Lads I feel terrible for rantin on about the poor fella with the sign outside the supermarket in last week’s post. I mean I walked past him today and I said hello to him and I’m not sure right, but I think he might be a bit simple! God forgive me!
Monday 26th Oct
Yer man in the first room’s family are STILL here. God I wish they’d piss off home for themselves. I think they are actually sleeping in there with him. Every time I go to the kitchen one of them is in there, gawkin up into my face. It’s not fair that they are stayin here because only one person will fit in the kitchen at a time and I have to wait for them to finish spit roasting their pig or whatever they’re doing in there before I can make my crispy pancakes. SO annoying.
Went out to training tonight anyway, but I was feeling seriously dodgy so I left early. As I was walking through the car park one of the lads left at the same time as me and he was loadin up the boot of his car. “See ya” I says as I walk past. I was walking down the road then and he passed me. He pulled up beside me. “Hop in” he goes. Well I didn’t have to be asked twice. So I walked towards the car and shur you know what I did next. Like you just KNOW I went to open the drivers door, out of pure habit like, since the cars are the other way around over here. Thankfully though, I copped on and saved myself at the last minute and walked around the front of the car and hopped into the passenger seat.
Now bear in mind it was pitch black so I couldn’t really see much, but I could FEEL how massive he was in the car. He was a GIANT like. Big rippling muscly arms and legs everywhere. So we were chattin away anyway and then there was a moment of silence. I can’t help myself in moments like these and I just burst out laughing, and literally a nanosecond later, he burst out laughing, as if he was going to do it anyway even if I hadn’t. So then we were both doing that “aaaah’ thing you say after you’ve just been laughing your head off, and he reached over and took my hand in his GIANT shovel hand. My little hand was LOST in his. “Lorenzo” he goes. I got butterflies in me ovaries, like when you go over a hill in the car. So he dropped me off outside my house anyway and I was like, “Thanks boy you’re a gent”, and he goes “we’ll see each other Wednesday.” “Yeah” I says, “talk to you then.” And as I was walking in the gate, it hit me. I never even saw his face. It literally could be any one of the lads. Sure odds are there’s about 47 Lorenzos among them! Shit. Now most people would be thinking “shur you’ll know him when you se him” but I actually won’t. If he had given me a lift in the blazing sunlight I still wouldn’t be able to identify him in a line-up. You know the way some people can’t tell the difference between "oriental" people ie all people from Japan/Korea/Mongolia etc fall under the umbrella term “Chinese”? Well that is literally how I am about Italians. They are all the image of each other, especially the fellas. I guess I’ll just have to play this one by ear.
Tuesday 27th Oct
Run down to the supermarket to grab me few bits. Yer man with the sign was there but just as I was passing someone stopped to give out to him. Yessssss! Off the hook! Went down the homewares section because I broke the handle off my butter knife. While actually cutting through some butter. I know, I don’t believe it either. So I look up at all the cutlery hanging up and look for the butter knives. Then I see them, no wait, that must be wrong – EIGHT euro? Eight euro for a butter knife with a plastic handle. And a cat MUSTARD coloured plastic handle at that! Eddie says NO! I tell you now I’d rather fashion one from flint than pay eight euro for a feckin butter knife. Shocking.
Went home anyway and started this weeks’ blog post. I have to say now, I gets an oul buzz off writing the blog. I’d love to do something like this for a living. What can I do to make this happen, I am thinking. I must do something to catalyse this change I say to myself. I know! I’ll email an extract from the blog to Ray D’Arcy! Perfect! Sure he’s bound to read it out and start the ball rolling on the international superstardom front. Grand. Fire off the email, delighted outta me head. Set the alarm for early the next morning.
Wednesday 28th Oct
Me feckin nerves! Couldn’t sleep at all last night because a) I am praying Ray reads out my email and b) my friend Meghan is due her baby today and I was so up in a heap about that I’m waiting to go into labour myself! Got up at the crack of dawn. Showered and dressed, full face of make up now, in case Ray rings me. I wouldn’t want him to hear me without makeup like haha! I turned on the laptop and went to start streaming Today FM. It wouldn’t work. Tried literally everything, links websites, live radio websites, links from boards etc. Nothing worked. I could listen to 2fm, WLRfm, Beatfm and every other station on Earth as much as my heart desired, but the Today fm stream was broken. I could have screamed!
In desperation I started begging people to listen to it for me and ended up with a small but powerful army of friends listenin in for me (thanks again lads). In the end he didn’t read it out. How dare he like, I mean honestly, how rude. Of course now I was already after imagining him reading it out, then the whole of Ireland logs onto my blog, leaves millions of comments, all become my followers. Word spreads quickly to Ireland’s top newspapers/magazines/agents and by four o’ clock that day I have a column in U magazine and a three book deal with Poolbeg. I struggle to adjust to the new reality that this won’t be happening. I plunge into the bottomless depths of misery. Sigh.
So I went up to make my lunch anyway. Just as I left my room, the fella that just moved into the room beside me came out of his, wrestling a packet. “Well!” I said, “How are you boy?” “Oonga boonga polski sklep” he said back to me. “What?” I goes, “Oonga boonga polski sklep” he said. Now lads, I’m fairly confident in the aul Italian and I can understand basically everything I hear, but holy God, this fella’s accent, I didn’t have notion of what he was saying. And the fact he was saying it at a squillion miles an hour didn’t help.
