Now I Know How Charlie Brown's Teacher Felt

Oh blimey, looking down the barrel of another class tomorrow morning and already I can feel a big, huge, 'but do I HAVE to?' welling up in my chest. I started teaching at the boys' Montessori nursery after being asked last year. It seemed like a good idea at the time, even though I knew - from bitter experience over the years - that I absolutely LOATHE teaching. I agreed because it meant that I could contribute pretty much the full cost of the boys' fees to the household income and because I thought it would be nice to get to know the children that my boys are spending their mornings and lunchtimes with.


So, it started off well, with hope and optimism. It has since developed into a grim battle for the most part, with me spending most of my time trying and, on a depressingly regular basis, failing, to control the little buggers. I have two groups of around eight children, aged from 2 - 5 years old. This may not seem much if you don't have experience of small children, but in fact, the huge develpoment that goes on in these years is remarkable. A two year old will barely be speaking their own language, while a five year old is generally writing their own name and takes on a teenager-level of knowledge in comparison. What will hold the attention of the older ones just won't cut it. Mind you, if it lasts more than 5 seconds with the little ones, you've lost their attention.


One of the central tennets of the Montessori method is the prohibition on shouting at the pupils. Believe me, I've tried but I just don't seem how this is possible. Is this the same in the UK? I have nothing to compare it to but these children are just totally undisciplined. They really couldn't care less if I sit and say nothing and just watch them, calmly, hoping that this will make them realise that I have stopped talking and therefore so should they. HA. In fact this seems to be a signal to start having chats with their next door neighbour, play with each other's hair or throw themselves on the floor and pretend to be a wild animal. I've seen it performed by the head-teacher/ owner, and it seems to work a treat for her. Well, it worked really well on the parents at the last parent's evening. So how exactly do I control the kids without shouting? They can't hear me when I am politely asking them to listen rather than chat because they are chatting too loudly. Eventually, I shout. Loudly. Not too often because then of course, it doesn't mean anything, it's just the normal level of discourse. But when I need to, sod Signora Montessori, I bellow that now is the time to be quiet, close mouths and open ears. Seriously, I am repeating the old chestnuts from my own schooling.


Of course, there are some children who you can really tell are getting something great out of the lessons. One girl regularly greets me with 'good morning', always in the right context and with a beaming smile on her face. When they remember something that I know we did a long time ago, those moments are lovely. One particular pupil, one of the oldest, we know personally out of school as we also know his parents. He's a typical spoilt rotten only-child, totally out of control and while he's five years old, he's a sweetie, though the handful he is now needs to be steered in the right direction to avoid any problems in the future. But he's bright as a button. If something catches his attention, and really most new things do catch his attention, he will pick it up so quickly while concentrating and seeming to really enjoy it. If only I could find more of these precious lessons, we would be laughing. And of course, whipping ahead to keep him and others like him interested would invariably mean leaving the younger and slower ones behind.


The interesting thing is that the classes are mostly girls. The school is mostly girls. I have done my bit for the male population but it seems that most of the other mothers were hogging the females. They are just as difficult to occupy but mostly they are a bright bunch. The few boys there are a real range of oddballs though, I have no idea why. One of them is incapable of looking me in the eye most of the time, prefering to look down slightly to the side of my foot, while repeating, loudly and repetitively, 'this isn't fun AT ALL,' to the extent that it becomes a little chant. Which, if I am not careful, catches on quickly with the rest of the class. Another one just sits there with a great beatific smile on his face, fixing my face with his eyes. And does precisely NOTHING. He doesn't speak, rarely joins in and cannot be coaxed to take part in anything. He just grins. I say that, although finally we are getting somewhere and he will let his hand be taken in the 'greeting' beginning of the lesson so progress is being made. After a year... Then there is the four year old who can't speak his own language properly because of shameful over-use of a dummy, who talks only of his grandfather and appears to believe that he is the only child who exists in the class. So just chatters all the way through to me, having a one sided conversation that never ever ever ends. God help me.




So maybe the problem I have is that there aren't enough of the bright, interested ones and far too many of the disruptive, uninterested ones. Sounds like a familiar lament of an old friend of mine who teaches secondary kids in the UK. The trick is in enjoying teaching and not just enjoying getting enthusiastic responses. Ah, now I see why I hate teaching so much...

