Memoirs of London - 2

The next Monday I started working for Emilio’s Pizza Factory. The factory was set in Farringdon, East London, somewhere in Smithfield Rd, if I’m not wrong. We made packaged pizzas for big markets, Sainsbury, Tesco, things like that, if you know what I mean. The staff was all made by a small group of Egyptian Copts, a bunch of Italian guys, an old Portuguese named Pinto (who was often kidding the Egyptians in a mixed of Portuguese and   English but  spoken  with marked Iberian pronunciation ) and a retired old Easter Londoner, who was able to mark with  three or four fucking  a speech of five or six words. It was him that I first started with my job that Monday of August 1977. Our duty was to cut the cheddar cheese (which took the place of Italian soft mozzarella in packaged pizzas, and not only, as I quickly learned in London) and send it upstairs, through the lift.

-“ Fuck you, and fucking shut, ‘you know, the fucking door!” he used to shout from

underground space, in order to call the elevator and send the cheese up.

The cheese was kept in a large fridge, down there. Old Jim (that was his name) didn’t allow me to get in the fridge. He did, all the time. It was stocked in big packages of fifty pounds. We were busy on cutting them, by means of wooden handles sharp iron,  on strict, long  slices to be shred in the electric grater before to be sent upstairs on big plastic hampers.

Upstairs there was the production chain.

In a large electric mixer they put flour, yeast, salt and water. After an hour and a half the kneading was ready. Then it had to be pressed to obtain a plain leaf from which they made a circles of five inches diameter. With a trolley they had taken and put in the oven for about ten, fifteen minutes. With the same trolleys, after the baking,  a boy took them

on the assembly chain where the round pizza was flavored with tomatoes juice, cheese and some spices ( besides the plain pizza, we made mushroom and yellow or red pepper’s). In the end we put a brown preservative powder (the only ingredient we avoid when, at lunch time, we made our own pizzas). Finally they were wrapped in cellophane with the seller’s mark, and good appetite.

We went on that way from height  a.m. till 4 p.m..

At that time I had a thick beard and I talked to none, a part those few words with Jim, needed for unroll the work.

When later, I made friendship with the Italian colleagues, they  confess had thought I was a sort of fugitive man, hiding himself to escape from someone or something.

As a matter of fact I was just escaping from myself, and  I was too shy and insecure to make friendship easily.

After a couple of months I asked the boss to go upstairs and he wanted to please me.

2.     To be continued…

Memoirs of London - 1

1.

The first time I went to London it was in 1977. A long time ago. I still remember the day I landed at Heathrow airport. It was the day Elvis Presley died. I remember from my bus, in the endless one which was to lead me to Victoria Station (according to my ticket bus), the supporter’s march in honor of the great song singer from Memphis. They held in their hands signs of their idol: “Elvis will never die” or “Elvis forever”, “You still live in our hearts” and things like that.

I was a young man full of hope and sorrow, at that time. I was going to London to forget an unrequited  love; or maybe I was just searching for something I had not found yet.

I had at present left my university’s studies, with no money, no job, no love at all. Lonely as a stone can be.

I had not been really very fond of Elvis; surely much more of Jimy Hendrix; Elvis was a too controversial myth at my eyes; a great singer of course, I wouldn’t say he was not; but sometimes I felt like he had been exploited by the American industry of success; that kind of business able to create (and also destroy, if they wanted) any kind of myth, any kind of star; ‘you know? That sort of star’s system victim like Marylin Monroe or James Dean. I was quite a critic of capitalism at that time.

But indeed I had already too many problems by my own to be a critic of anything.

I only had an address on my pocket, of a friend of mines who had previous gone to London and I was in contact with. Through this friend I was introduced in an Italian Grocery, in King’s Cross Road. I’ve recently there. Where the shop was there’s now only an insignia, covered by dust, left. I found good help in there. A friend of the owner, a good marchigian guy who sold Italian hams, cheese and other special Italian food, found me a job in a pizza’s factory, somewhere in Farringdon Rd. And George himself, I mean the marchigian shopper, found me a place to sleep in: a room in Keystone Crescent, just around the corner his shop, where I was charged with 5 pound fee per week while in the factory my first wage was a good 40 weekly wage’s pounds .

