’t. We met outside the station and walked to the nearest bar, talking nonstop.

  Julie lived with her family in Colorina, a mountain village even smaller than Piussogno, on the way to Sondrio. We couldn’t believe it when we discovered that we’d lived quite near each other in the UK; I was from Poole, she was from Bournemouth – incredible!

  “How come everyone in the village knows what’s going on before it happens?”

  “That’s a good question.” Being a veteran foreigner of thirteen years, it no longer bothered me. “Don’t worry, you’ll soon get used to it,” I assured her.

  “Really?” she didn’t sound convinced.

  “Two hot chocolates, please.” The waitress looked at me blankly.

  “You just ordered in English,” Julie explained, suppressing a laugh while the girl stood waiting impassively, notepad and pen poised to take our order.

  *

  “I need to buy some Sellotape but I haven’t a clue what it is in Italian and I forgot to ask Gino,” Julie said as we walked out of the bar.

  “It’s scotch.”

  “What, like the drink?”

  “Yes.” I hadn’t really thought about it before.

  When we reached the shop, it was closed and there was a sign hanging up: Torno Subito!

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Back Soon! and it also means we’ve got plenty of time for some window shopping before it opens.”

  “Are you saying that shops just close if they have to go to the bank or something? They hang a sign up and customers wait?”

  “Yes, they wait – unless they’re English, of course.” She looked at me to see if I was joking or not.

  “I’ve got a lot to learn, haven’t I?”

  My nod answered her question and we laughed.

  We made a point of meeting up at least once a week for a coffee morning in Morbegno. Her husband, children and menagerie of one dog and five cats, together with my family and a cat, meant there was always something to talk about.

  “Sorry I’m late,” I apologised one morning. “But I ran out of road.”

  “What on earth are you talking about?”

  “The road I always take to the station has been closed off and I hadn’t a clue where the diversion was taking me.”

  She thought I was having just another bad hair day until it happened to her.

  “You’ll never guess, but I was driving back from Sondrio when the road ended. I had to follow the diversion route and what should have been a ten minute drive, took me forty minutes. Honestly.”

  “Coffee?”

  “Definitely.”

  *

  A few weeks later, my mother-in-law, Carla, popped in to see Elisa who was home from school with a nasty cold.

  “Ha la febbre?” she asked.

  “Non lo so,” I realised I hadn’t taken her temperature.

  Carla touched Elisa’s forehead before confirming that she definitely had a temperature.

  “Prendi il termometro,”she told me. I went into the bathroom to get the thermometer and then remembered I’d broken it and hadn’t replaced it.

  “Non c’è l’ho, devo comprarne uno,” I confessed. I wanted to suggest getting a bag of frozen peas but decided to keep quiet. Elisa didn’t get ill very often but when she caught a cold or the flu, she invariably ended up being feverish for a few days. I still had to get used to the fact that every Italian household boasted a mini pharmacy. I usually managed to find an aspirin, disinfectant, and a packet of plasters. I had a feeling of déjà vu as Carla sent me off to the local chemist to buy a brand new thermometer.

  On our next coffee morning, I asked Julie if she had remedies for every ailment in her house.

  “You are joking, aren’t you? If I need anything I go and buy it,” she looked long and hard at me before adding, “I’ve always got a packet of aspirin, a tube of antiseptic cream and plasters.”

  “No thermometer?” I ventured.

  “No, of course not. You can tell if someone has got a temperature or not.”

  Any sense of guilt I may have had, faded away at her words – I smiled and finished my coffee.

  *

  During school holidays, Julie and her family often came over for the day and
while we drank tea in the kitchen, the girls played with Alex and Elisa, running around in the garden or disappearing upstairs to explore the attic.

  “How long do you cook a Bolognese sauce for,” I asked Julie.

  “Why do you want to know that?”

  “Well, most people I’ve spoken to say they cook it for at least two hours sometimes more. My sauce is ready in half an hour.”

  “You really don’t like cooking, do you?”

  “How did you guess?” I grinned. “Actually, I made the cardinal sin of telling some people that I often do other things like washing my hair or putting the washing on the line while I’m cooking. They couldn’t believe I didn’t stay in the kitchen watching everything bubble away until it’s ready to eat.”

  “So, what’s on the menu today then?” she asked.

  “Pasta?”

  15

  Do, Re, Me

  “Hai tempo per un caffè?” Silly question – I always had time for a coffee.

  “Sì, certo.”

  Sure enough, ten minutes later my friend, Patrizia rang the bell and the conversation went like this:

  “Ciao. I’ve been thinking about it a lot and I want to know what you think.”

  “Sì?” I had no idea what she was talking about.

  “Grazie,” she said, gulping her espresso before I’d even sat down.

  “A choir. I want to start a church choir here, in Piussogno. What do you think?”

  “Well, it’s a good idea but how are you going to choose choir members?”

  I couldn’t help thinking of some of the congregation singing flatly to hymns during the Sunday service.

  “That’s not a problem. We’ll have a meeting to discuss it and then choose an evening for choir practice.” Her enthusiasm was almost tangible and we spent the next hour discussing the new project.