As a joint birthday
thing, Venice was our shared birthday present (well, that was the plan
but there was Kylie bracketing January at one end & an evening in
theatreland bracketing the other end).
I
have a man who loves to bimble
about & people watch. Who likes a good bit of architecture, awe
inspiring scenes and, as it turns out, is equally at home in my
favourite hotel, the Bauer which is opposite my favourite view of the
Santa Maria church on the Grand Canal.
We
had a wonderful best part of a week, we did a Vivaldi concert & did
a tour of the clock tower in St Marks Sq and may I observe, if my
recollection is correct, did James Bond not crash through said cloak
tower in Venice in one of those movies (Roger Moore JB)? Cos, if so,
having seen how it looks on the inside, that could sooo not happen!
Anyhoo, back to my sightseeing list, neither of the above in my past 7
visits have I ever done. We did Florians for tea, the Danielli for
drinks, got lost in the residential back streets and were diverted by
pretty balconies, outside staircases, looking up into the windows of
grand houses with opulent ceilings & the prerequisite Murano glass
chandeliers. We spent an hour at the top of the Basillica watching
Italian teenaged school boys playing imaginary ping pong (ooh the
confidence, the arrogance, the egos!) to both impress the gaggle of
Italian school girls and to torture a female Japanese tourist who stood
there while this jumped up ***** darted back & forth in front of
her, waving an imaginary bat in her face! It’s a shame we had no loose
pebbles kicking around by our feet, because we both agreed, we had a
fare chance of clocking that pair on their noggins & giving the rest
of us a break. The teachers, we assume, were somewhere else, smoking /
smooching / topping up their caffeine levels but certainly nowhere to be
seen for the hour these kids sat below us on the walkways left out for
the Aqua Alta (flooding at high tides). Whilst up there we also honed
our ability to spot Americans, the English, sometimes Germans &
Italians. It’s hard to put your finger on how you spot people from
different countries but it didn’t escape our notice that we didn’t need
to utter a word for people to know we were English. Italian women can
normally be spotted for wearing impractically high shoes & real fur.
Venetian women of a certain age, 50+, adopt a uniform: ¾ length brown
fur coat, tights or neat trousers poking out the bottom, sensible brown,
navy or black court shoes, backcombed & set with superglue hair,
with or without the additition of a Russian style fur hat (which makes
them look about as Russian as I do right now (current status: in bed
with laptop, black jersey PJ bottoms, nightshirt, red dressing gown –
it’s cold, Venice gave me a cold & our cottage is suffering from a
case of ‘packed up boiler’ which after reporting to the useless estate
agent who supposedly manages the property, who doesn’t see our no heat /
no hot water plight as anything that requires action on his part, the
cottage owners will be fitting a new boiler tomorrow. Point being, I don’t
look Russian right now, the hat doesn’t make them look Russian & neither
of our looks could be described as stylish)).
I took to merely
referring to them as ‘uniforms’ & also observed that groups of them
(the male version is: smart clothing, long wool coat, a Trilby hat) when
tackling a bridge or small alley or the in-orderly queue for the water
buses are rather like the Venetian equivalent of ‘hoodies’. For though
Venice is, in my opinion, the most fabulous city on the planet, your
born & bred, older Venetian women like nothing more than to display
bullish, aggressive behaviour towards the hated tourists and both barge
us, sneer at us & queue jump whenever and where ever possible to get
one over on us. Walking down one alley, we came upon a female ‘uniform’
who, issuing us with a withering look & using her hand, gestured a
sharp flipping back and forth action to indicate we should jump aside
and let her past (& you know what, no one needed to do anything to
pass each other). It was just Venetian ‘furcoatie’ attitude, for
attitude’s sake. I joked we should have done something to really upset
her, like my pinning my love to the wall, snogging his face off
whilst indulging in inappropriate touching. Whaaa
t? She says with a micheivious twinkle in her eye, we would have
been moving aside for her! It’s a shame one never thinks of the
appropriate reaction at the time. Similarly a rush of uniforms did ferociously barge
us tourists aside as they took a bridge on mass and I tell you now, you
may be the first body, at the front of the queue on the floating bus
platforms but after the locals have pushed through to wait on the ‘no
waiting’ chevrons and a couple of old ladies have manoeuvred themselves
and their wheelie baskets in front of you, at best you’ll be
10th on to the boat. I took to stepping right back, to take the one
upmanship out of it – hey it’s no fun if the girl you’re trying to beat
on to the boat, steps back and makes a very big, obvious gesture to
usher you ahead of her ;)
There may
also have been a smirk & the use of a raised eyebrow (well I didn’t
say Venice was the only place bitches resided and besides, one has to
get into the spirit!).
