Today and tomorrow are election days for the local councils and city mayors in southern Italy. Next week, there's a referendum on nuclear power (I think we know which way that’s going to go – this is earthquake country folks). Reading the pledges and promises from the various candidates it struck me I'm not a visitor any more. I'm a registered voter.
All week there has been a fascinating battle going on in the streets: the poster wars. When you retire for the night your house will bear the image of one politician, only for it to have been redecorated by the morning with one of his opponent’s.
Coming home after pizza with friends last Thursday – well after midnight – I stumbled upon a small army of men, running up and down streets, chasing each other with step ladders. No sooner had one climbed down from plastering a poster on the side of a wall another would sneak out from the shadows and overlay it with two more.
There are at least a dozen different parties and fifty or so candidates for each district so the fly poster business is doing quite well. I wanted to hang around for the inevitable moment when two or more poster-boys turned the same corner from different streets and came face to face. Would they whistle to themselves as they, nonchalantly, passed each other by? Or would they draw glue-brushes and charge at each other, ladders poised like lances? Sadly, Maria was tired so I couldn’t stay to watch.
I’m not sure what the local issues are but I’m pretty sure that Pellaro must be a key marginal seat. In the last week all the rubbish has vanished and we’ve had an entire road resurfaced for the first time in living memory. This miraculous event brought everyone out to drive up and down, just to enjoy the smooth pot-hole-free experience.
I shouldn’t be flippant though. The national issues are serious and immediate. There's the situation in Libya and the waves of North African refugees that land on our shores daily, unwanted by the French and English who have done so much to encourage them – thanks guys. The economy. And another promise to crack down on the Mafia, always a vote winner. In the background, as usual, our Prime Minister is trying to convince the masses that there’s a communist plot to take over the judiciary and that the “slightly-left-of-centre-left-liberals” are really Taliban insurgents bent on ousting him from power.
I was introduced to an eminent Italian journalist at a party last week and we started talking about the forthcoming election. Maria told him I did a bit of blogging.
“Really?” he said. “What do you write about?”
I explained that my blog was a gentle view of life in the South of Italy for the folks back home. They know a lot about Tuscany but not much seems to be written about Calabria.
“What do you say about the Mafia?” he asked.
I said, “Not much.”
He turned and stared at me for a moment then shook his head.
“How can you possibly write about life in Calabria and NOT talk about them!”
He was right. I’ve been doing my best to avoid the subject. But whether I ever write about them or not, I have begun to realise that, unfortunately, life’s not all sun-dried tomatoes and Latte di Mandorla.
First things first though. Tomorrow I find out find who won the poster wars.
Charles Winning is a Scot and Blue's guitarist who has started a new life in Southern Italy. You can follow his adventures in this largely ignored part of Italy on his blog, Winning Over Italy
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