A brush with bureaucracy. And I survived.

It all began when the baby was born some 18 sleepless but joyful months ago now. My mother-in-law gave me a nudge and said I should apply to the state for family cheques.
"You pay tax, you're due it," she said, which was at least partly true.
I looked at her and asked, "Well, how difficult is that going to be? Will I need a degree in public administration first to be able to negotiate the quagmire of rules and convoluted archaic Italian?".
"Now, now, Deep, non esagerare. It's easy, one, two, three, it's done. Have a little faith in people sometimes."
As you can imagine, I pictured Woody Allen's face in the closing scene of his absolute classic 'Manhatten', years before he lost his talent and his marbles.
"You'll have some more orecchiette with ragù, won't you?" she continued.
"Does the Pope shit in the woods?" is what I wanted to say but I wisely kept my mouth shut but I'm losing the narrative thread here.
So I asked at work what forms I needed and what supporting documents were necessary. Silence. Boh. Ask the commercialista. So I did. Via email, like some fool drunk on cheap punch. Silence. Weeks went by. I chased it up.
"I actually sent an email about it weeks ago."
I heard uncontained sniggering on the other end of the line. The line was being repeated around the office to much mirth.
"I'll let you know," the voice said eventually, after the laughter had died out.
A few days later, the answer came.
"You just need to fill out the forms with the right details and Bob's yer uncle."
"And that's all? Nothing else?"
"No, nothing, tranquillo."
This word always sent a chill down my spine. Tranquillo.
"Niente niente?"
"Niente, don't be paranoid!"
Okey doke. Have a little faith. I filled out the forms and left them with the secretaries to send to the commercialista's office together with the prima nota, the monthly office payments in/out documents. And I waited.
After another couple of weeks, I started getting the shakes. I called and was passed onto the consulente di lavoro, a certain faith-inspiring Mr Beans. He hadn't received any forms.
"And anyway, you need the autorizzazione from INPS (the social security office). Get that and send over the forms again and we'll get this sorted," he said, all upbeat.
So I called INPS and explained the situation once I finally got to talk to a human being.
"Can I do this via the phone or email?"
I could hear uncontrollable giggling again from the other end of the line. What am I funny? Do I amoose you?
This was June/JUly time and I was wrapping things up for the summer and getting ready to leave town so I put the thing on ice for a bit. Until after the summer and then I plucked up the courage and went in on September 1. I picked up a ticket and waited with my ipod and some McEwan for company. I didn't have to wait long though. While I was, I heard many a violent screaming match between these power-drunk officials and Italians on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
The far from friendly guy behind the desk looked through the forms I'd brought.
"All this seems to be in order. And the letter from the mother declaring she isn't receiving family cheques?"
"What letter?"
"You don't have it?"
"Can't you just check on your computer whether she is or not?"
He smiled broadly like I'd just slipped on a banana skin.
"Err, no, that's not how things work. I really need that letter."
"Nobody told me I needed it," I protested, too much.
He shrugged his shoulders and pressed his button to summon his next victim. I walked out effing and blinding.
Trying to maintain my calm, I rolled up the following day, clutching the aforementioned letter. My partner hadn't been around so I'd faked the signature like a good Italian. I had a different bloke this time, no less mean and self-important.
"Tutto bene, tutto bene," he said leafing through my papers. "E lo stato di famiglia?"
There was a quiver in my voice when I meekly replied, "Stato di famiglia? What's that?"
What it is is a document issued by the Comune that declares whether you're single, married, living together or whatever. What difference it makes is beyond me.
"Can't you just ring them?" I ventured.
"Don't worry, you can fill out this autodichiarazione. It may delay things however."
Finally it was my turn to blurt out a nervous, anxious chuckle. Delay things? Are you pulling my pecker, buddy boy?
That was two months ago. A few weeks ago, I resigned myself to the fact that I'd have to go back in. In the meantime, I'd received an email from the future chirpily saying that I could email INPS directly to chase up applications. Yeah, right, I thought but then I figured that very few Italians would be green enough to fall for the invitation so I scribbled a few lines and sent off the email. What did I have to lose?
This morning I was about to lug my sorry arse in and ask what was happening but luckily I didn't. This afternoon something strange happened. I got a call. From a very friendly woman.
"Signor Deep. I'm calling from the INPS office about the email you sent two weeks ago. We just wanted to let you know that your autorizzazione is in the post."
I gushed like a shy teenager.
"Thanks a lot. Thanks, really, really, that's ever so kind. Thank you for the call."

So all's well that end's well although it's far from over. The letter has to arrive. I have to fill out all the forms again and personally hand them in to the consulente di lavoro. Then maybe, just maybe, I'll get my family cheques. Hopefully before the baby turns 18.

I've told this story to my Italian friends and they've just shrugged in that resigned but knowing way.
"Only two months? Ti è andata bene," they say.

Maybe they're right. Maybe at the end of the day, all things considered, I did get off lightly.

There's magic in the air...

And when you can get away from the head-spinning chaos of the eternal shitty sprawl, gobsmacking, awe-inspiring magic awaits...

The sun

Waking up to warm winter sun is priceless though. Gotta get ready, then will step out and brave the traffic in this brave old world on my flash new scooter. A dopo.

