Terra firma is the place to which all Venetian kids dream of escaping the very minute they're old enough for a Learner Driver permit. You can see them down in the square, aged three, careening round Mirko's fruit stall on their trainer wheels and longing for a little more acceleration. It all goes bad, of course. Every Sunday morning the roads of the Veneto are stained with young Venetian blood. To the usual dangerous cocktail of alcohol and testosterone they add the tragic Venetian ingredient of zero road sense.
Most foreigners who've chosen to live here represent the other side of the coin: a loathing of cars, highways, gas stations, you name it. We lived here a full year before we ventured onto terra firma, driven to Marostica to see the biennial human chess game by a friend who thought we really should get out more. What a very big deal that felt. How we flinched and cowered as he gunned his car into the melee.

Now we think nothing of it. We're out there all the time, buying timber and power tools and all those other items you can't get in Venice. And we go to visit my mother who now lives in an unremarkable little Italian town no-one ever heard of. A town where you can always find a parking space. Where shopkeepers greet you with sincerity and curiosity instead of that Venetian subtext of 'Come in, O foreign sucker, and let me see how much I can shake out of your billfold today.' A town where you can get a blow-out lunch for 12 Euro. That's 15 bucks to you, dudes. Linen table napkins and everything.

In Venice these days one is aware of a simmering scorn for America, not least by many self-loathing expats. But on terra firma memories are not so short. The liberation of Italy cost America 18,000 casualties and at Caposile they haven't forgotten. They've kept, out of gratitude and affection, the pontoon bridge built by American sappers in 1944. We drove over it yesterday. So two cheers for terra firma.
I'd give them three if they'd only stop tail-gating at 90mph.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Monday night we had our annual House Blessing. Fr. Policarpo is a man who doesn't hold with diaries so the only way to do this is ask him the day before. Then you discover that most of your friends will be out of town. Because of this, last year we managed to talk ourselves into such a negative frame of mind we were convinced no-one would come. Howard and Laurie No Friends. The arrival of three priests and a hungry multitude of biblical proportions really put my kitchen store cupboard to the test.
'An English speciality?' they asked, snarfing down a lightly-curried pasta and artichoke salad.
Erm... yes... a desperate English speciality.

This year I was prepared. This year we had a 2-priester plus deacon, so our house was truly and comprehensively blessed, and my own catering was supplemented by an emetically sweet cake that had been courier'd in from Thessalonika that morning. Tsoureki with extra thick white chocolate frosting. How those Greeks fell upon it. I managed only a thin slice and believe me, when it comes to cake I am no sissy.

There's something about house blessings that seems to attract the comical. It must be the intersecting of the mundane with the transcendant that the Orthodox handle so well. The last year we lived in England our house was blessed by a visiting Russian bishop. He was a very wide bishop and ours was a very narrow house, one of those early Victorian mid-terraces in which two rooms are piled on two rooms are piled on two more rooms.
He surged up the first staircase like a vodka-fuelled Zeppelin, sloshing holy water left and right, and we and our friends followed him in procession, as is the custom. The problem was, what to do when he reached the top.
This was not a man built for tight turns. The only solution was for us all to come down backwards. The last shall be first, just like our Lord said.
I could very easily have given way to hysterical laughter. I felt it rising in my throat. Fortunately there's nothing quite like the sight of 200 lbs of prime kasha-fed bishop hovering above you, groping for his next reverse foothold, to restore sobriety. It could have been a front-page disaster. FALLING BISHOP SQUASHES SIX

On a completely different note, my genealogy find of the week has been to learn that I have an ancestor named Morgan Morgans. This has given me more pleasure than I can explain.

Posted by Laurie Graham at 03:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

What can I say... Our little show opened to a full house and closed with rave reviews. Three days of rehearsal hell followed by 48 hours of footlight glow. Those pesky egos were brought under control, the sets didn't collapse and everyone was fabulous, daahlings. F-A-B-U-L-O-U-S. Mwaah mwaah.
But I'm never doing it again. Writing, directing and producing, that is. There are a thousand other fun ways to shorten one's life. I could, for instance, eat frittelle every day. 24 days till Carnevale and frittelle are in the pastry shops already. Some filled with zabaglione, some merely studded with raisins and pine nuts. Deep-fried sugar-dredged gobbets of yummitude, each one fast-tracking to the waistline, via the coronary arteries.

