We had our annual local Community Barbie today, in the local
Community Garden at the bottom of the road, which is a delightful local asset
tucked unobtrusively between some ugly lock-up garages, the railway, and an
inspirational view of the grey wall of the local Lidl. Here’s a picture I took just before people
started to arrive, which doesn’t do it justice but gives a flavour:
You can’t see the wildlife pond behind me (which I helped to
dig fifteen years ago), the free allotments at the railway end where locals
grow and share every conceivable kind of vegetable, from runner beans to exotic
Caribbean squashes; nor the kiddies’ swings, doll’s houses and slides which
over the years have been – I was going to say ‘donated’, but that doesn’t
capture the true spirit of the place – let’s just say ‘put there’, by local
people (some of them probably long moved away), just because they wanted to.
The barbecue was a great success, of course, they always are:
but that’s not what I really wanted to tell you. This is uncanny.
When I’d arrived at about half-eleven to help with setting
things up, there were already a few people who’d decided to have a family
picnic and were doing their own setting-up further down the garden from where
we’d installed our barbies and tables. I
went over and introduced myself, explained what we were up to and suggested
they’d be welcome to come and join in, mingle and use some of the cooking heat. The young man I spoke to told me they’d come
to England last year, loved Reading, were settling in nicely but thought the
streets were too dirty… So they did all
that – cooking, mingling, kids interacting – over the next few hours, but I didn’t actually
get to talk to any of them. For some
reason I’d assumed they were from Poland.
Anyway, as we were tidying up at about four o’clock, someone
told me this extended family (there were over a dozen of them by now, spread
over at least three generations) were in fact Italian. As you may know, I never pass up an
opportunity to practise my rusty (arruginito)
Italian, so I went over again, and introduced myself again, rustily.
Naturally, I was asked how I’d learnt Italian (‘parli ancora molto bene!’), so I explained
how I’d lived in Milan for three years in the late sixties, been in a band, etc
etc. (Here comes the uncanny bit.)
A lady at the far end of the table, who’d been listening
with interest to the conversation but not saying anything, looked up.
“You lived in Milano?”
I nodded. “Where did you live?”
“In a pensione, in Via Lamarmora, near the Duomo,” I told her.
Her mouth opened silently for a moment, then she said:
“I lived in Via Lamarmora before I came to England.” I didn’t want to ask, and I didn’t have
to. “Number seventeen.”
