Holiday Journal 2011, part 7

The last day we spent in Rome was suffocating.  I had to have my hair cut as my hair, especially at the back of the neck, was always wet because of sweating and humid air.

At the seaside it was all another story.  Our little apartments had air conditioning and the sea breeze was refreshing and dry.  The girls (and the boys) were incredibly well behaved.  They helped immensely by setting the table and washing up in turns and were with Valentina, my autistic daughter, most of the time, especially at the beach.

I haven’t spoken about Valentina’s behaviour till now.  She was unpredictable and unsettled as usual (she ran away a few times, screamed in shops, made herself sick putting a hand in her throat) but we managed to share her problems among seven people.

Being at the beach with her is always hard because she wants to stay in the water all the time (two/three hours or more) with someone to play with.  On past holidays (about nine years of past holidays!) I and my husband used to take turns in this exhausting routine.  Having someone who helped us this time was a massive relief.  We could rest, take a walk, have a chat, just as people usually do on holiday.

Though I couldn’t sunbathe because of a skin cancer, recently removed, (nothing dangerous luckily, it was a non-melanoma kind of skin cancer) and I had to wear a hat and a light dress all the time, I enjoyed the mild warm air, the moderately lively village of Grottammare, where two-storey houses stretch to the shore, ordinary middle class Italian couples pushing a pram and children cycling in the main square.

We had plenty of ice-creams and one night we even sat at a bar and had a gigantic sundae each.  The girls were so impressed by its size that they took photos.  We also rented bicycles and had a long ride on the cycling path which stretched along the coast.  The sea roared nearby against the rocks; the air smelled of pine resin and croissant.

There was rough sea for two days with the red flag flapping on the beach, which meant they advised against having a swim.  But it was too funny to jump into the waves and feel the current dragging you, though it might have been risky if you went too far from the shore.  Needless to say, Valentina went into the water.

In the evening there were markets in the streets of the village and along the coast.  The products ranged from Indian scarves, Asian silver jewels, Italian wines, African batik clothes, toys, to all kinds of t-shirts and shoes, leather items, handicrafts such as crochet, jewels, paintings, bags, cushions and dolls' dresses.  The prices were very reasonable and the alleys were so crammed you could hardly move.  I saw original, pretty things like crochet jewels, handmade clothes for Barbie dolls and beautiful, light, pastel-coloured tunics.

In the nearby town (San Benedetto del Tronto) there were also street artists who performed in the evening.  We thoroughly enjoyed the puppet show by Teodor Borisov, with very complex marionettes that could move even fingers, pick up a cup and write using a brush.  The magic was in the masterful way he moved them, creating characters and stories to colour with your imagination. My favourite piece was Vento (wind): actually three belly dancers made with pieces of wood and white gauze, gracefully moving their lower parts attached with a sort of spring to the rest of the body.

At home, during the hottest hours, we watched cartoons and the news: Libyan rebels, the ups and downs of the Stock Market and London burning.  It was likely that they showed the same building on fire each time, but it worried us, even though we live far from London.  In the newspapers the riots were described at first as an understandable rebellion against the unjust killing of a black man by the police and the consequences of unemployment and cuts on benefits and social supports in the poorest areas of the English capital.  But then it became clear that the revolt was becoming a pretext to break, crash, steal and ‘have fun’, a ‘shopping riot’.  The rioters were described as belonging to all ethnic groups and social classes (except aristocracy, I suppose), most of them very young, pushed by an insane wish to grab whatever they could, destroy, assault, maybe without a clear plan of what to do with the stolen items, only for the sake of it.  It was a way to vent frustration, anger, escape from ordinary life, have real excitement, not the fake one of video games and theme park rides.  It was a way to live a real adventure, as crazy as it may seem: no ideals or political programs behind it.  The political parties condemned it in unison. The rioters were not protagonists, only outcomes of our careless society.

One of the articles I read underlined the fact that bookshops were not looted, an interesting point.  Who cares about books?  Well, maybe it would have been the only place I had gone...if I had had the chance J.

I also went on reading from the short story collections I had with me, including How to breathe underwater by Julie Orringer.  I loved reading short stories because they gave me the time to end, or almost end, one before I had to stop to cook or take care of Valentina, or fall asleep at night exhausted.  I definitely preferred them to a long thick novel, difficult to follow if you are often interrupted as happens to me all the time.  Julie Orringer’s brilliant stories have something creepy, mysterious, unexpected, sometimes hopelessly ruthless, going on in apparently ordinary lives. We need only to have a closer look to find it out.  Awfully entertaining and enjoyable, though.  She is a true story teller.

On 10th August (the traditional night of shooting stars) we scanned the sky but didn’t spot one small shooting star.  No time for wishes and hopes this year.

Visit my website www.carlascaranod.co.uk (sorry it doesn’t work with Firefox), you’ll find out more about my readings and Christmas Fairs.