italiafile

Even the Times is reporting on the Camorra now, and apparently publishing maps of where it isn't safe to stray. The body count is now in the 120's, hundreds of extra Carabinieri have been drafted in, and businesses are being torched on a daily basis. Apparently tourism is suffering, though if you had tried to walk through the city centre yesterday you wouldn't have thought so. The weekends leading up to Christmas see hundreds of thousands of people flock to the centro storico to buy Xmas decorations. The typically Neapolitan presepe are the main focus, and the street of San Gregorio Armeno is impassable most of the time. For English eyes, it looks more like a Blue Peter make it yourself sticky backed plastic, fairy liquid grotto, but the tradition is even older than Biddy Baxter. Yesterday the danger came not from the Camorra but the heavy rain, which caused a balcony to collapse into the street hospitalising two old ladies from Puglia.
Anybody thinking of avoiding Naples because of the turf war would be mad. The chance of anyone wandering into Scampia or Secondigliano accidentally is absurd. You'd be relieved of your camera and wallet long before you made it all the way to Scampia.
The new red double decker tourist buses now have plain clothes police escorts, so frequently are they stopped and raided by the 'baby gangs' as they are called. For me, it conjures up images of the Little Rascals and the Double Deckers, but unfortunately this is a little far from the truth. The golden rule in Naples is not to behave like a tourist. Despite the obvious danger in doing so, I saw Americans today, in shorts, bristling with cameras, taking photos of the Spanish Quarter as though the residents were exhibits in a zoo. Watching the street urchins closing in for the kill I found it hard to summon up any sympathy.

What's the most dangerous job in Italy? I have a nomination. On the Via Garibaldi 4 lanes of traffic and at least 2 lanes of parked cars vie for space on a 2 lane road. Buses and trams negotiate the tracks and overhead powerlines, while the scooters, more often than not, plump for the pavements as a clearer route through the city. In the midst of this a man stands on a rickety and very tall set of ladders as he puts up Christmas lights. That is, right in the middle of the road. His ladders are of the wheeled variety and he makes stately progress down the middle of Via Garibaldi as he suspends illuminated stars to the overhead wires. His mates, who obviously chose longer straws, attach the light bulb bedecked swags to buildings at either side of the road. To ensure the ladder balancers safety, the ladders wheels are painted red and white, but even this clever ruse doesn't stop cars and buses from missing the ladders by a hairs breadth. Despite this, or perhaps because of the constant threat of a mangled death, they have managed to put up the Christmas lights along the entire length of the street in less than a day. I am impressed.

Big Brother 5 (Italy version) is in full swing. The big news is that one lad has been thrown out of the house...... for swearing. It is indicative of the difference between Italy and the UK. In fact there is an English girl in the Italian house. Out of the entire group she is the one who screams, shouts, bounces around and is generally a pain in the arse. The rest of the housemates got their revenge this weekend by telling her it was the weekend against sound pollution and that all of Italy was refraining from shouting, shrieking and screaming. As a result the Big Bro house was a haven of tranquility all weekend, the British girl constantly saying what a fabulous idea a quiet weekend was, and how it could never happen in Britain. The story became more convoluted as one boy explained it all started with the muffled horses hooves at Verdi's funeral in Milan. How many of the UK contestants could talk in any way, shape or form about opera?
Here the housedwellers sit around and discuss philosophy and politics; a far cry from mud wrestling, and effing and blinding discourses on different ways to perform oral sex that keep the British house on the screen.
In a typically Italian way, good challenge results, birthdays and such like are rewarded not with copious alcohol but with mamma's home cooking. Parents are in the studio every week to give teary eyed cut away shots in response to their child's deprivations. ANd of course never ending love is professed by all and sundry. And you believe it. I am sorely tempted to show my students my dvd of Big Bro UK highlights, but fear their opinion of British youth would sink even further.

It rained last night. The palazzo which houses the internet point seems to have suffered. This morning, the entrance was full of rubble which had fallen from the walls. The firemen arrived and sealed it off, while taking a hammer to most of the exterior walls and knocking off all the render, presumably to stop it falling on the heads of others. It won’t help the general state of preservation of the place. One good reason why it is probably safer to rent than buy in the historic centre.

Christmas obviously started the day after Ognissanti. There are no more holidays before the big one, except the feast of the Immaculate Conception by which time you should have your tree up. In Via San Gregorio Armeno, the shops are full to bursting with Xmas goodies. As is the street itself. There just aren’t enough shops now, so new cabins are being erected in every available space at a rate of knots. Since last night another 5 have appeared, and more are on the way. There seems to be no hint of a planning application or permit, just lots of lusty youths with wood and corrugated iron, assembling temporary shelters for the huge amounts of presepi that have been built and stored over the year.

I sat outside a bar on the Via Tribunali this afternoon and engaged myself in scientific endeavour. For ten minutes I counted all the scooters that passed, an astonishing 134. Of these forty six had a single rider. The remaining 88 had a total of 203 passengers and seven dogs. The youngest driver was probably three years old, but at least he had his father sitting behind him, ready to grab the handlebars should his son and heir fail to negotiate the milling throng while carrying two scaffolding poles and a gas canister. The youngest of the unaccompanied riders was all of 7. These ‘scugnizzi’ generally ride around in pairs so as to create twice as much havoc, though I find the early teenaged girls the most annoying, as they ‘beep’ constantly, and are more interested in grooming each other and sending text messages on their telefonini than actually getting from a to b. Most tellingly of all not one of the 249 people aboard these bikes had a crash helmet, a fact which didn’t worry the police one jot. Here in Spaccanapoli there is yet a different code from other parts of the city. .

