The first report....

Current mood: BAM BAM
Category: BAM BAM Jobs, Work, Careers

Well, it might not surprise you to learn that I lasted a full 4 days on the job, before having to take 2 off on the sick...

Si capo, my main problem with most things is the same as a childs:

I run in with explosive nuclear energy and enthusiasm and KEEP ON RUNNING!!!!

until I crash into a wall of some kind...


In this case the wall arrived remarkably quickly and it took the shape of a rather vicious bought of flu: 39.9 degrees fever, rigid stiffness, an army of frogs in the throat and head axe pain...

I nearly always get this kind of an ailment when I return from Italy not when I arrive, and there's nothing worse than being ill in someone elses house, so consequently, I've been in a very unpleasant mood indeed...

I've missed 2 days pay and 2 days sunshine - this was not part of the plan...

C'est la vie...


The thing is part of the world is it's very HARD...

Si capo, at times people get caught up with the romanticism of Italy, and it's there. But Italy is also a very tough environment to live and work in.

This particular region has pretty much everything in it's nature which requires survival first: Extremes of temperature, snow, vicious storms, hot sun, mountains, venomous mosquitos, scorpions, earthquakes, the list goes on...

As a result the houses and communities are rock solid and traditional. Marble and heavy wood is everywhere. The houses feel like forts. Communities are thickly tribal and difficult to penetrate unless you play the game their way.

Meanwhile, the church bells still dominate the soundscape....


As I've already shouted, the grape picking work is rather severe in it's mundainity. Perhaps it's more romantic than packing Christmas Crackers in a dirty grey factory in Wolverhampton - but no-one much who's done it, is gonna choose grape picking as a living - at least not in this generation...

Basically, it's a pretty horrible job...


This so, the older generations here think nothing of it...

Mrs Giovanni's father Rugero is an example..

2 days ago, he spent his 72nd birthday picking grapes for 8 hours in 30 degree unsheltered sun...

Mrs G suggested that perhaps that might be a little much for a man of his age, but Rugero shrugged the concern off by wondering how the grapes would get picked if people didn't go and pick them??


My mothers father was of the same mindset.

He spent his entire life delivering laundry to rich people 6 days a week, then came home and turned over a huge garden so the family could eat well...

He never seemed to mind, despite him being a clever enough man that meant two of his sons went on to become professors and three of their children the same.

But back then, the majority of people simply didn't think they had a choice to move out like that, so they didn't worry about it other than to make sure their kids had the best possible prospects...


That kind of selfless, sacrificing strength is something that doesn't exist in quite the same way in this current generation - at least not commonly here in the industrialised west...

No capo, most people will happily stay at home on the slightest ache and are happy to prescribe themselves make believe conditions and diseases in order to make their lives less effort...

And why not??? I'm far too cynical or wise to be sacrificing myself for someone elses financial gain unless there's something good in it for me, no matter how well they dress or what fantasy goods carrots they dangle...


But things go in circles and I'm not sure it's too long until we're gonna find ourselves having to be quite a bit less rich and cosey..

No capo, for the last little while, us industiralised types have become used to the easy life in which we sit prettily on the top of millions starving elsewhere, occasionally offering fake charity and 'fair trade' to appease our consciences

But increasingly these countries are bigger, more clever and strong enough to start with financial fireworks, and I don't reckon it'll be long until they're gonna light the matches...

Leaving us all bankrupt and scrabbling around for that old strength...