I was interested to read the opinions of an Italian girl on living in English houses during her study stay in the UK.
“For study purposes I stayed in traditional English houses, in different cities as well as in London. Always bad experiences. Flats with low ceilings and narrow and steep stairs, very small rooms, windows without shutters (I had to place a towel on them to have some privacy) separate kitchenette and dining room which involved a continuous to and froing, fitted carpeting everywhere, including the bathrooms, often with even more carpets on top (I am also allergic to dust mites).
In the bathrooms there a bidet does not exist (!) and in the bathroom fixtures the taps were apart, so hot or cold water came out separately. There was no shower in the bathtub, so I had to buy an accessory which, connected to both taps, allowed the water to flow into a tube ending in a hand shower.
In short, I’ll stop here, I’ll leave out the area of hygiene; on the other hand, where dishes are soaped and left to dry without first rinsing them, we cannot have high expectations…”
I realize I may become somewhat unpopular with several segments of the local bagni di Lucca community in saying this but I have to confess that, putting to one side the really good relationships we have managed to achieve during the almost twenty years we have been involved with the area the ghastliest encounters we’ve experienced have been with – yes some have guessed it – people emanating from the British Isles!
It’s not just a question of meeting the wrong sort of ‘ex-pat’ as several of these refugees from Ultima Thule like to call themselves. Many people we have met have had the benefit of a university education and some even have degrees from Oxbridge colleges. No, stereotyped education aspects have little to do with this dislike. I don’t really care if they studied at Cambridge Uni or Cambridge Tech. Indeed some of the unpleasantest Brits I have met in this otherwise ‘happy valley’ have reams of their translations of mediaeval hagiography under their monkish robes which they sell off at grossly inflated prices.
Taking those prima Donnas who pride themselves on their knowledge of psychoanalytic labyrinthology they appear to have precious little understanding of human nature and probing deeper into their past reveal chasms of astounding phobias mixed with a considerable dose of contempt for the native inhabitants, particularly as they display themselves in the local bars. Little thought here too of that ghastly hyena laugh so full of nervousness and hypocrisy that distinguishes bipeds from north of ‘La Manica’.
Last but not least, to say nothing of those who profess to have strategies for managing disruptive behaviour in inner-city multi-ethnic schools and then display their skills in their stay in small communities by associating with criminal elements (like J, but I anticipate) and importing as their partners the most objectionable of pseudo-professional leaders paid by us to supposedly represent us but who are quite unable to see through the most elementary of situations.
Professions and careers can be almost absurd in their outcomes. I have come across ex-police officers from the UK settling in these regions who display true humanistic sentiments (one even runs an engaging yoga class) and those who display (eventually, it must be stated) the most unbelievably gross behaviour towards oneself with the result that only now can one begin to fully understand the horrors of such situations as are under investigation by the Met these days.
So intelligence or degree of education serves little in separating the obstreperous figures in Bagni di Lucca’s English refugee community. Neither does profession. And certainly ‘pleasantness’ and ‘sociability’ do not immediately mark people’s negativeness (or even hypocrisy) here. However, there are three features which I feel combine together almost inevitably to distinguish those persons who (at least for me) are singled out for one hundred percent personal avoidance. These three features are (not in any particular order of priority):
Italian language skills.
Attitude towards Brexit.
Amount of family relations of Italian heritage.
I inevitably find the ghastliest Brits around here have Italian language skills that would barely enable them to order a Cappuccino in a local bar (indeed some say they don’t need to learn the language) , that they are, furthermore, acolytes of the leaver faction cult in that infamous 2016 referendum and, finally, that they have absolutely no relative of Italian heritage, even if that heritage may be marked from two or three generations.
I intend to write down some of the horror stories that have happened to us here in ‘il bel paese’. These occurrences have nothing to do with local corrupt officials, dodgy estate agents, or even La Mafia (although the Tafia may have something to say here). No, they have nothing to do with these things but are entirely due to hypocritical British brexitian bigots living (at least partly) in this otherwise utterly enchanting and enchanted part of the earth’s globe.
Indeed, I think the time has come for me to write a short account of some of the things that have happened to me (and to Sandra, my wife) during the sixteen years I have been making Longoio my main home.
Let’s start with this little sick tale in our Decameron of events here. May a plague strike him too!
The English couple who once owned the house near Longoio’s wood yard had, for some odd reason, their water meter and supply tap near the village’s little church near my house. They would have to dig a hole to get to it and read it. One day they forgot to fill in the hole after they had read the meter. E’s brother G noticed this and asked me, as an English speaker, whether I would ask the couple if they could please fill in the hole. I went to their house and was met with some coldness when I gave them G’s message. ‘Please don’t shoot the messenger’ I said in response.