“Look boy", I said, "I seriously don’t understand you, you will have to speak more clearly if you don’t mind” “Would you have a pair of scissors til I open this packet”, he says. Well that’s what I presume he said anyway, since he was making a scissors sign with his fingers. I gave him a pair of scissors anyway and he came down to the kitchen with me and we were chatting. When I said my name was Jennie he said “you’re not from Italy anyway with a name like that” (“Or a head like that” which is what is he really wanted to say.) “Nah, I’m Irish” I said. “Oh lovely” he said. So he was talking on and on, and I was like “yeah, boy, ah yeah haha etc”. Didn’t have a CLUE what he was talking about. I literally couldn’t understand a word he was saying in his quare accent.
Next thing “how old are you?” he asked me. International code for “are yeh ridin?” I was like, eh, there’s a question like. And I looked up from my crispy pancakes and he went on the worlds giantest reddener. 25 I said, how old are YOU? And he was morto, “em, a little bit younger.” “How much younger I said?” “Nineteen” he said under his breath. “Ah nineteen!” I said, “you’re only a baby.” Shoulder slap. Haaaates tha’ boy ha ha!
Anyway I served up me dinner and went down to the room and was chomping away on it when I heard his door open and he knocked on my door to give me back the scissors. I opened the door, still chewing and he was standing there with the scissors in his hand…..and a pair of sunglasses on him. “Thank you” he said in English. “You’re welcome” I said. “Buon appetito, Bella”, he said, over the rim of his sunglasses. Oh jaysus! Jaysus! Is he…. is he wooing me? I cant cope! I just gave him a big smile and went to put the scissors back in the drawer and here I looks in the mirror and there’s a half a head of iceberg lettuce stuck in me teeth. Well he’s not wooing me anymore anyway.
Still in the depths of despair I study for a few hours and then turn on my laptop to check my emails. Here’s one from Jac Flavin with a pdf attachment. What’s this all about like? I clicked on it anyway, and lo! There on the screen came up a scan of a section of the Waterford Today with a little piece about my blog. Well lads. I had to sit down. And then I had to stand up. And then I had to sit down again. I was buzzin! In your face Ray D’Arcy! I don’t need you! (But if you could mention my blog that would be nice, please and thanks.) Here it is for those of you who don't have the pleasure of having the Waterford Today "trun" in your letterbox of a Wednesday morning.
On the world's biggest high I went to training and Iwas like, right, I don’t know what Lorenzo looks like, but if he says well to me I’ll know its him. So I walked in the door and this HUGE fella was standing there lookin at me. “Well girl!” he goes, “Well boy how are you?” I go, thinking this must obviously be him, until another identical fella came over and was like “well girl!” and then another four identical fellas. Ah jaysus. This is gone beyond a joke.
Thursday 29th Oct
Right the fella in the first room is really takin the piss. Every time I turn around his father is standing there with a bowl of grapes. I have literally never seen him without a grape in his hand. Every time I go to the kitchen his mother is in there “you’re not cooking?” she says. No I’m not now anyway, not with you up in me ockster, and your husband chewing a grape in me ear. Fuck sake like.
Friday 30th Oct
Went down to the supermarket to get my bit of shoppin after studying all day yesterday. Passed the fella with the sign (sharp pang of guilt) and into the supermarket – I couldn’t believe how packed it was in there. What harm I says to myself, I don’t mind queuing.
Well I went and joined the queue and since it was an Italian style queue, the people behind me were actually standing next to me, a woman and her two little sons, about three and four they were. One of them was done up like Batman and the other one was done up like a giraffe. Batman poked his mother and pointed up at me “Mammy, Mammy, she’s beautiful!” “That’s right boy,” the mother said and we were both laughing. So the mother said “hang on I’m after forgetting something, stay there now boys and don’t move!” so she ran off to get whatever it was she forgot and the giraffe started crying and Batman started doing something ten times worse than crying; he started whining. Crying I could listen to all day, but whining - don’t get me started.
So I said “Boys I have to tell you a secret” And the two of them looked up at me dumbstruck. “You can’t tell anyone now ok?” Imperceptible nods. “I’m a princess from the land of Tir na nOg.” Two tiny jaws drop to the floor. “And when I hear children crying it makes me cry too, so don’t cry ok?” More open-mouthed nodding. Their mother was coming back so I said “Don’t tell anyone ok?” And the fella in the queue in front of me had his back to me but his shoulders were heaving and he pissin himself with the laughing. The mother came back anyway and the giraffe was like “Mamma, Mamma!” about to tell her, but Batman gave him the elbow and he shut up. Ah, lying to small children – one of life’s simpler pleasures!
Saturday 31st Oct
Me and my band of merry bitches head out to Decathlon, this giant sports superstore to get some new gear for running. We were supposed to go running that night, but we were so overexcited we ended up spending hours in there and instead went home tired and weary (but delighted outta our heads) and chillaxed instead.
Sunday 1st Nov
God, I really have to find a job. I’ve already tried all the English schools here but one of them doesn’t need any more staff and the rest seem to have come down with a bout of Ray D’Arcy syndrome and haven’t got back to me yet.
At the moment my only source of income is the ads on this blog page which make me a whopping squillionth of a cent per click. Still though, Eddie says it all adds up! Sure if I save it all up I might be able to buy myself a sally lun for Christmas. Maybe even a sliced bun. Dream big like. Anyway now I’m thinking more about looking for some work in transcription. We’ll see how that pans out.
It was another lovely week in Pavia, thanks in no small part to Jac Flavin and her legendary journalistic skills – thanks again Jac! The thesis is coming along nicely, as are my rippling shoulder muscles. The mystery of Lorenzo continues, but don’t worry lads – I’m on it!
P.S. A lot of people have been asking me how to become followers of the blog. All you have to do is scroll down to the part at the side where it says "Come follow me, children!" and click on "Follow", a new window will open up and you fill in the blanks. Then you turn around three times and say the Hail Mary backwards. Done!
