The Italian habit of phoning

The Italian habit of phoning, announcing only their name and asking “You remember me?”, is somewhat disconcerting. Thousands of names flash past in seconds and hundreds of faces. “Errrrhhhhh”, one hesitates, hoping for a small clue. “Surely you remember me?” insists this unknown voice. “Mmmmmmmm, help me”, I ask, “Was it to do with property, the guesthouse, the soldiers, the films………………”, the list goes on and on. Then they usually relent, and give the background. “Yes, of course, now I remember.” I lie, “you must excuse me but with the dozens of people coming and going each week, and at my age………..”.

Even worse are those that telephone and say “You don’t know who this is, do you ?”, to which, perhaps rather rudely, I say “No, I don’t”.

I really don’t mind playing games, it’s just that I like to have some notice before they begin!

The sweet corn in our area has now been gathered in by huge shark toothed machines that cut the stalks, separate the corn on the cob, take the corn pellets off and shoot them into a waiting truck and discard the cobs back to the land for rotting down and providing nutrients for next year.
The corn in this zone is only used for animal feed, for pigs and chickens, as it is a very hard variety, and the ones we once “scrumped”, were useless as popcorn. Other varieties of corn however, when dropped into hot fat explode into real popcorn and with salt or sugar make a wonderful and entertaining snack. Here in the local dialects we call them “spose” the “brides” became of the extravagance of frothy white, and the the vivacity and the pleasure brought to the everyone.
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