9.
One of
them, who used to work in the ice cream sell, was Bob, who had made me an
instructor, a few years earlier, in the short period of previous work
placement: in particular cleaning and maintenance of the machine, and preparing
ice creams and ice drinks.
He wasn’t
very tall (you would say surely more
than five feet but less then six, with light hair, combed with a line-centered
brush; his eyes were green colored and
very moving on the features of the face,
made a bit irregular by two slightly pronounced upper incisors.
At the left lobe, with a lot of naturalness,
he carried a small round gold earring, fashion, which on our country was still beyond to come. His clothing was
both simple and well-groomed. Particular attention, however, he showed on the shoes and the t-shirts, on which, usually
stood out of immeasurable, numerous gold chains, different in appearance and
size, as our women do when they wore the
ancient folk costumes.
Bob was
definitely nice. Very uneasy, he was always around in the nearby shops, he was
a jumper, or a grocer's colleague. In his "pitch", which was usually
the most profitable, he had during the high season one or more aides on whom he
uploaded, in a casual and good manner, most of the workload. When it happened
to be in distribution, at peak times, sometimes he was bizarre.
Once,
for instance, there was an orderly and
long queue of customers waiting to be served at the ice cream machine, up to the outside edge of the sidewalk.
Suddenly
Bob said he had to go and make a phone call. And so saying, he showed customers
a ten-penny coin, holding it high between the thumb and index finger of the
left hand and hissing, with the upper lip slightly curled on the teeth, in a
string of glottis shots : "I'll
be back in a minute!”.
After
he had disappeared into the store I
tried to do my best on serving the customers. When he was back, seeing so many
people still queuing, he asked me
kindly,
to set
aside, tracing a semicircle with his
left forearm and grabbed a dozen cones, he was able to fill them all by turning
his hand skillfully under the ice cream faucet, simultaneously driving the
lever with his right hand, and while I was struggling to get ice cream in both my
hands, to distribute them, the customers, cheered him up with admiration. And it seemed that these customers had the
magnitude, because there were more and more behind them, and Bob's show was
repeated until the machine could keep on refrigerating.
But
when he stayed away for a longer time he used to ask me, with a significant
gesture of the index rubbed on her thumb, if
I had
any banknotes, which he called in his
funny slang “wonga”.
It was
at that time of my first novitiate in London that I started to love the
English.
If he did not have customers, he read the
newspaper: The Sun, the Daily Mirror and, above all, the Evening Standard, a
London daily newspaper that published everything about horse racing, the other
sporting events of the day, as well as some local, political issues and seldom internationals.
He did
not read much concentrated or for a long time, since he looked up from time to
time to whistle or recall the attention of some glamorous girl of passage, on the
goodness of whose forms we did not always agree, and if I tried to drag him to
comment on some political news or abroad eco-social argument, its responses
were always superficial, albeit not evasive.
At first I noticed a certain
surprise in his eyes when listening carefully to my reasoning, and I did not
know how to interpret it.
As time
went by, I realized that it must appear unusual and even bizarre to him that an Italian ice-cream seller , wanted to deal with arguments that not even the English
and the Londoners , like he was, would to be interested on.
So, though seen as a sort of phenomenon, a bit funny and original, I
realized that his attitude towards me went gradually changing, from the initial
snobbery and indifference into a cordial, sincere sympathy that I was not able to turn into a deeper
friendship, perhaps also because of my immaturity and insecurity.
Bob and
the other dealers, including his two brothers and a sister, had left the school
shortly after they had solved their attendance obligations; indeed, many even
before that term.
Rebellious
and refractory to the harsh rules of the English teachers, they preferred the
free life of the street; without hierarchical supervisors invading or rebuking
and without any form of obligation (it
was not rare he changed bad words with
some overly demanding or unfortunate customer).
And with a great pay over the average earnings
of workers and employees.
9. to be continued...
By the end of 2012, the nanny news story that had received the most media exposure was the tragic tale of the Krim children, who were stabbed by their nanny before she turned the knife on herself. Parents around the nation mourned alongside the Krim family, and counted their blessings not to be in their shoes. There were, however, far more stories of courage and inspiration to be found that didn’t receive the same sensational attention of this grisly tale. These 12 nannies were among those to be celebrated, even if their stories didn’t receive national coverage.