Not too bad for a beginner.

1.     To be continued…

Money, health and law

As anybody else I have suffered watching Charlie Gard's hospital pictures.
 Who can say what kind of world there is behind those closed eyes?
And why does he tight so strongly his little hands?
Nevertheless I wondered, as a man and as a lawyer, why his life was going to be stopped against his parent's will.
The High Court's sentence has given me the right answer.

 The GOSH (Great Ormond Street Hospital) made an application  to the High Court in order to know if it were lawful for the hospital to withdraw the expensive  artificial machines which keep Charlie alive. 

The doctors  say in their application that any  decision would be taken, as in the past,  in the best interest of the little boy. 

But still the same question rose on my head: why against the Charlie's parents? 

Why don't they have a say in their boy's life? 

Well, though the good Mr Justice Francis has tried to overlook the issue, I must say that the real origin of the whole affair is the money. 

As a matter of fact if Mr Gard and his wife Connie had had the money to pay the Charlie's expensive treatments, then the hospital would have never applied the High Court. 

They can now mix the cards otherwise but since the beginning it was a matter of money.

And when Charlie's parents rose a fund to transfer their son in USA it was too late:  the voice of law had already spoken.

Nobody would have allowed to make such an application to High Court if little Charlie was not kept alive with the National Health Security's money!

And the bitter truth can't be hidden anymore: You can live only if you the money for! If you can't afford it, you may surely die! In the name of justice!

I'm not saying the High Court's sentence was unfair or, in some way, wrong. That's not the point! It has even appointed a Guardian in the interest of Charlie,  though it was clearly  against the parent's will! And the reasons of the sentence were well balanced; and even drenched of human compassion.

We may talk a long while about euthanasy or about the fair ethic of keeping a live attached to an artificial machine's treatment, but I underlined once again that this is not the focus in Charlie's affair. 

The justice has been promoted in the name of the public interest: with that money we can save more other lives, likely to be saved more than little poor Charlie's.

But how many kind of lives do exist? Are we making a range in the right of living? And wher do we put the equality principle in this heartbreaking affair?

It's difficult to answer only one of these questions. But we cannot hide the truth behind a finger: the law, in this case, has taken the supremacy against life because the lack of money; the poor has been crushed under the obscure formulas of law.

I hope the law finds the courage to step back. 

If they don't want  God saying the  last word, I hope they leave Charlie's parents decide about their own flesh.

London for ever - 9

According to a recent survey, reported by the yesterday's Guardian news, 60% of British people want to mantain the EU rights even through Brexit process.

I'm glad of that for I still believe that UK is part o Europe: forst of all from a cultural point of view; but also economically and historically speaking.

I think that we don't have to be afraid of exalting our differences amid the  European memberships (of course I'm generally speaking now, for I know Brexit is hardly a revoking subject at the moment);

I mean that French, Spanish, Germans, Italians, must proud of their specific characters and they never have to neglect them. 

But all together, with our own peculiar specificity, we need to work for a stronger Europe, to be alble to face the challenges in the next decades. First of all we must fill the space will be left by USA in the world wide scenario. Secondly we have to face the new arising econimies: such a giants like China, Brazil, India, SouthAfrica and even Russia itself can't be faced by UK, Germany or France  on their own.

Further more we need British by our side side, with their language, their culture, their experience.

Please, people of Europe, let fall your walls of suspicion and  forget your dreams of greatness. In the globalized world there is no primary role  for small country, how much  full of ancient glory they might be.

We can make a great empire of Europe, but only all toghether.

Politicians fron all over the Europe, great descendants of great leaders, be worthy of your ancestors, and please keep on dreaming with folk and not by yourselves.

And London is still for ever!

9. to be continued...

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jul/01/poll-european-eu-rights-brexit