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.