A word to the wise:

Nothing works any more in Italy: they’ve given up.

Especially, don’t use another pc beyond your own, or you will need a day’s worth of time (at least) just to log in to something without tits in it. And while you’re on this zero-functional non-u pc

                     don’t try to use Skype, you’ll be able to do anything on the site except (a) call anyone or (b) bring up your contexts

                     don’t even think about getting onto Twitter, it isn’t going to happen in this millennium.

                     don’t try to post at wordpress, as the post will be swallowed up into the black hole that is Italia Avanti! today.

Spartacus had the right idea. It’s a shame he lost.

So on my own computer at last, the story so far….brought forward from yesterday’s eleganti failures:

As part of my ongoing background research into ClubMed reality (based on having undergone foregoing research into the once fine City State of Athens) I have been driving around Italy quite a bit this week. This has forced me to face a number of issues I did not set out to address, although some of these addresses may have gone astray, this being Italia mollto moderna.

The following points may be worthy of note, but I am forced by the forthcoming Blogosphere Regulation Authority to point out that noteworthiness can go down as well as up:

1. Why is it that no hotel in Italy has yet mastered the art of making a fridge minibar cold, as opposed to unpleasantly warm? Was there a Universal rule dictated shortly before Big Bang which stated, “Everything Albert Einstein says will be dead right except for Hotel Minibars in Italy, which are an exception to the hot bodies/cold bodies thing”?
2. Is it me, or do 70+% of all Italian digital plastic hotel room keys fail when tried in the equally digital lock? Are such keys to blame for otherwise inexplicably high rates of carpet wear between the hotel door lock, and hotel reception?
3. Who singled me out as the person destined to be Man for Whom Technology Will Not Work in Italy? Why do petrol station and peage robots swallow my cards? Why do the f**kwits in charge of petrol stations and peages never have any interest in sticking fingers down robotic throats?
4. Why does nothing at all work in the Italian port of Ancona? Why do signs saying ‘Centro’ lead one down a road at the end of which there is nothing except an industrial estate in which Aliens with funny fingers are herding Close Encounter victims into oddly-shaped space vehicles? Why do aircon systems, ticket-booking sites, Skype, wifi, lavatories, the internet after ninety minutes and traffic lights at all times fail to function there? Is it the Mediterranean equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle….the Berlusconi Parallelogram, perhaps?

But setting all that paranoia aside, I do more seriously need to confirm an allegation that has been plonking into my email box at regular intervals in recent weeks. It is this: Italy is falling apart. Although under far less duress than Greece, Ireland or Portugal, it seems to me that the average Italian has surrendered in true Captain Corelli style. And let’s be real about this, most of the special Italians are either way about which way is up as well.

Do I say this out of some kind of misguided belief in the superiority of all things Anglo-Saxon? No, I do not. I reach that conclusion because everyone ignores the speed limits, half the petrol stations are closed, none of the service area loos work, formerly inefficient but clean cheap hotels are mainly scruffy and well below the standard suggested online, and – this is a very bad sign – the prime spot in the morning TV news sector is Your Stars.

When I first spotted this two days ago, I laughed out loud at breakfast – and was treated to malevolent stares from the inmates, sorry, guests. It was as if I was a heathen who had dared to prick the bubble of belief. I am here to tell you, the nation that horoscopes together is the nation suffering from synchronised brain leakage through the nose and ears. Also perhaps through the belly-button, arse and toenails.

But this is the clincher: the Italian word for ‘level’ or ‘floor’ is piano.

Can you beat that? The Italians are a nation of people fully adept at playing floor concertos and level sonatinas. It is a miracle.

Equally disturbingly, from Bologna to Rimini, the once smart and rather shy North Italian teenagers of yesteryear now seem to me ill-mannered and yobbish. The boys are loud and tedious, the girls sullen, slovenly Lolitas. They all wear a uniform of poor-quality, ill-fitting textiles that show too much flesh, too little taste, or far too much makeup.

Much of it is redolent too of that other long-gone empire now known as the Disunited Kingdom of my birth. The geeky Italian beanpoles I remember in 1970 when I first came here have been replaced by flabby kids growing more than adequately into obesity. Their fathers are already there, yet somehow proud to show a stomach expanding over garish swimming shorts, like a snail wobbling at the edge of a psychedelic abyss,

Many people will of course dismiss these observations as the disturbed ramblings of an old git hiding his innate racism behind another grumble about falling standards. Let them do so: empirical observation will always remain a powerful weapon; especially when judged against behavioural norms going back seven dceades.

I write this heading for the gangplank. It is the only safe way. And an incredible relief to be going somewhere else. Anywhere else.

I was about to publish this when the hotspot died. I was, literally, two seconds away. Here goes again….ooooooooowaaaahoooo….