escape from the smoke

Time to go to my mountain lair

2009-01-13T07:14:00.001-08:00

In the last couple of days I've learned that in Milan a Cuba Libre is an entire bottle of Bacardi in a glass, a lime and 2ml of Coke. Nice.

I've learned that in Milan no one looks where they are walking.

I've also found out that a three Euro umbrella lasts about as long as a cigarette. When it rains I could easily be on about twenty umbrellas a day.

But, fun as it has been, it's time to throw my shit into the passenger seat of the MG and head into the mountains to my new home.

I'm massively excited and a bit worried at the same time. The road to the village (the name of which which I'm keeping secret to keep ex-wives and bailiffs from knocking on my door) is up a mountain track with a 500 foot drop on one side and Italians driving in the other direction.

The MG is rear wheel drive and a bit skittish on ice. It's also got almost no abilities as a hang glider, so if I do screw up there is going to be a yard sale of my possessions and most of my organs in the river at the bottom of the pass.

I'm also nervous about the house. It's water tight, it's got a wood stove, but other than that everything needs ripping out and rebuilding. It's a big task for a guy who has spent his life sitting at a desk answering the phone and talking BS for a living.

I was going to write some more, but have decided to go hunt for a dictionary instead. I've just realised I don't know the Italian word for wheel barrow! Shit.

Girls Called Natasha

2009-01-12T03:08:00.000-08:00

I've never dated a girl called Natasha, but think it would probably be brilliant.

Obviously, she's be mysterious and drink too much vodka and for no reason at all she'd throw crockery and furniture - and I strongly suspect she'd smoke like a chimney. Nice.

I want to date a girl called Natasha because I'm just sick of London girls - I'm sick of girls who always know the name of the new trendiest club, I'm sick of girls who care about global warming, I'm sick of girls who have opinions about wine, I'm very sick of girls who slag off men all the fucking time, of girls who think world music is massively important and of girls who genuinely believe the arts are more important than the sciences.

London girls are rubbish. London girls are boring. London girls need bloody therapy.

Natasha, she'd be different - mostly because she doesn't exist and therefore manages to avoid being a git.

These days every girl in London doesn't just think, she knows absolutely that she's smarter than any man she'll ever meet, that she's more emotionally intuitive than any man she'll ever meet, that she's more in touch with her feelings than any man she'll ever meet. Girls in London hate the men they date and hate the men they marry, they despise them. And they never stop punishing you for being so crap.

So, once the house is fixed up I'm looking for a girl called Natasha - she has to smoke like a chimney, wear jeans and a fur hat, hate baby seals and love dogs (not literally, for obvious reasons).

I'm so ready to get into the mountains, you can't believe it. Just anything to escape the psychic stench of London and the twats who thnk they're cool because they live there.

Death and New Life

2009-01-10T02:48:00.000-08:00

Since my uncle died, I am the last living member of my family, and I'm sterile. So evolution has pretty much given up on this DNA experiment and from now on the human race will have to move on without us.

Sophie, my bastard ex-wife, found the ticking of her biological clock louder than her feelings for me and took her fertile womb to somewhere in Florida last year. Apparently the sperm count is higher there, something to do with the heat and all the Cuban food. Understandable, I guess. When she left I was both sterile and skint.

Then my reclusive uncle died and I found myself totally single and with more money than I'd ever had in my entire life. And it's these two forces, heartbreak and death that brought me to Italy to find a new life. Almost all of my mates reckon I'm running away from life, but most of them spend all of their time complaining about how shit their lives are and worrying about the credit crunch.

Then there is England. Or rather then there is London. A great city, until they imposed the smoking ban. I can remember when smoking used to be fun. A packet of Malboro, a Zippo and a pint of Guinness in a warm London pub made life worthwhile, but all of that is gone and now all that is left is huddling outside of pubs in the cold and wet whilst stuck up non-smoking pedestrians make coughing sounds as they walk by. Wankers.

