Vampires upstairs

February 20, 2005 · Filed Under Milan - My Zone · 2 Comments

My other half has just shouted ‘basta’ from the bedroom, again. ‘Basta’ means ‘enough’ or in this case ‘cut it out’. Why did she shout this? Were you to blame? Don’t worry, I’ll be getting to the answers to these questions in a little while. First, dear reader, you need to know something about Italian appartments.

Well, as I do believe I have already mentioned elsewhere in this blog, many Italians live in appartment blocks. This means that more often than not you have houses next to you, below you and above you, unless of course you are the happy owner of the penthouse ‘bungalow’.

I have lived in quite a few appartments since I came to the sunny country (not sunny today 4°c and snowing) and I’ve never had any real problems with those who lived under me or next to me, but I have had one or two problems with those residing directly above me. Now, you have to know that Italians harbour no love of carpets. They think they are dirty and, perhaps more to the point, very expensive. Rugs, even large Persian ones seem to be OK though, for some unfathomable reason (I mean often they are almost as big as a wall to wall carpets and so must get as dirty as the wall to wall versions!!??). So, no love of carpets means that other flooring is employed, well two types predominate here, stone or marble tiles and parquet. Another small cause for concern is the fact that the thickness of the ceiling above you and its distance from your overhead neighbours’ floor does not seem to be that great (fire regulations anyone?) and this means that you can hear lots of interesting sounds. Little dogs go pitter patter across the floors above you, ladies wearing high heels go tick-tack over your head, men with nice solid heavy British made leather shoes go clumpety clump as they cross from the kitchen to the kazi. When things fall on the floor, which is fatal for crockery and causes the sudden demise of glasses, I might add, you know about it. The sounds reverberate around your ear drums. Someone above me once dropped what sounded like a whole load of marbles on their nicely tiled floor. You can imagine what that sounded like. Are you getting the picture? Yes. Thought so. But hang on, there is more.

It is a very common Italian custom to ‘restructure’ one’s new appartment before moving in. This process very often involves changing all those horrible old tiles which the previous owner thoughtfully embedded in concrete. I have lived under this refurbishment process a couple of times. Bear in mind that the hammering and thumping can go on for six months or more. It is not a nice thought, and if you live under this racket, I can tell you that you do not spend much time having fond thoughts about those over your head, especially when the workmen are at it at 7am on a Saturday (sometimes Sunday….aaagh!) morning. I really do think that the Italian appartment refurbishment system could be most productively employed as a form of psychological torture.

I’m nearly at the crux of the matter, so I will not regale you with the story of the amorous couple who regularly liked to go for it at around 2am in the morning, over my blasted head. She was probably a werewolf, seeing as she howled so much, I concluded.

Well, the nightmare of the thin floors is upon us again. Our upstairs neighbours seem to love clumping to and fro well into the night across their nicely tiled floors. (Oh, I forgot to mention parquet floors, these are quieter until they get old and start creaking and squeaking.) Not only this but there is this unidentifiable sound which you here all too often. It’s a bit like someone closing the stone lid on a coffin, I suppose, and it is rather annoying. I wonder whether our local vampires have serious stomach problems too, seeing as they appear to need to go to the loo at least twenty five times a night.

After having put up with the repeated endless footsteps over our head and the lack of success of the word ‘basta’, the other half has asked me to go up and enquire as to whether our overhead neighbours are aware of the din which we hear below. However, I feel as though we are in a bad position (literally), because if they decide to be bloody minded, they could really make our lives hell. Must speak to the friendly neighbour who dwells beneath us and kindly puts up with our cement mixer of a washing machine and see if he can tell me something about the undead above us. Rumour, good things rumours, has it that one of the overdwellers likes a bit of a regular tipple - this could explain ‘clump, clump etc….flush….clump, clump, clump etc….’ (repeat times 25). We shall see and I shall post the outcome here, or you may read about something in the papers. Last thing I want to do is create any bad blood between us. I mean, you wouldn’t want to go creating bad blood with a vampire, would you now? It could turn out to be a real pain in the neck. (Cue: Reader groans)

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Tags: Italian

Looking inwards and around

February 20, 2005 · Filed Under My son · 2 Comments

OK, things do seem to be a little bleak at the moment for me, what with baby being ill often and this leading to not enough time to do as much as I would like, but it’s easy to be negative. There are lots of positive things going on in my life and living in Italy is one of them. Another good thing is that I have got my own, albeit very small, company and it is going well and would seem to have a bright future. I always wanted to work for myself and in doing so I have fulfilled an old ambition. Not only that, but I’d always wanted to learn another language and experience living in another country, and these are another Two fulfilled ambitions. I have a job which I like very much, which is more than could be said about my old work back in the UK.

I love technology and I’ve got loads of techy gadgets to play with, so things are not too bad on that front. The woman who I finally hooked up with is very down to earth and keeps me on the straight and narrow, plus she is good fun and it feels good to have her around. Then there is my son, who is wonderful, even if at times he can be a worry. He does provide many magical moments and will continue to do so, I’m sure. So, things are not too bad at all on balance.

Sometimes, it helps to focus on the positive stuff when you are in a bit of a black period, even if this does seem to be difficult at times. Upon reflection, I have not reflected enough.

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Tags: Italy, Me, My son

Marty

February 20, 2005 · Filed Under My son · 1 Comment

Seeing as a reader of this blog, Christian Ventrello, has now become a dad and we had an agreement that if he posted a photo of his new addition, I would do the same, here are some photos of our little one Marty. They were all taken around Christmas 2004. He was having a 'swolleneye' episode around then too.

Marty is quite cute (he is also my clone…or so everyone keeps on telling me, poor little chap!) and good fun too. At this very moment he is getting a little shuteye with his mum.

All the best for the future to Christian, his wife Jamie and Presley.

PS Christian, don't go and start worrying about Presley having problems, most of the other little ones I know of are doing just fine and do not have swollen eyes or other worrying ailments, apart from the odd high temperature and other normal kid's stuff.

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