Clingfilm and Thomas The Tank

Thomas the Tank Engine is wrapped in clingfilm, has been since yesterday. Buzz Lightyear is also wrapped in clingfilm, but that's just a copycat gesture. My eldest gets more eccentric by the day. He's only 4 but I am sure that by the time he reaches puberty he'll either be genius level at whatever subject draws his massive intellect or sat in a dark room reciting only prime numbers and pulling his hair out one by one.

Having children was not on my list of things to do, climb to Machu Picchu, yes (done); see Carnivale in Rio, yes (done); marry an insanely wealthy ex-model with an IQ of 170, yes (still looking). Having children, no. Mum had already been warned not to expect any more grandchildren from her barren eldest child. It was Enrico who convinced me that it would be a good idea and frankly, I was getting towards a certain age and looking forward, the future looked just a bit too much, 'same-old same-old' tending worryingly towards the 'oldest swinger in town'. Not ever for one second expecting it to really happen, we started trying and within one month - Giorgio! Ha! Dig that one out of the back of the net, Trevor!

We were really really not prepared and when he arrived a month early, this strange, baby-spider-monkey-like little beast, we were just utterly unprepared. Enrico manifested this by carrying on going out every weekend and I manifested this by - well, I don't know really. It is just such a crazy thing, having a baby. All of a sudden whole worlds open up you never knew existed while many previous worlds are closed and gone forever - not a bad thing in many cases.

A whole new world of GUILT opened, for example, and is pretty much a constant companion these days, now more familiar and therefore easier to cope with but I remember calling my brother and telling him how guilty I felt for everything, from having a drink of wine to leaving the TV on standby (yikes, all those precious resources wasted). His reply has stayed with me since: 'Welcome to being a parent'. Apparently, it's normal to feel guilty all the time. I sit here - even though it's a Saturday and E's sat next to me watching the news and the boys are playing quite happily in their room - and feel guilty I'm not whipping up an exciting activity to stretch their little minds. Or that I haven't yet started a programme to get Giorgio reading properly. Or that I don't give Edoardo enough time to help him colour inside the lines better. Or that this week I gave them pretzels and Cheesy Wotsits for dinner because I was just sooo tired. I don't like sending them to nursery every day, even though I have a fairly convincing argument why it is a good idea (I would kill the pair of them if I had to be with them all day every day) and hate leaving them there sat on their little tiny-person chairs, dear GOD it feels terrible, and yet it is no doubt better for them in the long run... Logic seldom enters into discussions where parent-guilt is involved...

The older they get, the more fun they are though, and the more they express themselves, the more you realise that you're not doing too badly. Really. All things considered. I am sure there's a good reason for Thomas being wrapped in clingfilm, and the fact that the number 1 has such significance. And that everything has to be blue. All perfectly normal. Nothing to worry about here. Probably. Who am I kidding. Whatever it is, it's all my fault!!!!

Italian Politics.

Last night I was almost literally dragged, kicking and screaming, to a political dinner by my other half. I wasn't so much kicking and screaming but I was moaning and throwing really mean looks at him - I have no interest in English politics, so why on earth should I take an interest in Italian politics? Apart from the obvious theatre of the whole thing, of course - every week gives up a new reason to throw your hands in the air and say, 'SHEESH', but rarely for reasons of politics. Berlusconi is like a one-man vaudeville show. I saw his latest regional candidate in the papers this week who was actually his recent dental nurse following the miniature-Cathedral throwing shenanigans. She was also aged 32 and dressed in a mini-skirt short enough to ensure that the electorate was left in no doubt as to her credentials.

So last nights' do was a fund/ awareness raiser for the centre-right candidate for regional presidency following the, er, stepping down of the last president. This was occasioned by the fact that he was caught in a private apartment taking cocaine with transvestite prostitutes. I mean, SERIOUSLY?!! Fiddling the bird-feeder on the old expenses is just so uninspired compared to this stuff. These boys really know what they are doing. And of course it generally appears to be the boys getting up to this kind of nonsense. With the exception of Mrs Robinson in Northern Ireland apparently feeling it was her destiny to take a much younger lover, there is a real gender inequality in the ability to create sexual scandals. As far as I am aware, there were no whispers of Margaret Thatcher in a gimp mask with rent boys, or Mo Mowlam partying with teenagers, and yet there seems to be an epidemic of men with an inability to keep it in their pants. That's another story for another day however.