A couple of days later I was returning to my house from the village car park after having attended the local choir rehearsal (I sing bass). At the top of the path going up I was suddenly confronted by an English neighbour J. who seemed very angry and approached me rather aggressively. Apparently the couple with the water meter hole had complained to J. about me. I turned round and tried to reach my house but found that I was being chased by J. Behind J. was his wife who appeared to be trying to stop him. I was now next to E’s house and shouted out ‘E. aiuto! (help)’. At this point J. cornered me and put his hands round my neck. Luckily E. heard me and came out of his house. He said to J. (In Italian) ‘stop it. It’s not a very nice thing to do.’ At this point J’s wife burst into tears. I managed to free myself from J’s clutch and got home.
The next morning I decided to go to the Carabinieri to make a denuncia. I had been lucky in my life never to have been assaulted by anyone and now felt unsafe. At the Carabinieri, however, I also found J. I don’t know why he was there but I think it was because he felt I would be making a denuncia against him. Anyway I thought (unwisely as it turned out) that we could settle matters between ourselves without me having to make a denuncia. J. apologised for his aggression towards me. I accepted his apology and that seemed to be the end of the matter.
However, J. continued to act in a very surly matter towards me every time we met. He acted in a similar manner towards the various friends I had invited to stay with me to to the extent that they avoided his house and took a different route through the village. (He was still living in the village then and only moved out after 2009).
A police detective inspector from Essex, W., came the following year for a summer stay at his house in Longoio which is situated between my place and E’s. Relations between us seemed cordial but I noticed W. was a friend of J.
One day W. said to me that he didn’t want the road in front of his house turned into a parking lot so would I please take my scooter away from the road and park it down by the little church. At first I obliged but then thought ‘this isn’t W’s road. It’s public property. I can park here if I want to.’ (In fairness J. was of the same opinion as me).
I returned to parking my scooter in the road by W’’s house and relations soured between him and me. W. was also in the habit of using the road as an extension to his house which has no garden. He would put out deckchairs in the middle of the road and he and his partner (who he since married) would disport themselves in beachwear in a public place. (I should say that, especially in a village like Longoio, this is considered impolite. Beachwear should only be worn on the beach or in a private garden according to local opinions.)
In 2012 W. assaulted me pressing me against the entrance to my property. This event was witnessed by W.’s wife (who, incidentally, hailed from seminal UKIP territory) and a guest who said to W. ‘leave off. You have to think of your blood pressure.’ I am uncertain about the reason for the assault.
This time, however, I’d learnt my lesson and later I made a denuncia.
In the summer of 2013 I returned to Longoio after having attended the end of term lunch with the students of the University of the Third Age of which I am a member of the teaching staff as a lecturer.
Later that year I was delivered a summons from Lucca court of Justice which stated that according to W. I had stolen a window blind lying on the road waiting for repair by W. on the very day that I was at the end-of-term lunch and that I was to attend Court on the grounds of my theft of a window blind for the purposes of ‘getting profit by selling it’. The letter also stated that W. was in the process of obtaining a search warrant from the Police to search my property. (My property was never actually searched).
I could not believe what I was reading. However, I did seek the help of a solicitor (the girl friend, as it happened, of one of my ex-students at a college in Castelnuovo). The hearing kept on being delayed because the Court was unable to get W. to attend in Lucca.
Finally, at the beginning of 2015 W. turned up for a hearing at the central justice courts in Lucca and was asked whether he wanted to proceed with the case. ‘Of course’ he said, ‘right down the line’. With W. were J. and his wife who was acting as interpreter in the case. Apparently, she had also helped out in writing W”s accusations against me at the Carabinieri. I though her presence there was odd as interpreters have to be legally authorised and certified to act on behalf of Court attendees. (Could she have been aiding and abetting?).
The main hearing came towards the end of 2015. I obtained witnesses from Longoio and from Bagni di Lucca. Also some English and Italian friends attended to give me moral support.
The case was dismissed and I was found not guilty (‘assolto’) of the crime of stealing a window blind from the public road. The judge wondered why such a petty case had been upheld instead of being thrown out immediately by the public procurator. He felt that a reason was because W. was a member of the British Police so that the Italian authorities could not turn a blind eye to his accusations.
Everything seemed to have quietened down until, three years after the original accusation, in 2016 W. appeared for the first time since 2013 with his partner, now his wife A. at Longoio. A. was friendly towards us, ecstatic at finally having married her man, and offered us a drink. But both Sandra and I declined, particularly as W. did not look at all friendly! (Sandra thought that the drinks might have been spiked…).
Shortly after the Ws had left I received a letter from his avvocato to say that would I please pay his legal costs(!) I didn’t, of course, in consultation with my own avvocato.
