Entertaining customers 24/08/09
The summer is passing and mio marito and I have hardly had time to draw breath. Unbelievable that it is nearly the end of the summer. The most beautiful month lies ahead according to many Sicilians; September is lovely with fabulous sunsets and cooler air but lovely weather still and a mirror-like sea.
Yesterday there were posers at table 3 on the terazza. A tall muscular guy with a mop of white hair and big grey sideburns and a t-shirt with graffiti phrases all over it. An attractive woman in a long dress with long flowing hair, and two blond twins in a pram and a curly blond 4 year old running around in the two terraces, with some friends. I was sweet to the little girl since she was playing with the candles - I told her it was dangerous and also annoying for us if she blew them out! Then she was eating salt directly from the salt cellar and the flashy father saw and didn’t do a thing. He didn’t do much for the kids which is why I wasn’t sure they were his. At the end I asked a friend who was there with them and she said yes, he is a great dj ( in compensation ..). I said really ? I
thought he was John Travolta (he looked like he came directly from the set up Saturday Night Fever). My friend smiled a bit but no one else laughed because John took himself so seriously with his designer belt and designer t-shirt; it was too funny, a total example of how Italians take themselves so seriously. No self-irony.
We also had a tragic tale of lost love. Saverio popped up last Thursday full of charm and chat and was very taken with me. Undeterred by the fact that mio marito was around, he chatted away and was most interested, unlike all the others who run a mile when I mention my husband. It was quite a relief to have a normal conversation with a man. He had come down from Rome to see his Sicilian girlfriend (a dancer connected to his acting company), but she had refused to see him! So the next day he showed up with a girl he had met while out running that evening. The next night he came with the actual girlfriend, and was all over her upstairs and gazing at her intensely. Then he introduced us to her and he was a bit agitated and not so jokey. She smiled and looked pretty, ‘ti piace?' he asked, but I didn’t like that objectification, and I said I don’t know her. But she is bella, he insisted and I said ok she is bella but that doesn’t mean anything. She seemed arrogant and manipulative really. They left and the next day he came back alone and said it is over and he dined with me and then with mio marito. He chatted a bit more normally that night about his family and told us about the film his dad Deodoro had made about cannibalism ostensibly to prove the point that journalists will do anything to get a scoop but it sounded horrific. Apparently it was the 1970s and there was still talk about the last cannibal tribe in South America. How Tarantino sat beside his dad at the screening and couldn’t watch it and how he cited his father as inspiration afterwards. How his father also invented the handheld reporter style filming later user by so many directors ( like The Blair Witch project). So he lives in the shadow of his father.
Last night the girl showed up but made scenes and twice left the table, reported our latest temporary waiter. She uses her beauty as a weapon, he said, and for me she is not pretty she is just arrogant and that is so unattractive. She is full of herself and was really mean to him, even if he was a bit jealous or overprotective, as she accused him. Saverio came back like a stray dog and walked past the backstreet behind the terrace, strangely just as I was watching the old man opposite who was on his patio and looking grievously at the noisy bar blasting music just down from his house. Saverio was all the forlorn actor but I said, anyway be comforted by the fact that you certainly would not want to grow old with that awful screechy voice beside you. And he said yes, I have often said to her to modulate her voice but she never even did that for me, he said, sounding wounded.
Lola
Yesterday there were posers at table 3 on the terazza. A tall muscular guy with a mop of white hair and big grey sideburns and a t-shirt with graffiti phrases all over it. An attractive woman in a long dress with long flowing hair, and two blond twins in a pram and a curly blond 4 year old running around in the two terraces, with some friends. I was sweet to the little girl since she was playing with the candles - I told her it was dangerous and also annoying for us if she blew them out! Then she was eating salt directly from the salt cellar and the flashy father saw and didn’t do a thing. He didn’t do much for the kids which is why I wasn’t sure they were his. At the end I asked a friend who was there with them and she said yes, he is a great dj ( in compensation ..). I said really ? I
thought he was John Travolta (he looked like he came directly from the set up Saturday Night Fever). My friend smiled a bit but no one else laughed because John took himself so seriously with his designer belt and designer t-shirt; it was too funny, a total example of how Italians take themselves so seriously. No self-irony.
We also had a tragic tale of lost love. Saverio popped up last Thursday full of charm and chat and was very taken with me. Undeterred by the fact that mio marito was around, he chatted away and was most interested, unlike all the others who run a mile when I mention my husband. It was quite a relief to have a normal conversation with a man. He had come down from Rome to see his Sicilian girlfriend (a dancer connected to his acting company), but she had refused to see him! So the next day he showed up with a girl he had met while out running that evening. The next night he came with the actual girlfriend, and was all over her upstairs and gazing at her intensely. Then he introduced us to her and he was a bit agitated and not so jokey. She smiled and looked pretty, ‘ti piace?' he asked, but I didn’t like that objectification, and I said I don’t know her. But she is bella, he insisted and I said ok she is bella but that doesn’t mean anything. She seemed arrogant and manipulative really. They left and the next day he came back alone and said it is over and he dined with me and then with mio marito. He chatted a bit more normally that night about his family and told us about the film his dad Deodoro had made about cannibalism ostensibly to prove the point that journalists will do anything to get a scoop but it sounded horrific. Apparently it was the 1970s and there was still talk about the last cannibal tribe in South America. How Tarantino sat beside his dad at the screening and couldn’t watch it and how he cited his father as inspiration afterwards. How his father also invented the handheld reporter style filming later user by so many directors ( like The Blair Witch project). So he lives in the shadow of his father.
Last night the girl showed up but made scenes and twice left the table, reported our latest temporary waiter. She uses her beauty as a weapon, he said, and for me she is not pretty she is just arrogant and that is so unattractive. She is full of herself and was really mean to him, even if he was a bit jealous or overprotective, as she accused him. Saverio came back like a stray dog and walked past the backstreet behind the terrace, strangely just as I was watching the old man opposite who was on his patio and looking grievously at the noisy bar blasting music just down from his house. Saverio was all the forlorn actor but I said, anyway be comforted by the fact that you certainly would not want to grow old with that awful screechy voice beside you. And he said yes, I have often said to her to modulate her voice but she never even did that for me, he said, sounding wounded.
Lola
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