APPENINES FROM PORCHIANO DEL MONTE, UMBRIA

Taken on my Nokia unsmart mobile, early February 2013

SNIPPETS FROM ROME

05 February

The Agustinian nuns at Chiesa dei Santi Quattro washing and cleaning out their Peugeot hatchback in the forecourt. In their good habits, not their work ones!

Went to Piazza del Populo in the little electric bus 117. It tore through sidestreets. I walked back along Via del Corso, turned left and found myself at the Spanish Steps. Went into the Keats Museum just to allay a niggling doubt that I may have left my wallet there. I hadn’t. Lots of designer shops in this area, Margaret would have had a ball. Among them familiar ones from everywhere (global capitalism): Bally, Zara, Yamaha, Mango, Dolce & Gabbana. The survivors of ‘one capitalist kills many’ (Marx).

It was damp but mild. A light rain falling intermittently. Dull but lively. I had a tuna and tomato panino and a glass of Chianti outside a cafe named after its street, ‘Cafe Frattina’.

07 February

I’m getting to like the constant sound of the screaming, scavenging seagulls around Villa Irlanda. Sometimes it’s a witch’s cackle, sometimes a hearty but cynical laugh, sometimes a dog barking (or is that an actual dog barking?). I am beginning to rein in towards home and looking forward to it, which is a good sign that I have more or less achieved what I set out to do. May the Lord spare me any serious hiccups during my last few days! 

When I was in Despar today, at the bread counter, an Asian man came in a bought a single bap. It was weighed, put in a paper bag and sealed with a price tag. Cost 15 cent, I think. 

Yesterday afternoon, on my way to the presidential reception in the Irish Embassy, I got off the 75 bus at the junction of Via Fratelli Bonnet and Via G. Carini and went into a bar gastronomia on the corner for a glass of wine and an egg and turkey sandwich. Two young women (around 20 y.o.a) came in, one pimply with lank fair hair, wearing a black hoody with BASS HEAD in white on the back, carrying a shoulder bag and two hula hoops, the other one shorter, in red and black. The first had an Irish accent, spoke English and was clearly also learning Italian words from the other. The Irish lass with the candy-coloured hula hoops ordered a grappa and a Jameson, the other had a grappa. ‘We should get some wine,’ the Irish one said. ‘We can get it in Despar,’ said the other. ‘We should get it in a wine shop,’ said Hula Hoops. Sweet and twenty and determined to get pissed. Going to a party at the nearby American Academy??

On my way home from the embassy, I got a very sweet smile from a girl in a takeaway pizza place in Largo Argentina, and we shared a wordless joke: the way she picked up on her fork the tiniest piece of smoked salmon that had fallen off my pizza slice and put it back on.

11 February

Overheard from the Bore in the Breakfast Room this morning: ‘...Dickie was her cousin. Dickie Plantagenet was her cousin...’ 

IT WAS A LONG NIGHT BACK HOME

07 February

I shook hands with the President of Ireland at the Irish Embassy on the Gianicolo Hill last night. Later he was rushed home to disinfect his hands. No, he was rushed home to be on hand (Oh God) to sign legislation to deal with the IBRC crisis which kept the Dáil up all night. I just heard about this from a Cork woman and her daughter at breakfast here in Villa Irlanda. 

I thought Michael D. looked rather tired and spoke with far less gusto than he’s known for. With hindsight, now, I can see that one of his slips of the tongue was classically Freudian: ‘confusion’ for ‘cohesion’. This drew a laugh from the crowd as the President immediately acknowledged it with some witticism. I wonder how many of the guests at the reception at Villa Spada were aware of Ireland’s parlous state, with IBRC’s €12 billion assets in danger? I know I wasn’t.

One TD summed it up succinctly: ‘This is going to be a long night.’

BUYING A TRAIN TICKET AT TERMINI

01 February

Went to Termini today to get train tickets for Umbria. My initial impression there was that the last thing they want to sell is a train ticket. The station is full of designer shops, restaurants and cafés, and even has a few supermarkets, including a Despar (= Spar). The multinational heavies are actually pushing the real function of the station into the background.