So we are on our way to the dinner at a local restaurant and there is some discussion as to why the venue has changed. Apparently, either because the strength of interest in the candidate is so strong or because the dinner is free, there has a been such demand that there are actually two dinners in two different restaurants. We arrive at the restaurant to find it is already two thirds full and to find that E and myself are the youngest there by about twenty years. It appears the younger political activists are actually able to pay for their own dinner. Not to worry, we seat ourselves with E's father and step-mother and a friend of theirs and wait and wait for the candidate to arrive and launch into his spiel. I actually am waiting for the wine which finally arrives and doodling on a picture of the candidate. He really does look quite cute with bunches and no doubt at some point in the future, if he gets elected, there will be photos to prove it.

Meanwhile, the Olds are chatting. It is really something to finally be able to understand the conversations that are going on around me, albeit sketchily at times, but I generally get the gist of most that is said. And I still find it surprising how the men compete in terms of how fit they are well past the age that most English men have given up. I was party to a conversation between two male retirees that sounded more like a pair of schoolgirls - A: 'Well of course, usually in the evening, I eat very little, very little indeed.' B: 'Oh, me too, I only ever have a light dinner'. A: 'Maybe a salad'. B: 'I had just raw fennel for dinner last night!' Hilarious. An English male conversation would probably have been more focused on how many pints were managed and as for that pie...

So the main conversations usually, as always, centred around food, preparation and eating of and the other favourite of old people the world over, who is still alive and who is dead and who is somewhere in between. Spiced up with the occasional gossip as to who is doing what with whom - although the latter conversations now tended towards who's daughter is doing what with who's son.

Finally our candidate arrives and in he bounces surrounded by his team - chaps who fashionably need a shave carrying multimedia equipment. Whatever scale it is on, politics is a funny thing to be involved in. It is basically a constant needy cry of, 'vote for ME! I'm great, I can make you happy, vote for MEEEEE!'. I am assured that this chap is already rich and therefore cannot be in it for the money (has anyone heard of the Billionaire Berlusconi?) so maybe he really is in it because he can see how behind we are here and someone finally needs to solve the transport problem (Public: Woefully inadequate. Private: It doesn't move but when it does get where it wants to go, it parks wherever it damn well pleases) and the infrastructure etc. I just found it odd and interesting to watch him go about his spiel as an outsider with no stake in what he has to say. He was an actor on a stage looking for approbation and I sincerely hope that there is more than his ego involved here as we do seriously need a serious politician who can pull off the modernisation of the region that it desperately needs instead of getting in and handing out jobs for the boys while looking to Caligula for tips on Politician Deportment. We can live in hope but the candidate leaping about calling a roomful of old people 'youngsters' and shoving fistfuls of cards with his face on them, begging us to vote for him? I won't be holding my breath.

What's Wrong with the Big Shop?

First moving to Italy and living for a while in Italy are two very different things and I am sure I am not the only one who keeps saying to friends who have holidayed here that they really should take their house off the market, stop looking at the Italian property pages (which have been translated into very bad English by Google Translate) and have a six month sabbatical here before they take the big leap.

The Italy of holidays is a by definition not the Italy which features in our daily lives. For example, given half a chance and a large supermarket, I will not be going out every day for fresh produce with which to cook lunch and dinner. This seems to be the way it is mostly done here. I am fully able to appreciate the fact that it is great to have Massimo and his lovely fruit and veg just outside my front door, the great norcineria (pig-bits only shop) just round the corner, or the macellaio for other bits of other animals or the the Conad market for all the necessaries in between, all within a couple of kilometres radius. We have thriving local produce shops in Italy which are fabulous sources of seasonal fare, often produced locally if at all possible. People here are fiercely proud of their local specialities, and rightly so.

However. If I am spending all morning sourcing my wonderful local ingredients, who is cleaning my house? Who is ironing the shirts? When am I actually going to get the time to cook the ingredients I have spent all morning running around buying?? I have to get the children at 2pm, so unless I either tie mops to their feet or begin the wildly optimistic task of teaching them to iron at the age of four, I just can't do 'Italian housewife' properly.

