How to get ahead in Tuscany

Thursday, 29th June 2006

In my early days as a Tuscan, desperate to clamber up as fast as ever I could, I conducted an experiment (on the off chance that it might be my blondeness that caused shopkeepers to greet me with their best ‘What can I get you, madam?’). Though it was almost 100° in the shade and all the Italians had taken refuge in Sardinia, I drove to Lucca wearing stilettos and a tight skirt. I curled my hair and retouched my lipstick all day. ‘Buongiorno, Signora’ all round and immediately on to the next rung.

So when one has acquired the property and the look, it is really a question of maintaining one’s levels of contempt for one’s less successful compatriots. I met a fellow Brit down at the glorious open-air pool in B—– recently. He was taking his child to an indoor swimming lesson. ‘Evening, Bob,’ I said. (To say anything but ‘good evening’ after 2.30 in the afternoon is unspeakably crass in Tuscany.)

‘Buona sera,’ he replied. Then he got on his mobile phone and was telling someone how there was nobody at the pool yet because it was too cold. ‘Well, apart from a few huddles of English people, you know.’

For even when it is still too cold for any Italians to go out in a bikini (under 30 degrees) the tourists are smothering their poor, skinny, pale kids with white sunblock, straitjacketing them into long-sleeved protective wet suits and making them wear hats with neck-covering equipment flapping around behind. Never mind the shabby towels and last year’s swimming costumes.

And, finally, one must adopt a tone of utter despair when speaking of the continuing invasion (in which we ourselves, naturally, have played no part). ‘Do you think there are more than there were when we came?’ I ask Jenny, bowing to her impressive decade of prosecco-swilling.

‘Oh God, yes,’ she said, picking a bay leaf idly off a bush. ‘It’s getting worse and worse...’.