Imagine if you will, the westerns that crowded the television airwaves in your youth. Cowboys who could only exist when astride a horse. In fact the only time we saw them walk was when they strode, bandy legged, into a saloon. (They always seemed to leave flying, via a window.) Now apply the same to Neapolitans and their scooters This piece of machinery is as fundamental to life here as a horse was in the Old West. In the same way as it is impossible to imagine a cowboy wearing a sensible hard hat in case he was thrown from his steed, so is it unimaginable to think of Neapolitans threatening their carefully cultivated ‘bella figura’ with something so graceless and styleless as a crash helmet. As the Lone Ranger would rear up on Silver’s hind legs when answering a call for help, so the motorbike police here slam down their radios and execute a perfect wheelie on their bikes as they scream away to answer an emergency. Five hundred years the Neapolitans were renowned for their horses and horsemanship, so much so that a bridled horse was an integral part of the coat of arms. Nowadays it would be a Vespa.

Autumn has signalled its intent with a six hour thunderstorm and 12 hours of rain which has left huge holes in the roads in Posillipo. Dodging the raindrops I went off to the Gaudi exhibition which has had rave reviews. The first room is a few posters telling us all about Gaudi's life and work.. the second houses 15 monitors which have slideshows of his signature pieces... I suppose it isnt easy to display Gaudi's work, given as most of it is in the form of large buildings, but this exhibition comprises a couple of hexagonal tiles designed by the great man. The final room was an architecture students delight, nothing particularly tangible, but models and mutli media displays explaining Gaudi's influences. I am now able to discourse unknowledgably about catenal arches, hyperbolic vaults and conoids.
That's two of the large winter exhibitions ticked off now, all that remains is the Damien Hirst retrospective at the Museo Nazionale. Given that i wouldnt cross the street to insult the man were I in the UK, (unlike Tracy Emin - I would travel a long way to be able to insult her to her face), I am strangely tempted to go and see how Hirsts pretentious bollocks are standing the test of time. No I wouldnt mind seeing those in formaldehyde....

Salutary news today, other than Bush feeling grateful/smug/appointed by God. Today we have reached the 100th murder of the year in Naples.. that's 100 Camorra killings. It's back to a level last seen during the bloodbath of the 1980's apparently. The main problem seems to be the feud between two rival families for the control of all the Camorra activities which range from drug running to providing milk for the local supermarkets.
The other headline is that 1 in 5 families are now in serious financial difficulties, 48% of Italians only earn enough to get by. Berlusconi, instead of admitting that the cost of living has rocketed in the last four years merely announces that George Bush won because of tax cuts, and Berlusconi will win the next election because of the same. Worryingly we also have the news today that Berlusconi 'is like Jesus'... this time in connection with the miracle of loaves and fishes. Even Dubbya hasn't claimed to be a messiah.... yet.

November 1
I went to the city cemetery today. I had never been before but finding it was easy. I just followed every other Neapolitan who was laden down with chrysanthemums to decorate the graves. It’s a real social event, and seems that people who only meet once a year do so at the graveside of a distant relative. I wanted to see the tomb of Toto, the great Neapolitan comic actor, but it was invisible under mounds of flowers. Obviously he had been very busy last night leaving sweets for all and sundry.
The cemetery itself is vast, having the feel of a model town. Temples, houses and even conservatories in miniature are laid out in streets, each bearing the name of the family they house. As you enter from the via Nuovo Poggioreale, where the tram No 1 terminates, you climb a steep cobbled street lined with mausolea. For those who don’t have a family tomb, each of the Neapolitan churches has a chapel, so presumably its possible to be buried with your fellow congregation as well as your immediate family. The florists were doing fantastic business. In the north of the country chrysanthemums are the predominant flower, here its gladioli, lilies and freesias. The custodians of these tombs are obviously very proud of the family mausoleums, and having tidied and put out the flowers, sit outside on chairs they keep here. It was only when I reached the main road at the top of the cemetery, that I realised how vast the place is, for across the road, it started again; a broad drive leading up to a chapel and another boulevard with the more modern tombs, some of which resemble small blocks of flats, with two or three levels and verandahs.
To cater for these thousands of graves a whole service industry has arisen on the fringes of the graveyard. From the builders to the stonemasons, via the cemetery police, everything you could require for a burial can be found. Of course there is a bar, and, should you be overcome by emotion and driven to rent your clothes, a shop where you can buy a bra.
Slightly apart from the rest is a smaller, older cemetery which houses the tombs of Toto and Enrico Caruso, the latter being somewhat more overstated than the former who is entombed with his family. Caruso has his own Greek temple, with mosaic inlay above the door, and plaques erected by Caruso appreciation societies, most of which seem to be in America.
It is well worth a visit, even more so on All saints Day, when I was one of over 800,000 Neapolitans who make the annual pilgrimage. It meant, of course, that traffic was ‘in tilt’ as the Italian press say. The authorities had virtually banned private vehicles from the cemetery approaches, leaving the narrow road free for buses and taxis to have long standoffs as to who should reverse to let the other pass. Virtually every bus in Naples has been redirected on to the routes to and from the cemetery, which is far sighted and sensible of the commune, but probably marginally annoying if you want to go anywhere other than the cemetery so say prayers for the defunti, as they are charmingly called.