Sublime Stress Busters In The Back Garden

Not much has happened recently in my mountain village, so I may ramble a little here. And also, I completely forgot about the most important stuff which every female I know has asked me about repeatedly in all incoming recent e-mails:

Da Da Daaaaaaaaa: "The Italian Men"

Lets start with a B, then an E, then an A, then a U, then a Tiful! Seeeeeeeeeeeeriously. I saw one lad in Rome right, that was actually better looking than the bloke who plays Ernesto Guevara in The Motorcycle Diaries. I really wish I'd run up and taken a photo of him to prove this amazing fact.
When we were in Rome recently, after a lot of walking and sightseeing and reducing this ancient beautiful Roman city full of breathtaking buildings and gravity-defying statues to "Ooooh, do you reckon this is the fountain where that bloke tried to drown him and he breathed through the rubber pipe??" me, Han Na and Soph were sat having dinner, and me and Han were facing a Piazza full of Italian people, and every, lets round it down to... 3 minutes, what we were saying would stop dead, and we'd sigh, completely transfixed at something just beyond Sophie or Na's head, and we'd drift off for a good minute as we contemplated another complete Adonis walking past. I don't understand how a country can produce such consistently beautiful people, cos the women are all stunners aswell and they're all so cool. What happened at some point in history, that all beautiful cool people settled here? There must be a rational historical explanation, like they were all exiled from other countries for being too gorjus, and they settled here and just multiplied. And the men are blatantly sexual, well, being that good looking I don't blame them, but even with a girlfriend on their arm they'll look you up and down, to the point of being a bit slimy actually. And there's a really stupid phenomenon with the young lads. For some reason, you'll get the fittest bloke in the world... and he only plucks his fecking eyebrows to an arch higher than Lily Savage! Nooooooo! You feel like running up to them, shaking them, and going ;
'What ARE you doing?? Stop it! Stop it now! You were beautiful but now you look like a big gay bear!'.
Apparently vanity is symptomatic of Italian men (not to make a sweeping generalisation or owt, I am, by the way, completely aware that all generalisations are dangerous, even this one). Even ugly, fat old men (yes there are some here, they mostly drive taxi's) check themselves out in the reflection every time they pass a car door / window / pane of glass / mirror / slightly shiny surface. So anyway, the even more important stuff: I got 2, yes TWO Italian blokes phone numbers on recent train journeys. On the train on the way to Hannahs I was chatted up by a Robert DeNiro look- alike ..... ok, maybe I wasn't chatted up, maybe I was chatted to...... and maybe he was more like Robert DeNiro's grandad ....... and maybe he only wanted me for my English speaking skills to teach his 5 year old grandaughter English...... but it's still a phone number and that counts in my book. And the other number on the way back from Hannah's could have turned into something beautiful if only I spoke Italian or he spoke English, or both of us spoke French, or German, or any common language at all, as it was we couldn't, and the conversation was, accordingly, very stilted. So he's sat opposite me and looking at me like he wants to say something for 40 minutes, then:
"blinglio blonglio corleonio blahlio" (Italian type stuff)
"uh, I'm sorry I don't speak Italian" (I actually managed that phrase IN Italian)
"oh! blerbylio lerbylio da vinchio webylio gerbylio " (more Italian, I don't think I made it clear enough that the thing I just said in Italian yeah, that was ALL I can say in Italian, so I repeated the above phrase)
"Oh. Blingo blongo blaholio Sulmona wingo proloifico malofico waholio?"
"Yes! Sulmona! Me. Sulmona!" (I don't even know what "I live in - " is)
"aaahhh, blingo proscuttio blongo blaholio labuttio blaholio mafusio?"
(more italian, but with a rising intonation which i took to be a question)
"Errr. Me. teacher. English . Sulmona" (In shattered Italian. Aaaaaabsolutely pa-the-tic)
"ah! blaholio raphaelo blingio michaelangelo blongio donatello bleurio"
(I presume he told me what he did, and what he thought of it. Have no idea what that is or whether that is what he said, so smile at him and then look out of window hoping he'll not talk any more Italian to me with rising intonation, tho he can carry on talking Italian in general cos that just sounds luuuush). Then when we got off he gave me his number and I think he said he'd show me round Sulmona but, of course, I could be wrong, he could have given me the number of a hairdressers called Giovanni and told me to sort it out. Whatever, the valuable lesson that I came away with is that I seriously need to learn Italian, if only to pick up fit Italian men. To this end I've been having lessons with my Italian receptionist. She speaks no English at ALL during the lessons which is hilarious sometimes as I sit there like one of my beginner students that I find so amusing and have taken the piss out of on numerous occasions for the amusement of others. Oh my god, I bet Lucia does that with me, I bet she goes home and is like "oh my god, you'll never guess what the english girl couldn't say today in the lesson, she couldn't even pronounce 'my name is'... AND she couldn't even hear the difference at all when I said 'fishing' and 'peaches'!! he he!"! I'm also intrigued by what English people must sound like when they attempt to speak another language. Like, French and Italians speaking English sound dead cool, but Germans sound awful, so as English isn't the most gorjus language in the world, like Spanish, Italian and French, do we sound like Germans when we talk these beautiful languages? Actually , I think I must at least, when I tried to practice my french in Biarritz, they were having none of it-
Me: "Er, C'est combien d'argent?"
Surly French Monsieur in shop : "Zat...iz...fifty francs" (...in other words "Do not taint ma beautiful french language wiz yeur filthy english pig-dog tongue you ingrate. Now go away from ma beautiful french shop, I am eating an onion.")

And the teaching, it's a lot less stressful here. I think I've figured out why. The mountains.
It's hard to stay stressed when you're walking home and: "Hello there Mr!" up pops a mountain at the bottom of the street. There I am worrying about next weeks hours and what the hell the second conditional is and wondering whether and how I can best teach it without having a full and complete grasp of what it actually is, and this mountain's just sat there completely belittling my worries just by being there, mocking me with a "Ha! You insignificant pitiful fool of a human! You're worried about the second conditional when I've been sat here for millions of years, since time immemorial? Get over it." Which is always nice, a bit of perspective on the way home. So yeah, having the sublime in yer back garden is a great stress reliever. Actually, Hans housemate doesn't even believe the mountains are real cos they're too much like a film back drop. She believes we are all living in a Truman-style town which is packed up at night and brought out again dead early in the morning. I also think that there's a theatre somewhere in the world with a rather large stage set missing, and it's here, the back streets in Sulmona. The streets are too cobbled, the houses are just too stuccoed and rustic with their shutters and their flowers, the churches are stereotypically gothic, and even the lamposts casting their orange glow over it all are like something from a Stella advert. Well, I'm off to eat some more pasta now, I think I may have actually turned into a piece of cannelloni by the time I get home.