The views from the south 31st gennaio 2012

The views from the south 31st gennaio 2012

The football season has had a long winter break, which gave me a bit of time to recover some work stuff. The first game back at home was against Napoli, and in terms of the local support it really was the most impressive crowd that I have seen, and the first time that I have seen the entire visitors end filled. Their volume was huge, the songs great and they really put the boring Siena crowd to shame. Add in the blue flares and the drums and it was incredibly impressive, the ground really shook when they sang. Happily too the game resulted in a draw which was a pretty good result for Siena, all things considered. Siena could only counter with the standard Siena song - all the contrade use the same tune, so I wonder what words they sing for this, as the battling between the contrade is extremely vicious at times. In Siena it is strange that all the pubs close before and after the footy. (And I guess during the football too!) Some of the football fans are pretty violent for Italian standard, in the UK you can imagine that what Italy sees as being nothing, but here it opens hell. At Tai Chi yesterday, there was discussion about the football scum, although sadly I couldn't catch it all - but there were speaking pretty vitriolic about them. Cretins, bastards, big assholes and idiots I heard, so I wonder if there had been some trouble after Napoli only got a draw.

There certainly are some interesting types in the footy crowd. Seats seemingly are assigned at random, although we have our season tickets, there often are people sat in our seats, but the stadium is never full, so shuffling around is easier than kicking out some fools from our seats. Next to us sits shouty woman. She is, ahem, late middle aged, and sits alone, although sometimes it looks like her father sits near to her. She shouts a lot, and has the coarsest tongue around us, and normally disappears mid-way through the second half. A few weeks ago when we spanked Lazio 4-1, she left the ground both times when we had penalties. Strange beast. Others are conductors of the singing and always face the crowd rather than the game. One piece of graffiti I like is "con la voce si vince"- with the voices we win! And of course, because it is Siena there is a random arrangement of dull ordered flag waving every so often. And all this in a stadium of around 15,000!!!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A.C._Siena


Sad news about the crashed liner of the Tuscan coast, more bodies are being recovered one by one from the wreck, and now it is suggested that it cannot be rescued for another 7-10 months, until all the oil is salvaged. The court case continues apace, but now I am reminded of what Riccardo said - on the day after the crash he said that he was not surprised that it crashed, as they always sail too close to the island, so that the passengers can see the sights. If an Italian thought this on reflex, then why has it taken so long for this to come out. OK, the captain was extremely negligent, but it appears that the cruise company was negligent in encouraging, or at they very least, not discouraging this type of behaviour. Vada a bordo cazzi!

Meanwhile, life in Italy continues apace. Recently I had to complete the census. Every ten years there is a census in Italy, and the fine for not completing it is somewhere in the region of €1000 per person. Of course, it is completely unintelligible, and almost impossible to fill it in online. Finally I managed to do it but really it was a pain in the proverbial and I have no real idea what I signed. I'm sure it must have been more organised than the UK one though.

In the world of vaccines, a strange story crept out this week, about the need for teenage boys, as well as girls, to be vaccinated with the HPV vaccine due to the risk of getting throat cancer approximately 20-30 years after picking it up

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2089777/Calls-teenage-boys-vaccinated-sexually-transmitted-virus-alarming-rise-throat-cancer.html?ITO=socialnet-twitter-mailonline

On Saturday we had dinner with some friends. On our way to their place we had the double team of pleasure - we saw not only a porcupine but a badger too! Awesome!!

On other fronts, work had finally become too much, and I offered my resignation at the end of last week, sadly it wasn't accepted, just yet, but we have hope!

Other exciting things that have caught my eye recently:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16426024
Fashion firm La Redoute launched an advert campaign with young children and completely missed the naked man in the background of the picture!!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16446239
A Vietnamese man had a 90 kg tumour removed!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/howaboutthat/8982958/99-year-old-divorces-wife-after-he-discovered-1940s-affair.html

An Italian couple are to become the world's oldest divorcees, after the 99-year-old husband found that his 96-year-old wife had an affair in the 1940s.

And finally an update on James Cracknell.
http://road.cc/content/news/49043-olympic-champion-rower-james-cracknell-switches-cargo-bike-after-driving-licence
When I worked in Chiswick I used to see him driving around in this huge old BMW so seeing him in a bike would be strange. It must be tough on the guy, hope he gets something out of it.