Unexpectedly, in 2018 I received another letter from W’s avvocato or solicitor requesting me again to pay for his legal costs in the situation. I wrote to the solicitor stating this was quite an unacceptable request given the fact that I had been absolved and that the case had been archived anyway.
In any event, shortly after I had been absolved of the crime of stealing a mangled window blind on a public road, W. threw all his remaining window blinds into the local village dustbin (we did not have differential collections then). My neighbour E. told me about this and I was able to photograph the blinds in the dustbin. Our local carpenter then replaced the discarded blinds with the current grey shutters.
I sometimes lived in trepidation as to what may have happened next. But at the same time I realise that fear must be looked at straight in the face since we have nothing to fear but fear itself.
Three years later we decided to move to our present stand-alone farmhouse well away from any neighbours whether good or bad.and where our major problem from others seems to be from boars who love to dig up our lawns in search of succulent roots.
Anyway so much for some Brits who choose to holiday (if not live) in the comune of Bagni di Lucca. It appears that their most enjoyable vacation activity is not going on mountain walks or attending the carnival but quite otherwise. It is truly a case of the blind literally leading the blind!
One subject constantly recurs among Bagni di Lucca’s facebook pages. Sadly it is not so much to do with the comune’s outstanding natural and historic heritage. As one of Europe’s greatest natural spas Bagni attracted the creme-de-la-creme of the continent’s aristocratic and artistic milieu and apparently did so until something began to happen to it in the second half of the last century. Was it indeed the preliminary to a settlement’s suicide? What eventually resulted was a slow but inexorable decline.
During the almost twenty years I have largely lived in this area, for example, over three-quarters of all shops and catering establishments have closed or moved elsewhere – often to Fornoli, that part of the borough forming its more modern part near to the railway station.
What has caused the decline of this once proud and prosperous town? Some wags have suggested it’s to do with the nature of the inhabitants themselves. Too complacent to do other than rest on the laurels of their past glory-days they seem to spend most of their time squabbling between themselves and arguing about who is responsible (or not) for filling in those country lane pot-holes.
Others suggest that the real reason for the ‘ghostification’ of Bagni is to do with the fact that it has not been able to reinvent itself as a spa town in an age where spas are regarded as rather dated. But even this reason does not hold water. The reopened Bagni Bernabo are proving successful in providing high quality thermal establishment facilities. Canyon Park is offering popular adventure activities in an extraordinary natural environment. Fornoli itself has a spanking new health centre, a redesigned area around the station and a very adequate retail offer.
So what is going wrong and why is it going wrong at Bagni? Is it just the lull before the rescue when the shining knights will ride in and save the beleaguered inhabitants from the fate of utter destitution?
Who knows. However I do know that certain basic facilities largely to do with communications need to be improved. These in my opinion are:
Re-routing of the Via Brennero passing on the other side of the Lima river at Ponte a Serraglio through a tunnel (as planned as far back as 2001) thus avoiding the need for a traffic lights and enabling pedestrianization of the Brennero’s former through-town route. (Remembering that pedestrianization is a major incentive to inner town regeneration).
A fully functioning tourist office with wide-reaching facilities for information, bookings and other facilities.
Re-localisation of heavy industries (esp those paper mills) to an area outside the comune in order to reduce traffic and preserve air quality. It may be remembered that in the budding Italian economic ‘miracle’ of the 1950’s and 1960’s there was a certain disparagement of tourism in these parts in favour of industrial development which was held to hold the definitive key to the future.
Closer involvement of the population with local government. It’s sad but true that for many people interaction with the decisions of the wider world stops at their garden gates. Certainly for foreigners who visit their holiday homes largely during the summer period it may not seem too important to be involved with local politics but then they can’t complain if things are not up to what they expect. It may be fine to know all that’s going on in Amersham Parish Council and know nothing about what’s projected for Bagni di Lucca especially if one has not taken advantage of the excellent facilities here for learning Italian or because one has one’s television channels constantly tuned to Sky instead of the amazingly informative local NOI stations.
Whatever it is whether it be the description of Bagni inhabitants described as mildewed dowager duchesses constantly back-biting on each other and moaning about the loss of the family silver or whether the government is to blame for everything or whether it’s going to take a long time to deal with post-covid doldrums or Putin war tantrums one thing is certain: it is the responsibility of each one of us, whether permanent or occasional residents, of this beautiful part of Italy so rich in natural and cultural wonders to open that garden gate and become more fully informed and aware of those issues which will decide one way or the other Bagni di Lucca’s future as a viable, attractive and enjoyable place to visit and even live in – and help the town (at least) from committing suicide…
