Christmas Day in London - the Finale

London doesn't even seem London without double deckers running in its busy streets and with the tube stations locked and inaccessible. Today, it's Christmas. And I'm spending it in London, with the companionship of the city only.

I walked all afternoon, despite the chill creeping under my jumper giving me shiver. I grasped my camera and faced the deserted streets of London. I walked up till Oxford Street just to take shots of the shop windows of Selfridges. To my utter disappointment, huge banners with a dull "SALES NOW!" had taken the place of the mannequins dressed up in panto/fairy tale mode. The sales here start on 26th December.

Tomorrow, I'll be home. The problem is, I'm starting to feel at home here as well. I'm falling in love with the city. With its life, its frenzy, its poetry, its consumerism, its stalls, its nightlife, its buildings, its diversity. At dusk, London is more magical than ever. I almost felt like dancing and singning. On my own. Just me and the city. Soulmates.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!

Get back next year, in 2010!

Christmas in London - part III - lonely, but not so much

Christmas in London smells like the perfumes sold in House of Fraser. It smells like sugar-coated nuts. It sounds like the chatters of the crowds that cram the streets. It sounds like the pitter-patter of the heels on the pavement. It sounds like joyful Jingle Bells played with the drums in the alley off the main road - a Jamaican flavour to it that made me give the players a deserved tip. It looks like an anthill and like a theme park. Its windows are creative, colourful and excessive at the same time: a sprout of fun.

Today, I was wearing high-heels, and it was empowering to see the city from up here. I totally felt like Carrie Bradshaw. Indeed, I also have the spicy vibe of the aunt living abroad. I'm loving this city every day that goes by a bit more.

Today, I have almost flirted with a dad, a handsome man who was running around the city with his 4-year-old son. Danger zone. I must not enter that area. Although I must say that men with kids have a charming sweetness about them. And boy, oh boy. What did I see as I arrived back home? A cute guy just living in my own estate. What a pleasant surprise!

I am not lonely. Today, I met a friend of mine and we enjoyed chatting and laughing in the streets of London. We enjoyed a cup of hot drink at Starbucks. We enjoyed just being in this city, walking around, in Christmas-lit London, wondering how it's going to look tomorrow, when the fuss will be over, the tube will not work, the buses won't run in the streets in this ever-busy metropolis. I don't quite feel lonely. Even though I'd love my family to be here and enjoy this peaceful yet lively atmosphere with me.

Lovin' Christmas in the City

No, I didn't manage to catch the sweet side of the city. Today, it was everything but sweet, London. Grey and rainy in the run-up to Christmas.

So, I went shopping. I had two choices: Westfields or Oxford Street. I went for the second one, despite the dull weather. Entering shops, browsing, purchasing something, browsing, browsing, trying something on, craving... These are the moments when I love the City. It runs in your veins with its vain bling bling, its wild consumerism, its addictive glamour. (You feel all the more guilty when tramps sitting on the icy pavement look at you, arms stretching towards your bags of you-can-do-without stuff).

Too many handsome boys. Too many gorgeous-looking specimen of the opposite sex: shopping has become a voluptuous experience since I'm in London. They work in retails, they strut in the streets, they carry their women's bags, they take a hot chocolate just before you at Starbucks, they wait and snort while their girlfriend is trying a pair of boots on (the exquisite pain of relationships), they frown as you leave the store that sells sexy lingerie. Many of them -what a pity!- are gay. You exchange just a glance, you gulp, hold your breath for a quick sec, and then it's gone. On to the next one.

Next shop. In and out. Under the rain and in the climate of a rain forest (too much heat in the shops - no wonder the ladies in their underwear at Selfridges were fine!). People are rushing to buy their last gifts. People are crowding the street in this delightful Christmas atmosphere. You feel it. You feel happy although you can buy not even a hundreth of what you would you like to. Stuff, stuff, objects. How much do you need it? How much are we defined by what we wear, what we sport, what we buy? Expensive, cheap, fashionable, eccentric, basic, casual, fancy... If I had the money, I'd buy everything. Would I? The choice, the clothes, bags, shoes, jewelry, books piled up on shelves, hanging on their hangers, more or less orderdly displaced make me feel dizzy. The paradox of choice. When a lot becomes too much...



The lights in Oxford Street are joyful, warm. Kids make me smile. The frenzy of the shopping makes everybody a bit mad, even parents strolling their prams become aggressive. The Christmas market with its smell of sugar-covered nuts and sausages adds folklore to the scene. And then I feel it. I distinctly feel it. The loneliness. I am lonely. I'm at the centre of the world. And yet, lonely. All the people around me, all the languages spoken, all the ethnic diversity around me cannot help my longing for someone to hold me. (And then I think at the poor guys enduring the torture of shopping with their partners and I feel relieved by not putting anyone in such pain on the eve of Christmas).

