Che cazzo

This country just gets more peculiar by the day.

Now that the good weather seems to have arrived, I've taken to going out without a jumper or coat. The temperature has been good but the looks I've been getting are incredible. As I look around me today, I can't see a single Italian who doesn't have a jumper or coat on (and it's 16 degrees out there).

Now that they no longer have to carry an umbrella whilst cycling, the latest trend is to walk your dog by bike. I have to say that Italian dogs are not the best disciplined animals in the world which makes the whole cycling and dog-walking very precarious. Not that that has stopped anyone.

Yesterday I had to pay my electricity bill. I turned up at the post office at 11:30. I thought this would be a good time because all those collecting their pensions would have been and gone, working people would be at work and non-working parents would be preparing to collect their offspring. Boy, was I wrong. The queue was actually out of the door and into the road. It took me 45 minutes to actually get to the cashier (and one minute to pay) by which time the number of cashiers had reduced from three to one and the queue was even longer. I honesty don't know why the Italians put up with it - it's not as if there are that many post offices and the cashiers weren't pushing themselves to get things finished (and they kept disappearing into the back for oddly suspicious ten minute spells).

Today I went to get money out the cash machine only to find my card has stopped working. It's less than six months old! I did managed to get money over the counter but they charged me for it! This even though it was their card that stopped working and my being entitled to make one counter withdrawal for free a month. I have to go to my own branch to sort this out. I'm going to ask for the charge to be refunded but, well, this is Italy where nothing makes sense and contracts are worth less than the paper they are written on.

Finally, in this litany of WTF?!?!? I'm using an internet cafe in Piazza Duomo. It's part of a bookshop. You go in the entrance and the sign says: Spazio Internet 2 so you go up to the second floor only to find out that you have to go back down to the ground floor to buy the (rechargeable) internet card, then return to the second floor where you have to present your ID document, have your details taken and sign a piece of paper giving them the right to your first born before they will let you use their machines. When you've gone through this tedious process you are directed to machines which are nicely lined up, side-by-side in the window (so no privacy there), set back about two foot from the edge of the bench, in front of which are the stools. Now here's the genius. The stools are fixed height (level with the bottom of the bench) and with a forward slant so you can't sit on them with your legs under the bench (thus putting you another foot away from the screen and with your head about eighteen inches above the to of the screen - ergonomic? I think not) and for this privilege you have to listen to music from the 80's and 90's interspersed with bleeping from a faulty machine. Such joy.

And on that note, I shall sign off.