They've got the same smoking ban in Italy, but there are a few differences. For one thing most of the year it is a positive bloody pleasure to sit outside at a cafe, drink good coffee and puff away on a few ciggies. On top of that everyone in Italy smokes and they don't wave their arms about or throw a hissy fit when you light up. Bliss.

So it's odd. Some people, like my ex-wife, leave their homeland to make babies, some people travel to find work and me, I've fled dear old England because it hates people who smoke. But let's face it, I'm single and sterile, so what does it matter how I kill myself.

And on on that thought I think it's time to visit the balcony so I can watch Italian drivers trying to kill each other with cars, whilst I do the same by filling an ashtray.

Snow Bears and Waiting

2009-01-09T05:27:00.000-08:00

From Milan 09 The adventure starts

I'm still stranded in Milan in my mate's flat. I can think of worse things in life that could happen to me and there are a couple of ultra cool things. The snow is very pretty and I've been out making snow bears. It's like a snowman, but with cute ears.

From Milan 09 The adventure starts

The other thing is because I don't speak Italian I've spent nearly a week now without having my ears polluted by other people's conversations. It's great. Ignorance really is bliss.

Tiny Snowmen Make Me Cry

2009-01-08T06:39:00.000-08:00

This tiny little snowman almost had me in tears this afternoon. Partly because of how cute it was, perched on its park bench, but mainly because the tiredness of the 1,200 drive from Shoreditch to Northern Italy has finally caught up with me. It's stranded me on the wrong side of vulnerable, which is fun. Like being stoned, but cheaper. As I strolled idly through Parco Lambro, chain smoking Malboro Lights from inside the hood of my Parka, the heady mixture of exhaustion and the culture shock strangeness of a new country/city/language turned the emotional volume up on everything. Thank goodness I didn't see any puppies or kittens!

Don't get me wrong, the drive down was beautiful and epic... but, if I'd had any sense at all I would have spread it over two days, instead of getting all Jeremy Clarkson about it and hammering through France, Switzerland and the Italian Lakes in one mad day of driving. An experience heightened by the fact that I had with me all of my worldly goods. Yeap, after all those years of boring people at dinner parties rigid about downsizing, I had now set off for my new life in Italy with nothing more in the way of possessions than could be stuffed into the MG.

However, coming here to Milan first was a good idea and I'm so incredibly grateful that my good mate and fellow media hobo "Clive - aka Lagos Mondeo" offered me the lone of his Milan gaff, whilst he and his perky girlfriend research some weird documentary about bat farming somewhere in Eastern Europe. He told me I'd need an Italian base-camp to adjust to the changes before hacking out to my new, and as yet to be restored, home in the mountains... he wasn't wrong.

Oh, my first tip for anyone thinking of coming to live in Italy... learn all the Italian numbers before you arrive. Made a tit of myself in three shops and a bar today.

Bangers, Snow and a New Year in Milan

2009-01-08T06:36:00.000-08:00

New Year's Eve in Milan, it's midnight and people run through the streets setting off fireworks to celebrate the New Year. The city sounds the way I imagine Beirut used to; bangers and fire crackers ringing like distant gunfire. Actually not so distant, as it turns out, as the people in the apartment above this one are throwing lit fireworks off their balcony onto the road below.
When I lived in London this kind of behaviour would mean bother with curtain twitching neighbours and ultimately the Police, but not here. Here the motorists just weave a determined slalom between the Roman Candles and Jupiter fountains which are illuminating the middle of the road.
Despite the fact I was dog tired from the drive, I spent the hours between midnight (Italian time) and 2am leaning on the rail of the balcony watching the chaos and the slow flurries of Alpine snow.
The New Year is always a time for reflection on the past and new starts... the sheer unexpected weirdness of tonight's celebration really has driven home what this year is all about. I still haven't completely come to terms with the fact that I'm here... abroad, and more importantly that this isn't another holiday, this is it, this country is now my home and even something as simple as New Year's eve is now strange and unfamiliar.