We're living la Dolce Rita

DEPRESSED at the news that the manufacturer of Airfix models had gone bust (no grandson of mine will now ever enjoy the vicarious thrill of filling a plastic Messerschmitt BF 109E with petrol, setting fire to it and throwing it out of the attic window while shouting "Gott in Himmell!"), I cleared off to Italy for a week to recuperate.

Perched in a very nice villa on top of a mountain I decided that a period of abstinence was necessary to prepare me for the trials and tribulations of the last days of the Blah Empire, so I was determined to avoid any news from home. No foreign copies of the Daily Mail, no flicking through the satellite channels in search of Sky News (although searching for programmes featuring stripping housewives was allowed) and no mobile phone. And it worked - to a point.

You see, news is now such an international language that it’s hard to escape its all-embracing grip. It started with the dogs. I should explain: the soundtrack of the Ligurian mountains is a chorus of chainsaws, scooters and dogs. At any time of the night or day you can always hear one of them in action.

The dogs work as a team. One will start barking far down the valley and gradually others join in. By the time the rabid hound in the villa next door has started hurling itself against the chain-link fence, the noise has grown into a constant howl. And it was through this medium that I started to receive messages from home. Don’t ask me how it works; it just did.

“The Sikh servant on the Camp coffee label has been allowed to sit down alongside his master,” howled the dogs. “Fred Elliot drops dead on his Coronation Street wedding day. “And you forgot to record the new series of The Sopranos, you numbskull.”

Occasionally a donkey would join in, usually with news of Gordon Brown.

I tried to explain this phenomenon to the wife, but only received a strange look and a comment about how badly I’d needed the break. Listen, if it’s a good enough way of rescuing missing Dalmatian puppies, it’s good enough for me.

SO THIS villa shared a pool with the house next door and there I was the other morning, doing a few lazy laps, when this Italian bloke came out and stood watching me. He was slim, muscular and had his hair seriously Brylcreemed (or hair-gelled for you younger readers). He was the colour of Ron Atkinson’s missus and was wearing a pair of those Speedo things. And a sneer … a real snidey sneer.

I suppose you can’t really blame him. He sees this flabby, fifty-something, pasty-faced English bloke in greying boxers, trying to keep his fag dry while doing the breast stroke, and immediately sees himself as superior in every way. Except I was of sterner stock; the grandson of a Monte Cassino veteran.

So I flicked my ash in the pool, gave this fella the Hard Look and watched him just melt away. Back in the house, still searching for the stripping housewives, I came across a documentary marking the fact that it was 63 years to the day since the Italians surrendered in the Second World War…

THE Ligurian coast is where Dante wrote much of his masterpiece The Divine Comedy, the epic poem that is regarded to be the first major work of the Renaissance, in which he detailed at length the nine Circles of Hell.

Having experienced the nightmare that is the car hire desk at Pisa airport, I can quite understand this. One hour, 50 minutes to fly from England; two and a half hours to get the keys to the pre-booked, pre-paid Fiat Punto. There were hundreds of Tuscan tourists, rapidly falling out of love with the Italy that they’d been lauding at dinner parties for the past 50 weeks. The Tenth Circle, if ever there was one. And that was without the men wearing those appalling three-quarter length trousers and sandals with socks.

DID I tell you that I’d been on holiday? One thing the Italians get right is food, and I was delighted to find that a local speciality was Ravioli di lardo di Colonnata. That’s ravioli (not from a tin) stuffed with … wait for it … lard. Yes, lard. Not the vile Polish stuff that you get down your local Aldi, but real proper lard, cut from the back of an acorn-fed pig and so revered that they throw the meat away and just keep the fat.

We’ll not even mention the kilo block of top quality Parmesan smuggled back in the hand baggage (£4) or the fantastic fennel bulbs (90p) that put the domestic version to shame.

SO THERE we are at the ridiculously overcrowded airport on the way home. Over a thousand white, middle-aged, middle class English couples, waiting for their cheapo flights home. And one, solitary, 20-year-old Moroccan lad, who chose to come and sit next to me. Not only that, he then began muttering to himself, quietly wailing, holding his head in his hands and obsessively tying and retying his shoelaces.

Every single liberal eye in the terminal was turned upon us, suspicion as naked as it comes. So what do you do? I engaged him in schoolboy French and asked him where he was flying to. It turned out to be Rome, and his plane had been delayed by a “technical fault”.

End of story. He wasn’t on my flight, so I didn’t give a toss if he was wearing dynamite shoes or not.

THE HEALTH and Safety Nazis have had a stormer, with the city council in Bristol deciding to ban doormats in tower blocks because they pose a “tripping risk” in the event of a fire. Consequently, anyone not remove these lethal items from their doorsteps by Monday face immediate confiscation action from the Doormat Police.

Have you been to Bristol? Trust me. You’re more likely to be shot dead by a crack-dealing Yardie than you are to trip over an errant doormat. Good to know that someone, somewhere, has got their priorities right.

THIS MAY seem harsh, but if you’re living in Manchester’s Moss Side on a road known as Wild Western Street because of the incidence of shootings, you could do better than call your son Jesse James.

I am also bound to ask what this poor 15-year-old lad, whose brother is currently doing time for firearms offences, was doing out on his bike at 2.40am. An early paper round, perhaps?

O The views of Mr Beelzebub are purely personal and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the Editor or staff of this website, of anyone not rejoicing at the news that Bovril has returned to using beef stock again, of anyone who can understand why a blind driver (and we're talking no eyes at all here) has been ordered by a court to take a driving test as part of his sentence, or of anyone who thinks that fining cyclists £2,000 for not having a bell on their bikes is unreasonable. Let's face it, if the bastards weren't riding on pavements, there'd be no need, would there?