It took me quite a while to find Informazione and longer to find Assistenza Clienti,which is where they sell tickets face-to-face. There are, be it said, a large number of automatic dispensers of train tickets, but unauthorized people come in off the street to help you work these machines if you have difficulties (for a gratuity of course).

At Assistenza Clienti, you have to get a queuing ticket in order to buy a train ticket. I went up to some women standing outside the ticket offices and asked ‘É una fila?’ (‘Is it a queue?’) They looked at me expressionlessly, and I realized that they were oriental and didn’t understand me. Eventually a man pointed me to the dispenser for the tickets that put you in a numerical ‘queue’ for the train ticket desks. It took me a while to figure the whole business out, but I have to admit that for a huge station like Roma Termini, it is an excellent arrangement. You don’t have to form a physical queue, just stand around and wait for your number to come up on a screen, which also gives you the number of the sportello (desk) you should go to. You might even be able to go for a coffee and come back, having gauged approximately how long it could take for your number to come up. 

My number was B416 and the last number in the B category to show on the screen was around 350. (The B category is for Inter City and Regional Trains). It was about an hour before my turn came, but I was able to go out for a smoke and keep my eye on the progress of my number. The process seemed to speed up when three or more people went to the same desk, but they usually took longer than a single person, so the quick advance of the numbers was a bit of an illusion. 

I watched a ticket official chatting to a woman and fumbling to put two tickets into an envelope for her, and thought that this scene would be great if the hero of my new novel was on the run from his Eumenides to catch a train that was leaving in five minutes and was also bursting to go to the toilet!

SOMEWHERE I HAVE NEVER TRAVELLED

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

by e. e. cummings

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond

any experience, your eyes have their silence:

in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,

or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me

though i have closed myself as fingers,

you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens

(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and

my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,

as when the heart of this flower imagines

the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals

the power of your intense fragility: whose texture

compels me with the color of its countries,

rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes

and opens; only something in me understands

the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)

nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

A TOUCH OF SPRING IN JANUARY

23 January

I was sent on a fool’s errand by the receptionist yesterday (I should have phoned the place beforehand): she browsed the net for ticket outlets for Saturday’s Mahler Concert in the Parco della Musica and said there was an outlet in Largo di Torre Argentina, in a large bookshop called Feltrinelli. Off I went de shúil mo chosa past the Colosseum, down to Piazza Venezia, past the Vittoriano monument (nicknamed the typewriter or the wedding cake). I turned dutifully left into Via del Plebiscito and before I knew it I was in Argentina, which was ‘frantic with traffic’ (as The Rough Guide knew).  After a few swivels of the head I saw Feltrinelli’s, crossed the road carefully and went in. I was directed to the ticket office by an uniformed person and was told that tickets for that particular concert were not for sale there, I’d have to get them from the concert hall in Parco della Musica.

Rule One: Never assume that you can get tickets for a particular concert at a general ticket outlet.

Nevertheless, I enjoyed the walk among the imposing monuments, palaces and churches in spring-like sunshine. There was definitely a touch of spring yesterday, with a few showers, the kind of harbinger of better times you also get in Ireland towards the end of January, a transient kind of quickening, an unusual mildness and luminosity. All the same, I took a bus back to the Colosseum, the 87. I have been warned that the buses are just as pickpocket-infested as the Metro. But on this particular trip I was surrounded by solid decent citizens, and one woman helped me to validate my ticket, as I was pushing it into the machine wrong side up. I have validated tickets on Italian buses hundreds of times, but it was an unaccustomed type of machine.

This afternoon, coming back from a solitary pint in Finnegans, an Irish pub off the Via Cavour, after jotting down some lines of a potential poem, I passed the pavement-sleeper with raised knee I had seen earlier by the railings of the public park across the main road from the Colosseum. He was now totally covered by a pink blanket or cloth which had assumed the shape of an egg, as if he had disappeared back into the womb. A few meters further on, a few fresh hawkbit flowers nodded on their green stems inside the railings of a park. These sights, coming one after the other, gave me the strangest inarticulate feeling: a mixture of sadness, joy and an intuition of fate.