So. I maintain my frowned-upon custom of The Big Shop. I go once a week and that is plenty. Massimo is always to hand should I need the odd bit of fresh veg or run out of apples during the week, but my English roots run too deep and life really is too short to spend it stood in queues with retirees complaining about the length of the queue.

Of course, this is a favourite pastime here - I saw a skit a couple of weeks ago on Zelig, a kind of 'Live at the Apollo' programme which is well worth a watch with even moderate Italian comprehension and an understanding partner to provide explanations - where someone was in a post-office, impersonating a funcionary. Another character walks into the post-office, looks around him, and realises that - INCREDIBLY - there is no queue. He strolls up to the functionary and in a disbelieving tone, asks, 'what, no queue????!'. 'No,' comes the answer. The visitor abruptly turns on his heels and heads out of the office, saying 'right, I'll be back later then', which they both acknowledge to be the only possible action.

When you are here on holiday, it's a lovely pastime to go out and look at all the wonderful local produce on sale and bemoan the dominance of Tesco, but in real life, it's a custom for those either whose children are grown up, they themselves are retired or have a Woman Wot Does to Do all the stuff you haven't got time to do because you're too busy working your way around the village picking up that day's menu ingredients. Be prepared for funny looks from the locals when you explain that you do one 'shop' a week. And go anyway. They already have an unspoken list of your strange foreign customs. Just be satisfied you can add another one to the list and leave it at that.

Shut It, Proust, You Don't Know What You're On About.

Still horribly 'holiday hungover' after returning from UK at the beginning of the month. We had such a wonderful time with my brother and his family, some reconnecting with my nieces, lots of shopping... I never expected to miss the UK so much - or to appreciate it so much. I remember travelling round South America only 8 years ago (is that right? Is it eight whole years ago??), I was pretty much hard-pushed to find a good thing to say about it to my fellow travellers. As opposed to the American, who while espousing counter-culture values actually threw a complete hissy-fit one evening because myself and some English friends were sniggering smugly at some very loud, very obnoxious Yanks.

I find so much to love about it now though, all of which comes from seeing it as an outsider, of course. And, if I am honest, it has in large part to do with the Shopping. However, I have totally fallen in love with Lincoln, to my astonishment, considering I practically risked broken limbs in my haste to get away from the place. But now it has changed so much with the opening of the University, it has a great, vibrant feel to it and just feels so safe and clean and middle-class!! I know, not a PC thing to say, but I am now looking at it with a mum's eyes and I would love to bring my kids up there. There are so many lovely large parks, both manicured and left wild, so many facilities for children, real pavements that aren't covered in dog-do, great schools - great FREE schools - and lots and lots of lovely houses with GARDENS!! Oh the joy and bliss of letting the kids play in the garden - even if it was only for a short while cos it was snowy and bitterly cold.

Which of course is the problem. Can't change the weather and it is not the best, let's be honest. Although, again with the benefit of experience - I can now probably safely say that I loathe hot weather and would be quite happy to live the rest of my life in sweaters and boots. (Ugg boots, for which I must surely soon become Spokesperson, such is the vociferousness and depth of my love for my most treasured of possessions. Toastie toastie toes.) The summers here are literally unbearable. 40°c every day for weeks, searing, baking heat that comes at you from all angles and no respite, no let up, till gone October. It is over an hour to the beach but even that is preferable to suffocating in the sweatbox of home. I have been known to take my pillow and sleep on the (only relatively) cooler tiles of the floor in the roiling heat of nighttime. The two foot thick walls absorb the heat of day and ooze it out again of an evening.

And as if that wasn't enough - even if you do manage to survive the nuclear heat outside, the mossies will get ya. Tiger mossies, evil little buggers, striped black and white and with a diamond-hard proboscis capable of penetrating walls that just add to the total misery of it all. Most Romans clear out during August, very little gets done from July really, using the excuse that August will be slow. The summers in the UK are rotten, rainy and gloomy often, I know that - but frankly, I would rather have the rain than be trapped in my home for months because of the fear of losing a layer of skin and getting eaten alive.