Today, I loved London. I loved it despite, or thanks to, its flaws: the fine rain, the money-driven soul, the shallow it's-all-about-appearances mode. I loved it because it was fun, energetic, tolerant. London pulses with life, it's vibrant, colourful, free. It made me feel so alive. I wondered: is it going to be enough, just one year, to do all I want to do?

While eating at Pizza Hut, I read the review of a panto and posted a note in the back of my head: bring Thomas to a pantomime in London one day. I want to find a job, earn money, go shopping with my sister in the streets of London, take my mom to a car boot sales, have my father pick up its own T-shirt somewhere. In London the entire world seems to be within your grasp. It must be all the faces you see around you. Handsome people, different people.

I didn't want to go home. I felt like I could walk all night -like a couple of months ago, when I was roaming in the streets of the City with a friend of mine. It was night. It was deserted all around us. I didn't want to go home then, just as much as I didn't want to go home now. My feet were soaked wet, my left shoulder hurt from carrying the bag, I was cold and my nose runny. And yet, I didn't want to go home. I would hit London streets until my shoes fall apart.

I yearned for human companionship. The loneliness of cramped streets cannot compare to the loneliness of a cosy house you call home. Even the impersonality of the tube -with the funny man checking his pocket after the message on the loudspeaker telling people to beware of pickpockets- is warmer than your couch.

I'll read the book I bought -with a 75% discount!- about the art of photography. I'll enjoy my solitude before flying back home, on Saturday, right after Christmas. Family is where your heart belong. But where you choose to live is a matter of opportunity. I love the chances this city gives me. It makes me want more. Greedy me. Greedy beings. Why can't we ever be happy with the little we're given? Why do I keep having the feeling that my life is slipping off my hands like soap? Why do I feel the weight of ageing without having achieved anything?

The City is getting to my heart. It's getting me. Slippery London, you're finally conquering me...

Relishing Christmas Atmosphere in the Streets of London

After spending the entire day home, slaving over my three articles for the internship, I needed -physically and psychologically- to go out. So, I grasped my purse, put on my new leather gloves and went out.

The streets of London are icy, cold, smoke comes up from the pavement and steam out of my mouth. Christmas lights make me feel like a kid again, although I'm 22 now. My first stop, in the vain attempt to find a book or two I'm supposed to read to write my 1,000 word essay by the 5th of January, is Borders.

Borders...it used to be a paradise of comfort. The book shop where you can grab a magazine, a newspaper, take a coffee at the Starbucks upstairs and just enjoy spending time there. It was always busy, but the atmosphere was friendly, cosy, happily arty. Now, in its we're-closing-down frenzy, the cosiness, the beauty and the relax of it disappeared altogether, leaving just shabby up-to-90%-discount window-sized banners, raging crowds of customers fighting over the last copy of their favourite book and empty shelves. What once was a homey, it's now maddening. Not the ideal place to do some Christmas shopping. Books scattered all over shelves and tables look like displaced people fleeing from a devastated city. The last copy of a novel on a counter reminds me of the typical ugly girl at the school ball that nobody wants to dance with...

In my spree escape I couldn't help but notice that each and every shop had its own special Christmas score. A spate of feeling-good, let's all love each other songs that will put a smile on your face even if you strive to resist. Christmas heart-warming, consumeristic soul slips in your wallet in the most joyful, albeit tricky way. It's in its cheesy melodies, in its glittering lights, in its unnecessary gift cards. Christmas in London smells of business and snow. But it's so contagiously exhilarating that I can't for tomorrow's roaming in the streets of the City. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel adult and independent, even if I'm not.

Tomorrow's stop: Oxford Street. It might be hellish. But I'll take my camera with me. So if it gets rowdy I'll catch those moments. If I get the right angle, despitethe hustle and bustle I'm sure I can grasp the sweet side of London. I still regret not having my camera with me to snap those footsteps in the snow, still soft and shimmering white, while snowflakes kept flying down from the sky like crispy pieces of diamonds... a couple of days ago, when the City started to feel the Christmas warmth, despite the freezing cold.

A serious man - On life

Now, wasn't that a bitter ending?

