A bit of help from the locals

Today was overcast and we had an afternoon storm as I was driving back from the supermarket in Velletri. A lot of rain fell in a short time and the Velletri to Giulianello road was flooded in the low spots. There was a hell of a lot of water pouring onto it.

I had a beauty at the Carrefour supermarket here in Giulianello tonight. I have all the ingredients for making pasties tomorrow, including the pastry. The one thing I couldn’t find anywhere else was lard for the pastry. Roberto in the general store didn’t have any (he has got me talking Italiano to him because he has got no Inglese) so now I try to go prepared and I use Google translate a bit. Anyhow we spent some time working out what I needed and we must have been doing fairly well because at last he said “grasso” and I looked it up on Google and it said “fat” so now we knew we were onto something. No he didn’t have it but suggested that the local Carrefour would have it. I went down there with some conviction and did over all the fridges and the shelves looking for all the things that Google told me to look for, including “grasso”. Anyhow I found something that looked as though it could be it. It had “grasso” in the ingredients and it was in the fridge wedged between the burro and the Philadelphia cheese. I took it to the checkout and asked the redhead whether this was “lardo” – which Google assured me was Italiano for lard.

The redhead was non-plussed and called her 25 year old son who, she assumed, being young, would know some Inglese. He quickly told his mum that he knew no more than she did whereupon she probably pondered upon the wasted time and money in sending him to school for ten or so years!

Anyhow, in typical Italiano style the redhead put out an alert to all in the supermarket for someone with some Inglese. The first one proved to be a dud but then she saw a lady who she was pretty sure spoke Inglese. She was correct – the signora was fluent in Inglese “Yes, what is it that you want?” she asked.

I told her that I was planning to make pastry and I needed lard and was wondering whether the stuff in my hand would do the job. She politely explained that what I needed was, in fact, lard and that the stuff I had would definitely NOT do what I wanted. So she explained that the lard (sure enough, as per Google, “lardo” in Italiano) was kept under security in the fridge at the back of the store behind the ladies who served in the Deli. Presumably it is regarded as far too valuable to have out where the public could get it. It needed to be under guard in the manned deli section.

So I approached the ladies in the deli – who saw me coming and said “Fuck – it’s the Australiano” whereupon the younger one made a bee-line for the preparation room (as she always does when I approach) leaving the senior signora, about my age, to front and find out how she could help me this time. I started off in a manner to give her some comfort: “Buona sera signora” and she asked me how helpful she could be and I (wanting to keep things uncomplicated) simply said “Lardo, grazie”. She asked again, and I repeated. She asked a few more times and I responded. So then she got on the usual store communications system (ie she yelled out to the other end of the supermarket) for the redhead whereupon the whole line of people at the checkout (who had been very interested in all the goings on) all yelled out in unison “Lardo!” whereupon the signora understood that, in fact, I had been speaking Italiano all this time and NOT Inglese!

They are beauts these locals. They all assume that I can only speak English and when I do try to parli on their terms it throws them right off.

I also learned another useful lesson – the lard is a product of MEAT so it is kept in the MEAT section of the supermarkets – NOT, as I had wrongly assumed, in the dairy section! See what happens when you learn to cook – it opens up a whole new way of looking at things.

Speaking of communication I think I am making headway with the door maker who lives next to the bar – the fellow who fixed the porta entrata last summer.

As you know he, like the redhead, and Roberto, and everyone in the village for that matter, has bugger all Inglese and he’s the type that thinks that I’ll cotton on with the benefit of repetition and sheer volume of the parli.

The cantina door is euchred, as you know, and I have a heap of quotes to replace/repair it. Corrado is rather keen to upgrade it to complement the timber entrata so I have been getting quotes for that. Now the local man used to make solid timber doors as his profession prior to semi retirement so I naturally thought it would be worth our while to get him to give me a price (presuming that we can coax him out of retirement). He is a regular at or near the bar (he has to be! He lives right next door!) so I run into him every day and I explained, in my best Italiano, that the cantina door was buggered and has to be replaced. We want it in timber to resemble the main entrance door.

Now, I admit that my Italiano finds this a bit of a stretch so it is possible that the Professori missed some of the gist but I thought that we had a clear understanding that he would come and check it out “domani” when I could provide a more graphic explanation of my requirements. Three days passed without any sign of the Professori despite the fact that I would see him each late afternoon and renew the understanding about an inspection “domani”. On the third attempt during our reasonably animated discussion it came to me that he was a bit confused. The existing cantina door was made of steel, like all the other cantina doors and he was a timber man, NOT a fabro (steel) man. I explained very carefully that I wasn’t expecting him to take up a new vocation. I simply wanted to change the steel door for a timber one – whereupon, I think, the penny dropped and he made yet another appuntamento, but this time with greater conviction, to come and see “domani”!

You can understand that I was a tad nervous about yet another promise so I suggested that NOW might be a good time to have a look – after all we are talking about a door that is barely 40 metres from where we were standing! He had a very good reason to delay but I could not grasp what the reason actually was. To make it easier for me he simply said “Acqua”. Upon reflection it seems that he might have been referring to the rain that had been falling and he thought it better to await a brighter forecast before venturing the 40 metres with his notebook and steel tape.

We will see what domani brings!

Well, on that note, it’s buona notte time.