I feel like a foreigner again! Many years ago when I first came to Italy, some of my friends had moved to Piedmont and told me there was work for teachers ,so of course Piedmont is my first love, it looked so Italian out of the train windows, those Leonardesque landscapes, or so it seemed to me in my ignorance, and the Italians! It was the best time and place in the world to be a (fairly) pretty young Englishwoman! I think my first train ride was on a train taking all these noisy, tipsy men to some kind of meet-up. All had feathers in their hats and they were very free with their panini and salame, and above all their wine! I realised years later when I could stutter a little more of your language, that they were Alpini, enough said. I was also visited regularly by a very elegant young carabiniere to check I was a bona fide immigrant. Just like they do now. I didn’t like that very much because he had a pistol and being English I was only used to our Bobbies who for years went unarmed.
So to get back to my point. Why do I feel foreign after all these years? Well today was my first outing since the corona virus trouble started! I went to my usual supermarket shepherded by an apprehensive daughter and do you know, I didn’t know how to behave. I don’t have a tv and so I hadn’t heard the oft -repeated messages about distancing, touching etc. Of course my loyalty card is on my phone in ‘Stocard’, as is my shopping list in ‘Bring!’ and I open the phone by thumbprint! Then there was the problem of getting my credit card out of my purse with gloves on! I was very much a stranger in a new land once again!
English that grows 