Day 12 Lock-down italy...
On a Friday morning, the 20th of March 2020…
My paternal grandmother started every letter to me with news on the weather. So, let me do the same before barrelling ahead with the Codiponte Coronavirus News…
Spring is in the air, flowering bushes & trees are blooming and it’s c-c-cold.
People are going stir-crazy here in Codiponte…
In the late afternoons, when I think there is no one walking about, I take my thug Puppy- Croesus to Romp & Play around the Madonnina, an homage to the Virgin Mary sighting a number of years ago. There is a lovely moss-graced stream Croesus instinctively hunts for succulent sticks along the banks of its rushing waters. He gets a vicarious bath too. This past Wednesday… the same day deaths from Coronavirus spiked terribly at 475 in one day in Italy!!! and I discovered I had nothing left in the refrigerator… I ran into a few village women coming to pray at the little grotto cum chapel. Italian men NEVER do that. They hardly go to church. Instead, they hang out at the Scuzzy Bar while le signore pray in church. However, the bar is closed now. One can buy cigarettes or a newspaper. Maybe the owners might dedicated themselves to a good ol’ Spring Cleaning with less traffic? I doubt it. Instead, the men putter in their future vegetable gardens or, loiter outside the mechanic’s. I turned and called the Dog, who came obediently, and we went instead for a drive in the SUV to our Romp & Play spot undisturbed near the Acqua Paradiso natural spring. I was surprised at first by the waddling signore until I recalled Codiponte’s church was closed on March 9th, Day 1 Lock-down Italy. I’m not keen on the Catholic religion for many reasons I won’t bore you with. However, I will say they swirl around years of listening to my Mother’s anti-Catholic stance. She also berated me with her arguments in favour of legalising drugs & prostitution and taxing the heck out of them both. These rants hark from the early 60’s. A forward thinker, my Mom. There are certain Catholic customs which, I do find dear and one is to pray at a Madonnina. They are everywhere in Italy and not erected just because the Virgin Mary paid a visit in 1972. Often though, they commemorate a death…
There was a shocking Coronavirus death in our quiet corner of the Lunigiana…
Oh! The radio just announced the enforced shortening of store hours and nothing open on Sundays. Mostly for grocery stores and pharmacies, Reason Numero Uno for being away from home. The new restrictions force the closure of all other stores. Plus, the army will participate in controlling the movements of the Italians. That some cannot get it into their heads that the best policy to combat this modern day plague is… to… stay… at… home, the main reason Coronavirus rages onwards in Italy.
News does travel quickly in these days of quarantine through Whatsapp. It was one such message from an English friend who had heard about the death of the ex-mayor of Fivizzano, the Big Town about 30 minutes away by car from Codiponte, from Coronavirus. I knew the man. Not a particularly congenial person but still, I was shaken by the news of his death. Brought home… brought uncomfortably home… the unsettling fact of knowing a person who has died from the virus.
I called You-know-who with the news. He had already heard. I vented my shock and panic. You is much like my father: hates hysterics, panic, crazed behaviour. I got a solid 5 minute dose of Be reasonable, please. A mild slap in the face. Better that than a grapefruit.
On the same famous spike on Wednesday last, I drove to the D’Oro grocery store near the Big Town of Aulla. Larder was nude. The store gives me a Senior Citizen’s discount so, I do my grande spesa there. I was prepared, if fermato dai Carabinieri at a road-block, with the proper form filled out with my identity details and the reason why I was out driving. A Mission of Mercy, I’d say. No white wine or, potato-chips. I do eat other things: fish sticks, zucchini and oranges, lots & lots of oranges. The radio was my company on the trip. The news on the hour bludgeoned the airwaves with the Coronavirus situation in Italy mentioning the numbers of sufferers first, then the number of those cured followed by the number of deaths. Then, before you can possibly digest the numbers… in any of the three categories… the announcer bounces on about which soccer player has come down with Coronavirus. Ahhh, Italy. and the Italians. Knowing must be a comfort to many coop-ed up with no soccer games for a good long while on the TV. I was happy with the distraction of driving past cars stopped along my route. Italian newspapers do not have Obituaries. Nope. The custom is to have printed a kind of obituary poster to be pasted up on boards dedicated to community announcements… elections, communal meetings, warnings not to burn until September and deaths. Stopped to read the notice of the ex-mayor’s death. Few bothered with their car’s emergency blinkers.
Flash-mobs have sprouted in Codiponte…
At the sacrosanct Cocktail Hour, people set off firecrackers. My thug Puppy Croesus, scared by the sudden racket, flees to his safe place… My Bed and boroughs to curl amongst the pillows… for the duration. 10 minutes of chaotic noise and Whoops from the populace. Then, silence.
One evening and well after dark, people went outside their abodes and turned their smart and iPhone’s flashlights ON to shine at others doing the same in our village. Could not find my grotesquely expensive new iPhone 11 Pro. Found it later hidden in the cushions… along with crumbs from a bout of crackers & cheese… on the longest Chesterfield sofa and showing its wear from my 95 kilos… a whopping 210 lbs… and those too of the now single Dog in our family, a mighty 37 kilos of solid Weimaraner… he’s going on a diet 81.5 lbs. I will be ready if bonfires become the thing. Have stock-piled under the roof of the legnaia to dry… all the better to Burn, baby, burn… and enough clippings from my extensive Spring pruning and cleaning nel Poggiolo’s garden from the rough business of Winter.
My favourite radio station… the mythic Radio Subasio… regularly plays the Italian National Hymn and a few classics from the Italian playlist… Adriano Celentano, Toto Cutugno… to incite?… encourage? people to step out on a terrace or balcony and sing, sing, sing away self-quarantine of the Lock-down Italy.
Apparently, the Codipontesi have their limits. Beating pots with wooden spoons and singing the Italian National Anthem out a window is one of them.
P.S. No one cares since parking will be vietato, however, Codiponte’s piazzetta is done, but for the last official check for final approval. May or, June. Maybe. Could be in September. Yikes!!!
Stay at home. Play solitaire. Cook. Read a book. Watch movies. Communicate on Whatsapp.