Dante’s Beach, Ravenna
The youngest of our six children, Giuseppe, nine, received the Eucharist for the first time on Sunday. He and the other 12 new communicants looked angelic in their white robes. They all had impressive wooden crosses hanging from their necks and the five girls had wreaths of tiny flowers in their jet-black hair. Once Don Mauro had finished dispensing the Body of Christ, the bells peeled as if a wedding had taken place. There followed a pleasant open-air lunch by the sea and I wondered: ‘Is it better to live in Italy or Britain?’
Certainly, society is less fractured here. The weather is more helpful to both body and soul and the food is effortlessly superior, despite all the delusional British bragging about the amazing results of fancy fusion.
Italy, yes, is a great place to live – but it’s an awful place to work. Employers avoid proper contracts at all costs as that would mean shelling out on ‘extras’ such as tax and national insurance and paying a living wage. Last summer, the Venezuelan woman in charge of the restaurant by the beach where our middle daughter, Magdalena, 17, was a waitress failed to cough up the pittance she’d agreed to pay. But Magdalena and her mother, Carla, were too timid to cause a scene.
‘Basta!’ I bellowed manfully. ‘Your mentality is why the Mafia exists.’ Risking not just the wrath of Carla but a heart attack, I stormed off to confront the Venezuelan myself with Magdalena in tow. I told the woman that the wages she owed my daughter were anyway those of a slave and that her sister, a lawyer, would be interested.
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