From
left to right: The view from our table at breakfast,
Is it Art? A
culture overload? Inspiration? Dirty dishes? Or did we have too much
time on our hands?
St Marks
Square at dusk.
Don’t get me wrong,
despite trying really hard, an elitist, snobbish, Venetian, one of the
more recent in generations of Venetian citizens, will never spoil the
tourist’s experience of Venice. I just wish that they would wake up
& see the disintegrating palazzos bordering the Grand Canal, the
amount of Commune de
Venezia boards posted outside buildings covered in scaffolding,
awaiting restoration, the crass Rolex corporate sponsorship board in St
Marks Sq that is paying for the restoration of the facades, the Bulgari
board paying for the restoration of the golden staircase in the Doges
Palace & realise that without the tourists and the money they bring,
Venice could not survive. For there is little doubt that Venice is one
of the most special and unique places in the world but Venetian people
are no better than you or I.
Anyway, I prefer not to think of myself as a
tourist, I’m not a tourist when I hop on the train to London & I
know Venice every bit as well. She’s my home from home, the place I go
to recharge & I’m so very lucky that my love, is as taken with her
as I am. We returned on the Friday, not nearly ready to leave but
brought a gorgeous feather, in the form of a vintage opalescent glass
chandelier, back for our nest.
Oooh
- things I forgot & are worth sharing:
A joke I cracked: On Sky news whilst we
were away they were talking about an African girl that was married at 12
& I retorted that it was totally impractical to expect any
woman to be ready & married before at least 2....! Well I thought
it was good.
My shopping experience akin to most brides’ dress
shop experience:
After
having a latte in one of the squares we drifted (well given there was a
glass sideboard blocking the door, we sort of sidled carefully) into
this quirky clothes shop, which sold outlandish jackets mainly,
displayed on mannequins with female bodies but Venetian Doge’s heads.
The other, better items, seem more for display. There were corsets on
the wall with what looked like innards made of rubber tubing, etc.,
corsets covered in faux tomatoes, artworks that were so bad taste they
were great, cushions with raised 3D buttocks & hung on the walls
some rather lovely, shoulder capes that looked like a Matador cape made
of pieces of velvet sewn together like a web with hand painting &
long fringing. They were lovely, we both clocked them but there were no
prices. After we had been shadowed by an odd woman in a velvet
hat & long coat for a few minutes, the owner came over &
announced she was closing. I asked how much the cape was & was told
“oh it’s not for sale”. Seconds later, I was told it was 2000 euros (she
sooo pulled that out of her backside!). So, without flinching at the
price she'd just quoted I stated, faining confusion, “but it’s not
for sale”. To which she replied 'well, yes it is' & brusquely added, “do
you want to buy it?”. “Er.., no. Not right now”. It was so on the tip of
my tongue to say NO! You’ve all but told me I can’t afford it, so any
urge to buy has deserted me! She then started telling me how it was hand
made, very time consuming, in a slightly last minute attempt to jump on
the selling band wagon & doh! Preaching to the choir!*
On my way out she admired my bag, which I
had spent quite a large sum of money on in Venice last year & I
think it was then that it dawned on her that, actually, I may have been
able to afford it. When we escaped I commented to my other half on the
similarities between what had just occurred & what so many brides
tell me about bridal shop ladies, looking down their noses at ensembles
that consist of jeans & trainers worn by girls out for a Saturday
mooch around the shops, and that they go out of their way to imply the
most expensive dresses are clearly, often wrongly, out of someone’s
price range. Maybe the lady who owns this shop, should pop down to the
5 Star Bauer & see what the guests there are wearing down to breakfast
& to walk Venice. Tourists are similar to brides out shopping for
dresses on Saturday afternoon, the casual clothes don’t tell you a thing.