Now I have my life back and all that energy to spare, spring-cleaning seems to be the order of the day. Gonna tidy that show right outta my hair. Anyway, we have to create space to store the goose costume. Unless anyone.... No, the idea is too preposterous.
So Mr F is in the attic - no joyride that. The headroom is only 5 feet and Mr F is 5'10".
He did find a forgotten Basque beret in one of the boxes and that has saved his head from a few bruises, but every few minutes I hear, '!**!' followed by a weary, 'Do we really need this?'

I told him, junk the lot of it. Whatever it is, if I haven't used it in seven years I'm not going to miss it when it's lining a landfill. Apart, that is, from my castanets, my childhood Teddy bear and two pairs of high heels I'm going to fit into again any day now. Am I ruthless, or what?

Posted by Laurie Graham at 08:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

My final trawl for theatrical props took me to Soppelsa's store in Cannaregio, way off my usual track. The topography of Venice makes us very parochial. Some weeks I hardly set foot outside our parish, let alone outside our sestier and Cannaregio feels like another planet. It had to be done though. I needed the biggest bra in the world. Signora Soppelsa loves a challenge. She whacked a 46C cup on the counter and defied me to find anything to top it. Or fill it. She had it in black or flesh. Decisions, decisions. I went for the black. The guy who has to wear it wasn't available for a conference call.

Then I had to get back to San Marco before the paint shop closed for lunch. I realised I've developed a special internal GPS for dealing with Venice's peculiarities. You think, 'Well I'll buy fish for dinner, take the traghetto across to S. Sofia, check the street market for T shirts, then get the gold paint ' and you hear, 'ERROR! ERROR! GOLD PAINT STORE CLOSES AT 12.59. RE-COMPUTE! ' You do it on the move, zigzagging down alleys and across bridges while your plans morph and reform. There's always something you forgot to factor in. Like the T shirt stall isn't there Tuesdays when there's a J in the month.

My rethink took me to the foot of the Rialto bridge where I witnessed a fight between a bull terrier and a mastiff.
I know if I say anything about these animals from hell I'll be swamped with hate mail from people whose rottweiler has a mouth of velvet, a creature they would trust beside the cradle of their new-born child, etc. etc. What can you do? Why would anyone want to live with an animal whose raison d'etre is ripping out guts? Beats me.
Anyhoo, the reason I mention the dog fight is, I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often, particularly at this time of year when Venetian dogs have good reason to be testy. You should see the winter coats some of them are made to wear. Nylon ocelot. Red neoprene. Black Watch tartan. The handknits are the worst though. Ohmygod. I'm not a pooch lover but even I wouldn't do that to a dog. And how do you thread their back legs into the holes? Talk about living dangerously.

Dress rehearsal this afternoon. Our ragged little show is shaping up and we're even going to make the local press.
Judy Garland? Mickey Rooney? Pah!

Posted by Laurie Graham at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Nine days to go to Opening Night and I'm picking up a bit of primadonna-ish behaviour on my radar. A cast member informs me she hasn't done anything about learning her lines or making a costume. Too busy. She has a living to earn, don't I realise? Right. How easily one forgets the pressures on ordinary little people. Personally I'm just stretched out on the chaise longue waiting for Mr F to peel me a grape.
Am I tense? AM I TENSE? Actually I'm pretty cool. Not only do we have ourselves a new goose, she comes with a clean... er... bill of health and a good attitude. Elaine Eliah is recently back from Iraq. I guess dancing in a 6 foot goose costume is going to be a piece of cake after Baghdad.
We also have two high class fairies flying in Sunday, pointy shoes and all. 'Pack your bag yourself sir?'
Next week is going to be hell for my mother. As Chief Ironer and Assistant Wardrobe Mistress she's going to witness every gruesome amateur dramatics moment.
The golden rule by which she raised me was Thou Shalt Not Show Off and I've defied her every inch of the way. Non-essential public speaking, belly dancing, Lord Byron impersonations in a back alley of Venice, again and again my shameless exhibitionism comes back to haunt her. Serves her right. If she'd only let me go to tap dancing classes in 1957 I'd have gotten this out of my system by now.
Another cast member calls to ask what she should bring to the after-show party. Now that's the kind of forward planning I love. Pigs in blankets. Bring 'em on!

Posted by Laurie Graham at 04:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)