Welcome To The Pleasuredome

Another crazy week in the wacky world of Covid-19. The Ministry of Misery decided that way too many people were having fun and yanked the air bridge to France, ordering 500,000 people home by 4am on Saturday if they don’t want to quarantine. 4am, you ask? Why 4am? Hell, why not? When you’re making it all up as you go along, you may as well have some fun. I like it; next time it’ll be 3.15pm and 30 seconds. Cue hysterical stories about 160,000 people and their planes, trains and automobiles sagas. First of all, 160,000 journeys from France in 2 days? I should coco. That figure is completely made up; I’ve just been on holiday. I know how few and far between the flights and trains and ferries are. Secondly, the headlines are wrong, even allowing for the fictional numbers. They should really say ‘340,000 people tell the government to do one, maintaining that “we gotta fight for our right, to partaaaay!”‘

If the government is so keen to get the economy running, they could start by removing the gazillion banners in London and probably in other cities which still say ‘Stay Home, Save Lives’, and replace them them with neon banners saying ‘Go to Work! Save your livelihood!’ In other news, the churches are finally open. Yaaay, or not. You have to book an appointment to go and worship, you’ve got to wear a mask, leave your details for ‘test and trace’ and my particular favourite, no singing. Well, who could pass that up? Obvs, I went to sleep and woke up in China. You are allowed to speak the hymns to one another 🙂 What’s the big deal? Imagine yourself at a Led Zep concert, all of you sitting 3 spaces apart, masks on, with the band speaking ‘Stairway to Heaven’ to you. Or my favourite, I imagine being at a Prince concert with all of us saying ‘Let’s go crazy’ to each other:

Dearly beloved
We are gathered here today
To get through this thing called life

Electric word life
It means forever and that’s a mighty long time
But I’m here to tell you
There’s something else
The after world

A world of never ending happiness
You can always see the sun, day or night

So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills
You know the one, Dr. Everything’ll Be Alright
Instead of asking him how much of your time is left
Ask him how much of your mind, baby

‘Cause in this life
Things are much harder than in the after world
In this life
You’re on your own

And if the elevator tries to bring you down
Go crazy, punch a higher floor

It’s even funnier if you say the words in a cut-glass accent. Ridunkulous. Here’s the lunatic genius himself in action so you can see what I mean. Love that whole 80s vibe plus he’s wearing more make-up than she is. I can do without the guy flashing the devil horns but Prince sure can play the geeetarr :

So, will I be going to church anytime soon with my government approval clutched in my little hand? Hell, no. What with the pope deciding that he’s no longer the Vicar of Christ, and the CofE doffing its cap and saying “Yes, bawse. Anything you say, bawse” to the government, I guess it’s just me and my God, nearer to thee and all. I’m currently reading Ezekiel, and no, it’s not a laugh riot but the theme in the Bible is: The word of the Lord came to Ezekiel, or Daniel or Jonah etc etc. I can’t remember the last time I heard any vicar/bishop/whatever say the word of the Lord came to him or her. The word of the Lord came to Justin, and He said, get thee a tape measure and measure out distances of 2 metres apart. Sanitise thine hands, and on no account let there be any praise worship in my house, lest I strike thee with a deadly virus that has a 99.7% survival rate, a plague so deadly that you can only know you have it when you take a coronavirus test, a.k.a a common-cold test. Because I’ve noticed that we are no longer taking Covid-19 tests but Coronavirus tests. Yep, you’ll test positive if you’ve had the common cold. Talk about through the looking glass. Yet Jesus shall build His church, and the gates of hell will not prevail against it.

If you’re of a mind to go on holiday, go to sunny Firenze. They’ll never pull the air bridge to Italy: that’s where all their posh pals go so you’re safe. Go to Florence, stay at The Hotel Laurus al Duomo which is great although I can’t make up my mind as to whether my room was haunted or not, but that’s a story for another day. While you’re there, go to Il Granaio which is just off the Piazza della Repubblica where I had excellent Carpaccio Bresaola con arugula e grana padano and Filetto di manzo lardellato alle erbe mediterrane with a vat of spinach. That beef was so tender, I could actually cut it with a spoon. The owners are amazing, Silvia immediately went online to order a facial oil as soon as she found out what I did which was very flattering 🙂 , and her hubby helped me pick my wine after a little wine-tasting session, not to mention the free glass of barrel-aged grappa after dinner. I’m sending Sylvia the facial oil as a gift. AlaraApothecary: we will supply oil for grappa 🙂

Centre of deliciousness (yes, that is definitely a word)