MAKING HAY WHILE THE RAIN FALLS

19 January

Motivation on the blink today. A dull morning with damp penetrating cold. In Rome. Did I really need to come here for this? I have put on my long johns. This laptop is getting on my nerves, constantly making unwanted windows appear. I am going out to see the fourth century Church of the Four Saints, pointed out to me by my Roman friend Claudio when he was taking me back to his high-rise home last night for a pleasant few hours of reminiscence and dinner. 

When I am out this morning, I also intend to purchase a corkscrew, and suss out the Shamrock Bar down near the Colosseum, as it has billed TV viewing tomorrow of the match between Munster and Racing Metro, a must-see if at all possible.

Later

The long johns were not a great idea: it seemed quite cold, but I warmed up from walking around, and then I got too warm for comfort. I am glad to say that I achieved all three objectives of my morning walkabout, which is good for my morale. On the other hand, it rained incessantly for the two hours I was out. The rain gave rise to my being frequently assailed by peripatetic street-vendors, droves of them, who were making hay while the sun shines by selling umbrellas. I found them quite annoying, particularly when one of them interrupted me as I was asking directions for the Shamrock Bar. They had the effect of steeling my resolve not to buy an umbrella, which meant that I got rather soaked in the end.

The Chiesa dei Santi Quattro Coronati (to give it its full title) was a gloomy place but of great antiquarian atmosphere, and there were notices at the entrance about the various restorations it underwent since the 300 ADs. The portico was quite bright, but the inside so dull I couldn’t properly see the frescoes behind the altar, many of which seemed to show naked men suffering extremes of torture (it wasn’t waterboarding), and I presume these unfortunates were the four blesséd martyrs. The cupola showed the usual eschatological depiction of the gathering of the saints in heaven with the Trinity represented in the centre.

The centre aisle was covered with majolica-like tiles which I couldn’t properly admire because of the gloom. 

The four saints were martyred in the 300s at the command of the emperor Diocletian, for refusing to worship idols. 

I suspected I’d find a corkscrew in a shop whose fascia proclaimed Ferramenta & More, and indeed there was an entire rack of them just inside the door. The one I bought - a ‘hands-up’ type - cost €6.30.

Off I headed towards the Colosseum, searching for the Shamrock Bar. I like to locate places beforehand, to get the befuddlement over with in advance of the time I want to be there. Sure enough, I found the Via del Colosseo (where the internet map assured me the watering-hole was located) but  the street took an indeterminate unsigned turn sharpish left. Befuddlement ensued and was not assuaged by asking directions from a middle-aged woman (it was at this point I was interrupted in my conversation by an umbrella vendor). The woman did not know where the Shamrock Bar was (probably didn’t know what I was saying and got a bit nervous of me). I was about to turn back up the street, which had now become a downhill cobbled laneway with small cars parked plentifully on either side, when I noticed two flags hanging limply from a building further down. One of the flags was a tricolour which might have been either Irish or Italian, but I soon saw that the building was Hotel Perugia. 

I went further down and was greeted by a young man coming out of an office. ‘Can I help you?’ He had a Dublin accent. He pointed out the Shamrock Bar and told me that one or two of the barmen play rugby for an obscure Roman XV, therefore the bar would be almost certain to show Heineken Cup games. He also told me that the the only ‘real’ Irish pub in Rome was quite near, on Via Cavour: Finnegans. He added that he ran a travel agency, and that if I wanted a tour of the Vatican, he could arrange one, or indeed any other kind of Roman tour that I fancied.

It is now half past twelve, time for lunch. Still raining: I’m afraid I may eventually be compelled to buy an umbrella.

Rome Journal © Copyright Ciaran O'Driscoll 2013