Cooling things down

We had a storm here in Milan and it took the edge of the incredible heat. I was melting, as usual and even started to do my ‘Rambo’ thing of taking the waistband from my bathrobe and wrapping it round my forehead in an attempt to find some way of soaking up the sweat which literally pours from my forehead.

Today I actually managed to get two thirds of my way to work – a twenty minute bus journey – without sweating profusely, which was great, I can tell you. I saw a temperature gauge, many of the chemists/pharmacies here have them incidentally, and it read a ‘mere’ 29 degrees C, at about 8.45 in the morning. That’s quite cool for Milan in summer.

Even now, at around eleven in the evening things are still reasonable, even though I’ve got the fan wafting coolish air over me, which is still necessary.

I slept last night, or so it would seem, seeing that I felt almost human in the morning, which is more than can be said for how I felt when I got up on Wednesday morning. I think that your average zombie would have appeared more alive than I was. This is not good when you have to stand in front of 15 people you have never seen before and give them the impression that you know what you are on about. By about 11.30 or so on Wednesday I was feeling just about sentient, and may even have given this impression, too. I hope.

That’s the thing about teaching, you cannot just hide yourself in an office when you go to work, you have to be there in front of everybody and able to deal with lots of questions and stuff. In my old office job it was quite easy for me to find myself something quiet to do on theoccasionss that I was not feeling 100%, with teaching, this is just not possible. I have to say, though, that experience does seem to help. And I have plenty of that, luckily.

Tomorrow, yet more storms areforecastt and these may help to break the back of the heat for a while, until it, er, gets back up to steam, which does not, alas, take too long.

Grin, (and sweat) and bear it is what I’ll have to try and do, although it’s difficult not to get a bit tetchy sometimes and my other half gets the brunt of it. I’m not sure whether she appreciates just how much of a torture the heat is for me, she grew up here and for her the heat is very much normal. Hell, she doesn’t even sweat.

I’m still not fullu acclimatised, even after all this time. Phooey.

A messy incident

Last night, in the north of Italy, a group of heavily armed police SWAT team types invaded the house of a guy who had decided to shoot at all and sundry as they passed by. Result: 3 dead and nine injured. This guy, or so it turns out had debts of around 360,000 Euros and was worried about losing his house and belongings. No excuse for taking it out on other innocents. The man also had a number of guns and more than enough ammo to keep himself going for some time (over 2000 rounds). However, despite the killing and all the rest, the Italian press has not yet contained any reports demanding that the capacity of private individuals to possess guns be limited in any way. Oh how different it is here from the UK.

Indeed the politicos here have been encouraging self-defence and the courts have been taking a lenient stance with regard to those who shoot others who were trying to rob/assault them. This, for one thing, would make it difficult for a total ban on guns to be introduced here.

What many do not realise is that it is quite easy for people to get hold of guns here and many professionals and shop owners do possess weapons. Defending yourself is not yet considered the wrong thing to do – provided that you don't go too far. As far as I know, the Italian legal system has not found itself full of claims from burglars who have been injured while going about their dishonest business, unlike back in the UK, where the line between criminal and victim seemed to be becoming ever thinner. Under English law, woe betide you if you should actually, and successfully, try to defend yourself. At least here the law seems to be a little bit better weighted in favour of the victim. Unless that is you happen to be from a rich and powerful family, in which case you can pull enough strings to allow you to get away with murder and the victim may not count at all.

Funny old world.

Rape

It’s not nice and is probably one of the worst crimes anyone can commit, next to being a paedophile that is. However, whereas back in the UK stories about such crimes were quite common place, here in the living museum, such events seemed to be few and far between, or at least did not catch the attention of the media, or, which is more likely, just were not reported. While the last scenario is probable, I have to say that I’ve met a number of women from the UK/Ireland/States that have said that they do not really have any fear of walking home alone late at night. I can understand this feeling, OK, so I am a bloke, but even so, I’ve never seen a punch up in a bar here or had any hassle while walking home from the pub, which is something I can’t say about the UK, where two kind gentlemen once decided to break my nose for me. Considerate fellows. Don’t misunderstand me, punch ups and worse do occur here, only not as often as back home and women, rightly or wrongly, seem to feel safer too.

So, having said all of the above, I’ve got to say that the news this evening contained at least three stories about rapes, and those doing the raping were not Italians, but immigrants. Strange. Does this herald a sad downturn in Italian society? Has the media found out that rapes are newsworthy and will thus sell more ad space (yucky, but sadly very likely true)? Or does someone have it in for immigrants and want to use a few rape and pillage stories to get people to take it out on anyone not obviously Italian? The truth is that I don’t really know. But I’m going to keep an eye on things and see what transpires.

Rape is a serious crime and one which should not be trivialised by the media – heightening awareness and encouraging rape victims to report such incidents is, on the other hand, a good thing. We shall see.

The football season is over…….so news is a bit thin on the ground………

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