It's a love-hate thing

Rome, the Eternal City. You’ll love it when you’re strolling along hand in hand with some sun-kissed honey, sucking on a dreamy home-made ice-cream whilst knowingly checking out the architectural wonders of the city centre. Life is good, your threads are cool and the climate, ahhh, the climate. The next second, when you’re somehow flying through the air having slipped on one of the millions of smoking merdaccia left by some dog bang smack in the middle of the pavement (while its owner looked on oblivious to the connotations), you’ll hate it with a drooling, rabid, sometimes spitting passione that Italians themselves smugly understand so well. Ah, so you’ve become one of us finally! And you dared ask yourself why they, the natives, spend some of their time screaming blue murder at each other in the street or why their stress threshold appears to be so dangerously low. They can’t take it any more either. Join the club sonny boy.

Of the merry crew I used to know, years back, I’m the last man standing. Wooed over here initially on the dizzy promise of lusty romance and simplicity, I longed too to return to the 1970s, those halcyon days of childhood before the brutal dismantling of British society in the cold but necessary 80s. I yearned for long lazy summers, sideburns, simple pleasures, touchy-feely relationships. Which I got. I guess. Together with the inefficiencies, the strikes, the broken pavements, the defective streetlights, the blackouts, the hanging on the phone for hours at the mercy of public offices, the cliquey corrupt police force, the miscarriages of justice, the woeful supermarkets, the grisly standard of service, the potholed roads, the monopolised services screwing the consumer, the voiceless citizen, the extreme right-wing rumblings of discontent, the football violence.

Be careful what you wish for, right? What in God’s name was I thinking?

So you’ll occasionally hear me drooling over some gorgeous detail of Italian life (ahh, the sweet hills around Siena) like some pretentious Chianti-loving sap but for the most part you’ll hear me rage to high heaven. The wonder years are long gone. A day doesn’t go by without some aspect of life here popping up and taking a violent tweak at one of my nipples. And that hurts, take it from me.

It’s not what I want, believe me, I’d love to be ranting and raving about how great for example Italian TV is, how it’s full of ugly old female presenters with their mute half-naked toyboy sidekicks (not too convinced about this bit really), how you can’t get to see a good cabaret programme for love nor money, how it’s a shame that some old housewives’ favourites are phased out too early to make way for talented young people (did you see the Gianni Morandi Speciale on Rai Uno the other night with him singing inside a huddle of youngsters who were singing along in playback? – I was reaching for me sick bag, knowing full well that in 10 years time they’ll be digging him up for another Speciale paid for with our licence fees), how efficient the parliament is and how great it is that Italian politicians not only look out for the interests of ordinary citizens thereby risking the wrath of the grandi interessi but they also accept a pittance of a salary that is also taxed (cute this, the biggest legalized evaders of tax in Italy are Italian MPs themselves) and which they wouldn’t dream of spending on prostitutes and coke, how fast and effective the legal system is (if your life expectancy is like 250 years), how smooth and hole-free the roads are and blah di blah di blah. I really would be a happy man to be banging on about how other countries should be following Italy’s lead in things, that Italians really do do it better.

Italians do it better? What exactly, la focazz? (Barese focaccia is fabulous).

Before you start booing, you’re right of course. If I don’t like it, I can just bugger off back home, right? But I’m fighting the good fight for everyone, you too. And, believe me, I’m fighting, every damn day of the week.

Not that the grass is greener over the Manica. Watching British telly and reading the Guardian can be misleading. Their wit, intelligence and eloquence aren’t necessarily a reflection of real Britishness, far from it. When you listen to the foul-mouthed senseless rantings of Celebrity Big Brother, when you see someone puking up outside a pub, when you see someone coming at you with a knife, you think: oh now this lot could do with a dose of Italian bella figura. They, we, whoever, could do with being at least a tad worried about what their parents are gonna say if they come home minkered or with puke or blood splattered all over them. In the total absence of the law in Italy, the bella figura and family control is the only thing keeping the fabric of society together. But then again, come to think of it, Italians could do with letting go every now and again. Have a few beers, piss up a wall for Christssake! And when I say letting go I don’t mean having panna with your gelato or going out without a vest, let’s be clear. Don’t you, they get tired of having to behave themselves all the time?

It’s a no-win situation, for which the only solution would be a nice via di mezzo. A country called Itland or Engaly. We are beasts but our State isn’t. Here it’s the opposite, it’s the State that behaves like a beast, a drunken, drugged up Hollywood superstar that is above the law and couldn’t give two flying forks about anyone or anything. Flying fork – what a cool name for a restaurant.

The venom in my blood has subsided somewhat on the back of this damn dirty swine flu. But it’ll be back. It’s just a question of time before I pay 3 times as much for something here than I would in England, before I can’t go for a walk with my daughter in her pushchair without going into the middle of the road because the parked cars are blocking the pavement, before I tread in some dog shit, before I come across a merry band of piss-drenched tramps and their leashless dogs, before I destroy my bikes suspension on Rome’s roads, before I have my next dealing with Italian bureaucracy, before I next have to pay tax, before I next have to go to the dentist, before I next look into the window of a local estate agents.

But the moment I’m cool. I’m cool with Rome. We’re cool.

It won’t last though. It’s inevitable. When the Pope dies, up pops another. There’s nothing you or I can do about it.

Notte.