I coud talk about the new safe sex guidelines regarding wearing a mask which made me laugh like a drain (I thought people paid good money for that sort of thing already….) but maybe not. (‘Oh Bob! Bob!! I love you. Hang on, your mask has slipped. HEY! You’re not Bob!’ ‘Angela, is that you, babes?’), or the new guidelines for CPR that tell you to put a towel over the face of your resus patient (my advice, don’t go into cardiac arrest anytime soon) Instead I leave you with this excellent video that I took in the Piazza della Repubblica, showing real people having a real life and an actually funny mime artist. Apropos nothing, I have found that the walk from the Duomo to P.de.Repubblica is always entertaining; during this short visit alone, there was the selfie-stick seller who always yelled out “Hey, Beyonce” every time he saw me, to our mutual amusement. In the end I started dodging behind the Baptistry if the area was crowded. Then there was the Romeo who asked me to have a little drink with him. When I told him I was married, he said, “No problem, it doesn’t bother me” which I admit made me laugh. You gotta admire his chutzpah. If I wasn’t afraid that I’d end up chained to a wall in an underground laundry washing out ‘single-use’ face masks, I would have been tempted, he was so funny. Then there was Samuel from Senegal who gave me a leather bracelet and refused to take payment for it although I made him swap it for an el-cheapo coloured-thread one. La dolce vita.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mxq4sNuzn32PNcw12vWb_MRPtTUx-erH/view?usp=sharing

/by

An Italian Odyssey

Did you know that according to the Jewish calendar this year is 5780, which starts of the decade of ‘Peh’, the mouth. Last year ended the decade of ‘Ayin’, the eye. Interesting, no? Considering that we are all being told to be good little girls and boys and cover our mouths. I guess we had ‘see no evil’ and now we are at ‘speak no evil’ Only now, you can substitute truth for evil. AlaraApothecary: we help you win trivia quizzes. The spiritual premise here is that whatever you speak influences how things turn out for you. As it says in Proverbs 18:21, “Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruits.” so be careful what you profess into your life and that of others. In Matt 12:37 Jesus says, “For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.” Eek. Don’t really fancy judgement day much. Afterall, the Bible says God brought the world into being by speaking, “Let there be light, and there was light“, that’s how powerful the right words by the right person can be. At the annunciation, “Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word” Jesus is actually often referred to as The Logos, The Word. Sorry, I’m an etymology-nerd, what can I say?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Jm7MnqeM22Jjmerj77PV-AF02cxR5axC/view?usp=sharing

I’m in sunny Firenze for a much longed-for break. As you can see from the video, to paraphrase the old but memorable Foster lager ad, Italians don’t give a 4X for Covid masking. Despite the daily catastrophe reportage in the UK about the severe Italian lockdown and the way they are dropping like flies, the reality is very different. I did meet the obligatory mask nazi at the airport but her outrage was much tempered by the fact that the colleague sitting next to her was wearing her mask around her neck 🙂

The beautiful Arno in all its glory

So, what’s happening here in Florence? Well, we all put a mask on when entering a shop and immediately take it off when exiting. Outside the shops, those who feel vulnerable wear one. The vast majority, non. Social distancing? Come on, this is Italy, probably the most tactile nation in the world. Contact tracing apps, leaving all your details, a DNA sample and a full copy of your genome sequence? Non. Everyone gives strangers room but there are no morons jumping into the path of oncoming traffic because you are approaching them on a pavement. It is crazy hot, and all you can see is people pulling down their mask to breathe for a while and then pulling it up, vaguely round the nose. Most stores don’t give a damn about how secure that mask is and quite often people genuinely forget to pull them back up. A quick question: which shops are busy with sales – those with a securiy guard who may or may not police masking such as the department stores, or the little shops without a guard and a salesperson who is more concerned about dying from starvation if their business fails before they die from Covid? I actually timed myself – I can tolerate a max of 3 minutes behind a mask before I start sweating profusely and look as if I’m spiking the mother of all fevers. Not a good look re: covid’s many, many symptoms 🙂 I have spent very little money in those shops, let’s put it that way. I’m spending all my money on food instead. The Osso Buco a la Fiorentina at La Cantinetta was amazing. I didn’t want to wait 25 minutes while they cooked the rice so I had it with grilled vegetables instead.

Fabulous food and a river of wine

As for the whole quarantine of goods, changing rooms are open, you can try clothes, shoes, earrings, you name it. They just wipe the earrings and put them back into stock and clothes go straight back on the racks. It would seem that Italians with their history of changes of government every few months or so put zero confidence in the pronouncements of their clueless politicians and are applying their common sense. If there are loads of people in Florence with friends and family who are at death’s door from Covid, they are covering their sadness with having a terrific time. Until then, they are fast going back to the old normal. In fact one of my favourite bars Coronas Cafe is doing a roaring trade as can be seen below. That bartender was in a pretty good mood:

Coronas cafe; excellent gelato as big as my head. Mascarpone and Caramel 🙂

Meanwhile in Blighty, deaths are now in single figures but that doesn’t scare people enough so let’s switch to number of cases instead. Everyone stay home until we find the elixir of immortality. Good luck with that. Jobs are being lost in their thousands every single day, the GPs are still closed and the hospitals are still empty. Thousands of cases of cancer, diabetes, incipient strokes and heart attacks are being put on the back burner. Pubs must close if schools reopen. Eh?? That’s a non-sequitur nonpareil. What’s the link? It’s the year of the mouth; I respectfully suggest that we remove our muzzles and demand our lives back. Hate to break it to them but life has a mortality rate of 100% unless the Lord returns first and I’m guessing that most of you are agnostic/atheists so you’re not banking on that. I intend to live my life to my best capacity, my new constant utterance being ‘resist the devil, and he will flee you’. No messing about! Have a wonderful week and consider booking that holiday……Buona sera.

/by