David Charters: Yes, the Italians are cool, but we are eccentric

Sep 2 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

"TRULY, it is not possible,” invoked the French logician in the sharp navy shorts and thick-lensed spectacles, designed for the magnification of every human foible, as he joined the meandering queue to the ferry’s ticket-office – his frustration and indignation borne on severely white legs, carpeted by priest-black hairs, which stopped abruptly one and a half inches above his ankles.

The sun shone high in the blue sky, though thunder occasionally growled behind the hill, climbed by thousands of cypress trees to the rocky summit, where builders’ cranes had formed a second Cross, beneath the polished white of the startling church.

But, truly, the spreading ballet of flapping arms, bouncing shoulders, outstretched palms and shaking heads, which had caused the impatient Frenchman to express his dismay in English, was possible.

For at the head of the queue to the office’s window was a party of five Britons, facing a slow-smiling Italian in a crisp blue uniform, whose sense of time, in the style of his country’s bureaucrats, ran 20 minutes behind the rest of the world.

The ticket man was explaining the complexities of the ferry’s return-fare system in Italian, made poetic by the magnificent baritone of his soaring voice. The Britons were attempting to translate his words into English and then, in desperation, resorting to an acrobatic sign language, which involved the extravagant range of gesticulations you would expect from an eager amateur dramatic society, tackling a new play set in Latin America.

Finally, the group’s middle-aged leader looked around for moral support, before risking, “Quanto costa biglietto (how much ticket)?”, for which he received warm applause, as well as a gracious beam and a “si, si” from the ticket man. But by then the ferry was a picture in the middle of Lake Garda.

“Truly, it is not possible,” repeated the logician, now perspiring in Gallic incredulity, as the Britons secured their tickets for the next ferry, which stopped at the beautiful little towns, nesting around the lake’s banks.

I was with my wife and our 12-year-old son in Maderno – walking past the glistening boys, posing on the beach wall for the girls, who licked from their melting ice cream cones, meeting each dribble with a perfectly placed stretch of the tongue – while also rhythmically counting the times a Romeo, with a mirror in the chestnut of his eyes, could kick-up a football, without letting it brush the shingled shore.

Across the road, Sicilian traders were laying down Holy Virgins, saucer-sized lollipops, models of the Last Supper and liquorice twirls, which tempted the wasps away from the ripe peaches, on whose skins they had been sucking.

A little further on was “our” cafe. Here, the young waiter served drinks with olives, crisps, peanuts and a welcoming smile. Locals, from across the generations, gathered to gossip under the parasols – mothers lovingly wiping the mouths of gurgling babies. “Ah, bambino!”

Between the cafe and the beach was the main road, where pedestrians and Vespa-riders diced with Hell’s Angels on super-charged bikes, while crazed car drivers leaned out of their windows and hooted their horns.

A young man stepped from the souvenir shop with a pair of dark glasses. He adjusted them before the mirror on a scooter’s handlebars, before being satisfied that they were good. Yes, the Italians are cool, but we are eccentric.

Back up the crunching gravel to our hotel, built in 1904 from grand stones, an elderly Irish mother and her keen-featured daughter, both with high-born manners and suspicious of foreign ways, were preparing for breakfast in the restaurant/conservatory, by producing from a bag their own tea and cereals. “Soon, they’ll put a Primus stove on the floor and start a fry-up,” said my wife, in sparkling form.

The previous evening, the mother had complained about a lack of vegetables with the main course. That night, with a dramatic sweep, the waitress removed the lid from the lady’s plate to reveal four sulky Brussels sprouts, recovering from Christmas, and a trout. Happily, he had been decapitated, so that his sad eye did not have to meet the withering gaze of his eater.

At the pool, a middle-aged Englishman with long arms and legs and embarrassingly brief trunks, was laughing uproariously as he jumped up and down. He’s a children’s entertainer, I thought, a natural sculptor of balloons. Watching, darkly, from the side was a sullen fellow, the holiday grouch, with lardy legs, a pitted face and sunglasses worn over his head, Scunthorpe-style.

We watched, too, as our son swam strongly with three sisters. “Where has the little boy gone and where is the young man going?” I whispered.

You see so much on holiday.