Chances of being able to move back there? Slim to non-existent. E is fairly adamant that he could not survive the weather, and he would have a hard time getting a job there (although I think the idea of a little cafe in the Bail is genius) however I think I have the trump card. Schools. Brits - well, OK, mainly just the English - love to complain about the standard in schools today but really, they don't know how lucky they are. Most schools have a playground and playing fields, for a start. Here our local Liceo Classico - which is supposed to be of a high standard for studying the Classics, Latin, Greek etc - is a graffiti covered hovel with half a basketball court sum total of outside space, which apparently is actually there for use by the teachers and most of the kids to have their fags during break time. We have a good friend whose son attended the school and he said he never ever went to the toilet there as they were in such a state. I don't think it's too much to ask that my kids can go for a pee in a clean loo if they need to while at school. And it could be said that it's the quality of the teaching that's important, however I think that the environment must have an impact on both the staff and the kids.

Yeaaahhhh... Holiday hangover showing no signs of abating... I can see I am going to have to bring to bear all my powers of persuasion for this one. And if that fails, there's always emotional blackmail to fall back on.

Stuff Feminism

I have come to the conclusion that actually I am a pretty rubbish feminist. When I want to be, I can get on the highest of horses and expound the arguments with the best of them, however at heart, I realise that actually I am a 1950's housewife manquée.

I was having a chat with Dad while sat in traffic on the way to the Sistine Chapel while him and Mum were over (totally irrelevant, sorry) and we were commenting on the differences in the options that are open to me as opposed to when they were younger. It seemed actually rather lovely in their era - the done thing was to get a bit of a schooling but really this was just biding time until the main event: They left home, got married, had children. If you were a man, you got a job. If you were a woman, you had and then looked after the children. And practically, that was it for the next twenty years, at which point you cashed in your British Telecom shares, made a fortune when the Building Societies privatised, sold your house for an obscene profit and had a great time while you were still young enough to enjoy it.

The point was that it sounded lovely. All their friends were doing the same thing, the kids were all around the same age so could play and grow up together and there was no restless quest for something better because that was your life. I am sure that there are plenty of my friends and peers who would run vomiting and screaming from the room to hear me say this - but I envy that life. I have heard Russians and Romanians lamenting the loss of the State-controlled lives they had - there were no options, and life was so much more certain. Not that I am comparing the pre-feminist woman's lot with Communist Russia, we weren't sent sent to gulags if we didn't fancy popping out a couple of sprogs and knocking up a stew every now and again for supper. Hopefully you get the point I'm making, however.

Now we have so many options and possibilities that the fact that you haven't done anything spectacular or worthy by the age of 40 is just another reason to beat yourself up. With expectations come responsibility and I am not sure my feminist sisters in the '70's actually realised that for someone like me, taking away some options is not really a bad thing. In fact, it is positively beneficial and doesn't leave me feeling like a total failure for not living up to their hopes and dreams. Is it just me? It would suit me to go back to 1950, I have never really achieved anything noteworthy other than bum around having a good time and I think I would suit a pinny. I have seen lots of the world, which I do believe is a good thing, and would not have been thinkable in my parents' day. However, I would have had my children young and have my middle-youth to enjoy my sightseeing, with the added bonus of all the lovely windfall cash in my pocket.


It's a conundrum that has come into focus as part of my Passing Forty Epiphany, and one I am now really too old to do anything about. I can still get the pinny, though. Cath Kidston here I come.

Is There a Doctor in the House?

God, my head is splitting... I've had a stealth build-up of catarrh over the past couple of weeks which left me temporarily deaf in one ear necessitating a visit to the Doctor Disco Twins. Our doctor is an old friend of Enrico (who isn't in Monterotondo, let's face it) who started studying medicine at the same time as him. Unlike him, however, she managed past three years and actually graduated to become a Family Doctor. This is a bit of misnomer as children can't see the family doctor, they have to go straight to the pediatrician. No one-stop-shop health centre here in Italy, of course.