She also happened to be terribly overpriced. 2000 euros is about £1300
right now & I would have priced something like this cape at around
£600 & I suspect she did double the cost. Sadly, I think the price
quoted was to impress upon an impoverished me that it was totally out of
my budget in an arrogant, I can’t bare you dreadful tourists, you can’t
afford me, way! And so she could crow about how talented she was, which,
err sorry, doesn’t wash with me! Designers with over inflated egos are a
pet peeve.
I
recounted this story in a mask shop a couple of days later, to someone
who in fact knows her. Apparently she’s “not a seller” – no shit! She’s
a stylist. I hope the story & the fact that I also discussed what I
do & charge for my work with this colleague of hers, gets back to
her. The lady in the other shop said Italians make very bad sellers
because they judge too much on appearance & of course not all
nations dress with such vanity or put so higher price on appearance –
some of us dress down as much as we dress up & judging books by
their covers looses this Venetian stylist (who’s sign on her shop door
said something along the lines of we open when feel like it) &
middle aged, British bridal boutique owners, sales everyday.
* "Preaching To The Choir "
(trying to make believers out of people who already believe...
)
Do they know it's not
Chritmas time?
Christmas decs still up in the streets but
not all lit, so not a decoration choice for the year ahead then? Just
draaaaging your heels? St Marks Square, the most famous in
Venice was still decorated but not lit - still up on January 25th (hey,
if you can't be bothered to take them down, at least light them you
stingey buggers!). Though to be fair, on the 25th, 2 men with the
aid of a ladder did begin to take them down.
Em, haven't you heard of twelth
night? I know our towns never get the stuff down in time for
twelth night but they do get them down soon after. And we saw
at least two Chrismas trees in the public spaces. And the shop's windows
still have tinsel & sprayed on snowflakes & are still selling
Murano glass Christmas toot at full price with no sign of window revamps
in sight.
GUESTBOOK:
The costumes suggested flesh but were all very covered up, they were cut to promote curves and a couple really reminded me of Mae West, the heels had got more sturdy & once were ditched for bare feet, when you looked on the big screens you could see the head-dresses were held on by big hair clips; I noticed because illusion is what I do & I can spot it & it saddened me to see that her illness has had that effect on her, that you can see it’s physical effect on her wardrobe for the Homecoming tour. Video images of her posing in Dior & other stunning designer outfits flashed up on the back wall, really great dancers, rising podiums, superb dance routines, all served to deflect us from noticing that Kylie was doing less & who cared? We were just glad she was there at all & taking our hats off to her that she was taking to the stage so soon. Anyway to conclude, the lighting, the sound, Kylie - having been there, I can’t think of anywhere I’d have rather been & hello, booze? Baring in mind, the last concert I saw was in the 80’s (Michael Jackson, Bad Tour), boozing inside the arena came as somewhat of a surprise & who knew how attached a girl could get to little plastic bottles of Sminoff Ice ;)
The 31st
brought me cards, the main theme of which
involved shoes (these people know me too well. And upon writing that, it
occurs to me, as friends and family, if anyone would……). My love took me to
see ‘Wicked’ at the Apollo Theatre in Victoria, took me to dinner &
gave me a pair of ‘Racing Grannys’ which I have been trying
to justify buying every time I’ve been in Paperchase (well those or
the racing nuns), so yay, now I have some. We had agreed,
no presents, Venice was our joint present & both broke the agreement.
