London for ever - 29

Michelle was a Parisian girl. The two had met in London and had always been together. Her charm was not the ordinary allurement that usually circles  on long-limbed French girls, a bit diaphanous, with the features of their faces eternally ingenuous and gentle.

 It derived instead from her rather cheerful and carefree air, symptomatic of those who can live day by day, with no particular moods linked to sentimental events, work issues, or perhaps existential complications. Much more than her  attitude of disenchanted non-chalance, if not of deliberately informal and countercurrent behavior, it was astonishing the  contrast with the almost serious and formal behavior that Giampiero was going through even more than the hated bourgeois he declared to be still in fight with.

Michelle, on the other hand, was a painter and earned her living by selling her paintings and making portraits in Portobello and the other large London-based large markets; Her attendance allowed Giampiero not to lose all contact with a certain kind of culture and alternative minds, to which, though not in the depths of his being, he had been tied.

– “Whoever does not die,  comes alive, soon or later!” Giampiero said to the phone, returning my greeting, “What have you done all this time?”

– “I found a pub that resembles an amphitheater!” I said laughing- “and tonight performs a Rock band with square balls. What do you say?”

– “I say we were thinking about going down the corner to have a drink; But the idea of ​​a bit of good music would be even better. But where are you? “He asked then translating from English, as he sometimes did speaking Italian.

– “I’m here in Paddington Station, in a newspaper store”.

-” I get it. From Notting Hill is a step away. Wait for me to come. Maybe even with Michelle and a Parish friend who comes to visit us. I’ll see you right away!”

29. to be continued…

London for ever - 28

It was Giampiero who answered at the phone. He was a Ligurian friend I met at Tommaso's home, come to London in the same period of his. With Tommaso he shared the long-standing Italian militancy in the non-parliamentary left-wing groups; the same troubled ideological path: from the confused revolutionary militancy among the Maoists and  Marxist-Leninists to the softer Italian groups of  left ideology, such as the Continuous Struggle, Serving the People and Workers Autonomy.  And after that the gradual but inexorable disillusionment. And even without waiting for the 1977’s  second call, he had withdrawn from his mind all his past, reached London, and set up, licking his wounds  and trying to reconstructing himself and his life. Differently from  Tommaso, Giampiero's ancient political and revolutionary anger had dissolved into London's fog. Nevertheless, though  for the rest of his generation London had been  a bridge to the Oriental philosophy, he had continued on  cultivating  his youthful socialist readings in Italian and in English language; and I did not really despise to spend with him long night-time dissertations at his home,  after dinner, when between his flavoured smoking  pipes and my proletarian selfmade  cigarettes, sunk in a large and comfortable armchair, with disarming but at the same time eye-catching social vision, he still prophesied the  advent of  the power of the proletariat as a unique and inevitable solution to the conflicts of the  counteracting social classes of the capitalist society,  already long-standing in the edge of a fall. And it was so much the strength and security of his arguments that I never  doubted  that Giampiero would hesitate, at the time of the announced socialist victory, to renounce to his good and wealthy position in  a multinational transport company, with the smile of the one who feels, nonetheless, victorious. But what of his bohemian and revolutionary past seemed to survive in him more authentic and strong, was his girlfriend Michelle.

28. to be continued...

London for ever - 25

We cut off Leicester Square  and, through a maze of lanes, we hit the Trafalgar Square. We stopped at the center of the huge square, sitting on the edge of an imposing square fountain, whose tall, wide bushes at moments tickled the mouths of the four mighty stone lions that majestic delimited it at its four corners.

 The sky was cloudy and the warm sunshine dominated the great shining and cheerful square that day, as I had never seen before. Along the benches, arranged at regular intervals throughout its perimeter, some retirees were lovingly launched to hungry doves, crumbling bread crumbs or corn seeds, these bought in small bags, directly on the spot, by some street vendors.

In the sun, the many badges that Nancy, as I had found was named the pretty Irish girl, shone on the faces of his black leather jacket. In addition to the rose he had bought shortly before, there was one that depicted a sort of american-style jolly with a red tongue out; Others reported slogans of youthful movements that were in their favor. One in particular,  struck me more than any other, because it depicted a green leaflet asking for "legalize marijuana".

"Do you like to smoke?" He asked me, looking me half-eyed.

 To my assenting  answer she gave me a joint already  packed! It had a truncated-conical appearance, tapered and solid, close to the base, wider on top; it had been packaged with three cigarette papers; The base was closed by a cardboard filter; At the top it had been folded inside to prevent the contents from falling out ; His manufacturer, whoever he was, had been very skilled.

- "What is it?" I asked, smelling it.
- "It's a black Pakistani ", he replied prompting his lighter. - "It comes from Kashmir,  advanced from a party last night. It's very good, smoke it quietly! "

With a burst  of laughs I realized she was right. Smoked in  the morning, furthermore!

- "You have more badges than   the shop!" I said laughing, passing over the joint and continuing to look at his pins. - "And what is this ?! I immediately added, intrigued by a banal white brooch on which a German-language spelling out I had not even noticed before. There was  written: "Das Mütterrecht".

"Let me think about it," she said, concentrating on a complex response. - "It is the opposite of patriarchy." And she smiled, aware and amused by her strange explanation.
She continued after a further moment of reflection: - "Patriarchy is our social order, centered on the father's figure, while in the  Matriarchy the mother is the predominant social figure. 'Das Muterrecht' is to indicate a social and legal system that governed the life organized before the classics of Greece. We do not know exactly when, but before the gods we know establish their power in the world, there was another authority and another law: the natural rules  of life. This is in short the Matriarchate. "

She paused as if to realize whether I was following her speech or perhaps to give me a way to interact.

.- "Go ahead," I said, passing the joint again, "I'm following you with great interest."

25. to be continued...

London for ever - 24

One day  a girl,  who struck me at first sight for her pleasing appearance, stopped to look at some badges, who were showed in a moving showcase in the centre of the shop that housed my sales outlet.

She was tall and slim and had short cut and combed back reddish hair; The green eyes, of a very intense color, stood on a freckled face, with a well-proportioned nose, slightly upside down.

She was standing there, his chin protruding forward, as if she  were short-sighted, rotating  the shopwindow on its four sides, with a little enthusiastic expression on his face.

I felt a sudden impulse; I came up and gave her one of the "badges" that stood down, pinned, like the others, on the velvet covering the exterior walls of the window.

- "This is perhaps the best one," I said, handing it over.

She turned and spoke softly, after watching me for a moment with the badge  in her long, slender fingers, she said,

-" Are you Spanish?"

- "They ask me many," I said, amused - "I wonder why!"

-"An Englishman, of course, would never offer a rose to an unknown person!"

There was no tone of reproach or annoyance in his saying; Indeed, it seemed to me to catch a flattery in the woman's voice.

- "Where do you come from?" I asked in turn.

- "I am Irish, but lately, between one trip and the other, I spent a lot of time in Spain and I repeat it, looking at you, you look like Spanish. You have at least a few Spanish blood in the veins, don’t you? "

- "Well, you can say it! Spain has dominated us for over four centuries and who knows? My official language is Italian anyway! "

- "I did not make it a matter of official idiom," she said, dropping that speech.

- "Do you feel like taking  four steps outside?" I replied immediately.

- "Yes, why not!",  she retorted.

I handed the cash coin and the ice cream lever to the shop manager's store, begging him to look at the machines in my absence. Although the operations of the two activities were separate, there was between us ice cream sellers and the staff of the store that housed us, a  solid and sympathetic relationship.

24. to be continued...