So the Doctor Disco Twins are our family practice - two sisters who seem to think that one clause of the Hippocratic Oath was 'thou must go to work dressed in 1980's disco attire on a daily basis'. Last time I was there, our doctor was dressed in her usual white coat but from underneath peaked her customary black fishnet stockings, finishing off in a fine pair of 5inch black stilettos with a striking gold spike heel. Her hair has it's own post code. Her sister followed her out of the surgery, again in a white doctors' coat but even more strictly adherent than her sister - she had gone the whole hog and was in full-on Studio 54 Bianca Jagger-era, scarlet sequins sparkling in the grim light of the pensioner-packed waiting room. It's flu jab season. Maybe it's a deliberate effort for the old folks, no-one likes needles, and who could think of the injection when you are being dazzled by a million tiny scarlet mirrors??


So I went in with a blocked ear and came out laden to the gills with prescriptions. I was given anti-biotics the size of horse pills; a steroid inhaler for the nebuliser we were guilted into buying for the children ('it's €130, but you're going to quibble about the price over the health of your children???'); a decongestant and something else, not sure what it was for but I am sure it was integral to the therapy. That was over a week ago and I have steadily got worse, to the extent that now the anti-biotics have finished I feel totally run down and am sure I have contracted some kind of yeast infection thanks to the devastating effectiveness of the drugs in killing all bacteria, good and bad, in their path.


The point is that in Italy, you expect to get properly dosed when you go to the doctors. Everyone knows what drugs do what and if you are not instantly running to the nebuliser at the first sign of a sniff, then you clearly don't know what's good for you. It is a nation of hypochondriacs and I frequently have to mentally rein myself in from shouting, ''how are you?' is a greeting, not a question!!', when I get dragged in to yet another discussion about someone's temperature and various symptoms. I never even knew what a good temperature to be was until I came here but now we have two thermometers and I actually have to stop myself constantly checking the kids when they are ill. Therein madness lies.

Enrico is actually a lot better than he used to be. I well remember and will never let him forget when we lived in Spain he had flu which, with the male-chromosome factored in, makes it double pneumonia: Every five minutes - 'I feel terrible. My temperature's going up again. I can't breathe properly. My ribs hurt. When I do this (breathes in deeply) it really hurts.' I could hear him in the bedroom from the lounge - our thermometer made a 'click click click ker-CHING' sound every time it was used. It sounded like he had a slot machine in there. He actually went to emergency because his temperature was 39° and he thought there was something really wrong. They told him to go home and take paracetamol. Ouch.

The funny thing is that most of our Italian friends are also aware of this, and there are many who are trying to fight the tide of antibiotics, in spite of all efforts to the contrary. Our pediatrician is also a qualified homeopath and is unusually laissez-faire - if the kids are generally OK, he will let them leave without a massive prescription, which invariably requires a second mortgage to pay for. I now beg for paracetamol and Calpol when anyone asks what they can bring from abroad for us. The last time I bought generic paracetamol, it cost me €8... The same packet I could buy in ASDA for 15p. Never again.

Efforts to avoid getting a chill are loudly bandied about and not just with one's own children. Taking a child out without a coat after September will earn you a chastisement in the street. A good friend brought her young daughter in balmy October and committed the sin of taking her out without socks. It was 25° at this time. She was practically publicly pilloried as an unfit mother. It takes a village to raise a child - and to make sure they are properly covered up against the elements, it seems. Many is the time I have heard parents shouting to their children - in playgrounds, and my favourite, actually before jumping in a ballpool - 'don't sweat, darling'. I mean. EH?!! A ballpool is specifically designed to make children sweat, and as for commanding a child not to sweat - well, how exactly do they do that?!!!! An Italian friend of ours recounted Springs spent in Sardinia, which never really gets cold anyway, and seeing foreign children enjoying the warm spring sunshine in shorts and t-shirts, 'and there were the Italian children, wrapped up as if for a polar winter.'

I am trying not to get sucked into this over-exaggerated worrying over health but it is hard as you really do start to feel that you are being careless and hard-hearted. In fact, against most of the common colds and flus, I know, logically, there is really nothing I can do but wait it out yet I still find myself nodding when being reliably informed that the nebuliser is the best way forward (by an old lady in the street) and then worrying that I haven't kept the children's necks/ backs/ tummies covered enough while they are out playing. Oo. Hang on. Could it be that Hypochondria is catching too?? Either way I will just have to carry on being the World's Worst Nurse - if I made it through a childhood where I had to be practically dying to be off school, then I am fairly sure my children will make it through too. Enrico, however, I'm not so sure about...