Our English Lab

I took part of it, as part of the accusation!
It was 1994, my last year of the high school, so I was studying for the final exams. It was spring and with some friends of mine I went to a newly opened pub in Calenzano, famous for having telephones on every table, to call others. Once there, we sat and had a beer, but the pub was a disappointent for all of us. So, a friend of mine, Nicola, proposed an "adventure" in the countryside. On the hills above Prato there was a ruined building belonging to the very famous "Convitto Cicognini", which venue was now in the center of the city. It was the ex-building. The Convitto Cicognini is a college attended by students of the wealthiest families of Prato.

My friend worked in a yarn store, so his idea was to go there, grab some plastic cones they use, pile them up and wrap the top of this stick, like 2 meters long, with rags dumped in a chemical he had to make things burn slowly. The result was a kind of roman torch that kept burning for hours. With it, we headed to the ex-Cicognini, a place where a lot of student of Prato went to sunbathe during the day. We arrived there at late night, just to exlore and have fun.

It was easy to get into the building. there were no protections at all, no nets. While exploring the bulding I had to stop to wee, so I told my friends to stop, since Nicola, the man with the plan, had the torch so we had to move together. They didn't hear me and went on, so while finishing I was in total darkness. While still closing the zip of my trousers, I sped up behind them, but after a couple of steps I fell into what seemed an empty well. At first I didn't fell at the bottom of it, I was stopped by something I really have never understood what it was. But in the moment, I hadn't realized to have fallen. It seemed to me to have been hit by something falling on my head. When I realized that I had fallen into something and had landed while still standing, I started to call my friends as loud as I could. They hadn't seen that I wasn't with them anymore, so I heard them screaming "there's someone here guys" while panicking.
I called them morons and I told them that it was me and that I had fallen into an opening on the floor. They arrived, and in order to watch inside the pit. The homemade torch started dropping on me a rain of burning pieces of fabric, so I asked them very politely, very calmly, to get that fucking torch off I wasn't far from the edge at that point, so Nicola lied on the floor and hanged his arms to grab me. Bad idea. I tried to hold him tight, but it was inevitable, our hands slipped and I fell to the very bottom of that well, like 6 meters below, and I have been lucky that I only broke my leg, the tibia and the fibula.
So, that "well" as we discovered was actually the empty frame of what once was a wooden spiral staircase. They eventually found the way to go down to the second basement. That stair was two floors deep.
They grabbed me i four and brought me to the hospital, so that summer I have been the last student of Prato to take the exams for the high school degree.

Now, the building was property of the Convitto and they didn't fence anything, as law prescribes. Everybody knew it, since there always were lots of people when bumping school. My father went there the following day to make a video of the premise, showing how it wasn't fenced and how getting inside was easy. And we sued the convitto for leaving this way a place with such a danger inside.

The trial happened to take place in the judge's office, with me, representatives of the convitto and our lawyers. At the end of the story the convitto representatives said that the site was fenced, but that students went there to destroy the fence every week. In the meantime they had fenced everything and the judge didn't accept my father's video because... in the courthouse they did not have a vhs reader, so we ought to have brought photos... assholes.
Moreover, a friend of mine, a journalist who worked at the local newspaper, reported my story saying that... "they were playing hide-and-seek" in the building.
Fucking moron, I called her all the names, but just realized that he, like the judge, could do and report everything she wanted, she was nineteen like me and told me that she had to write something, she just started working... what could I do? Suck it up and go ahead.
In the end we only lost a lot of money and my trust in the system.

Do you eat dairy products, and how often? Which ones do you like, if you do? Do you ever use them with your recipes?

Happy Mother's Day

Thank you Tiberio.

I eat dairy products quite often: I like yogurt, various types of cheese, both fresh and aged. I use ricotta for spinach and ricotta cannelloni, savory pies and some desserts. In addition, I make many desserts with butter, which I also use for pan-fried spinach with milk or for sole “alla mugnaia”. Not to mention the mozzarella that I need especially for pizza or fresh Caprese in the summer.
I rarely cook pasta with four cheeses.

Do you pay attention to the body language (facial expressions, gestures etc)? Are you sensitive to it? Do you think it is important?

... now I'm freaking hungry

In my opinion body language is fundamental, in the short term, to truly get to know a person. Both because it's the main part of the overall communication, and because what is said by words is so fakeable, that the body language is the aspect of communication that is the most difficult to conceal.

Verbal communication is also very important actually i the long term, with a condition: it's not what a person voluntarily says that matters, but the repetition, the choice of the words, recurring topics, the jokes or what people say when they are not thinking, what makes them laugh, the topics that people sistematically avoid. Analyzing these aspects is everything, what a person says when asked is always something about ego, a pose.

In your area, is there some kind of fauna or flora that you remember merrily, but that has disappeared? Do you miss it? Would you like to get more committed in the preservation of the environment in general, if you aren't already? If so, how?

Yes! Is this...

Coloured butterflies! To me they really are just a memory, nowadays!

You love animals Turbo, don't you? Have you had a lot of pets in your life?

Comedy time!

I have two pets: one mutt dog which I adopted when he was a little puppy and now is already 11 years old, and a cat. The dog’s name is Nik: he is black and dopey, but he knows very well what he wants. Before him I had an English setter, white and very clever, because he obeyed all orders. Instead Nik often doesn’t come if I call him. Perhaps he was too young when I adopted him, because his mother didn’t have enough time to teach him several things.
Once he disappeared in a cave when we were walking and remained there for five days and nights without eating or drinking. After my husband rescued him. I think that also this experience affected the dog.

The cat Red was of my daughter, but once she had to go to India for some weeks and left the cat at our house for the holidays. But when she returned and wanted pick him up, Red hid from her and didn’t want to go. So he remained here. Red is very lazy and he sleeps almost all the time.

Do you think that downloading songs and films is illegal and must be punished?

It is illegal for sure in most countries, if not all. I certainly do believe that authors and musicians deserve to be paid appropriately and deserve to be able to live with what they produce. On the other hand, current situation of the market is highly complicated, monopolized by a few companies that let them have a small fraction of the incomes and it is very difficult for the authors to check autonomously if they are really getting what they were promised. I'm not too keen to punish illegal downloading, it would be hypocrite from me. Due to the factual oligopoly and all the deformation in the market, it's a battle that I merrily leave the producers to fight


Do you feel emotionally involved by the weather and its changes? Does it ever make you feel moody? Or are the weather conditions irrelevant for your well-being?
Do you feel repercussions with the change of season and when, if you do?

Questi qui sono dei gran bastardoni!!! Lo dico in lingua madre, che fa più effetto!!!

indeed!...

Bumble, do you know the Monty Python Flying Circus? I love them with all my heart

No, never seen.

Oh, you've got to watch them sooner or later! They changed British television forever!
You might have watched some of their films maybe, "Brian di Nazareth" just to mention one. They became famous with their show, made of short, surreal and irreverent sketches.

This is from "Life of Brian":

O yes, I remember Brian di Nazareth... I will watch them.