I read the review of A serious man on the Empire on the tube yesterday afternoon, and the same night I went to watch the movie (after the failure of two weeks ago, when it was sold out). Empire's Dan Jolin ended his article like this: "And if we see a more exciting final shot of a movie this year, we'll eat your yarmulke" (skullcap, author's note). Indeed, I must say. I gaped. Literally. I saw the last shot and then the screen went black and the credits appeared and I just gaped. Black irony was a leitmotif throughout, but the very last shot was more than sourly ironical.

A phone call and a tornado approaching, a camera that stays on the back, shyly, at the same height of the kid. Fate and its inescapability. And the attempt of man to make sense out of it. Like Larry, the protagonist of the film itself, a serious, honest professor that, however, seems to be punished by destiny -a reference to the Biblical figure of Job? And nevertheless, he searches for a meaning in his plight, he asks Rabbis for interpretation and advice. The second Rabbi's answer seems particularly interesting. The story of the dentist becomes a metaphor for the life of mankind. Stop asking yourself too many questions, and just live. Just help others. Just make choices.

We'll never know what happens after the credits appear on the screen. We'll never know what the content of the doctor's phone call to Larry was. We'll never know the results of Larry's X-ray. We'll never know whether the tornado cast Danny and his schoolmates away. We'll never know. We'll just gape, as much as I did. We can just appreciate the brevity of the movie. The brevity of life. We can just enjoy, as fully as we can, the experience. Even if we can't make much sense of it.

Italians in London protest against Berlusconi

Hundreds of people gathered on Saturday 5 December in Belgrave Square, near the Italian General Consulate in London, to ask Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to step down.

The demonstration, named “No Berlusconi day”, was the English counterpart of a bigger protest that simultaneously took place in Rome and was organised by a group of bloggers using social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

Italians living in London vented their anger at the current political situation in their homecountry and claimed not to feel represented by Mr Berlusconi. The protest was not backed by any specific political party and encompassed people of different beliefs.

Purple was the colour chosen to express citizens’ disappointment with the current political mayhem in Italy. The participants chanted “Dimettiti! Dimettiti!” (“Resign! Resign!”), while some others screamed “Thief!” or “You’re a clown!” and booed Mr Berlusconi as images of his reaction to the declaration of unconstitutionality earlier in October of the so-called Alfano Law, which granted impunity for the four main offices of the State during their mandate, were shown onscreen.

Main points of the debate were the need of equality of all citizens before the law, with reference to article n.3 of the Constitution, the urge for freedom of information in Italy, the call for political caring of public instead of personal interests in the management of the State.

SEEKING CHANCES ABROAD

Many students and young people at the demonstration expressed their views on Italian’s political situation. Not only were they dissatisfied with Mr Berlusconi, but they said the whole political class is not offering a valid alternative.

A 20-year-old student at the Metropolitan College of London decided to come to England right after high-school, because he felt in Italy he did not have chances to succeed. A film director left Italy annoyed by the “culture of acquaintances, so that if you don’t know the right people you won’t make it.” The lack of a merit system and defined career paths were major factors in Italians’ decision to leave their country.

The disappointment of Italians living in London is sharpened by the image of their homeland abroad. “People here think that Italy is a fun-fair and mock Berlusconi,” said a student. “Italians abroad struggle to show their real value when they’re ruled by a clown,” he added.

This week’s The Economist dedicated an editorial to Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi by the headline “Time to say addio”, where “addio” means “goodbye for good”. In the past few months the Italian premier has been involved in several scandals, including most recent allegations of collusion with mafia in 1993 and involvement with call-girl Patrizia D’Addario.

Check the gallery and the best posters of the demonstration here

Check our (Paola Bonfanti, Daniele Fisichella, Marco Granese and Anna Pitton) report on You Tube

Strutting in the City

I wonder how Carrie Bradshaw managed to strut in high heels on the streets of busy New York without ever stumbling or twisting her ankle.

I wore my boots this morning. They're not even that high. However, the moment I made my first step out of the house I regretted it. Questions like "Why the hell did I wore heels this morning?" or "Am I going to make it to uni without crashing to the ground?" kept buzzing in my head. I must assume that pavements in New York are less cracked and roller-coaster like than here in London.

Carrie struts smilingly, she's happy-go-lucky even wearing 15cm sandals, whereas here even wearing flats is not safe. I saw a man this morning that almost broke his ankle considering the twisting. Here in London rather than strutting in the city, we tackle an assault course every morning, watching out for cracks in the pavement, bumps, gutters, holes, drains, trying not to get run over by a bicycle, a taxi, or even worse, a double decker. And worrying at the same time, that if -heavens forbid!- you actually fall you cannot even rely on doctors here. They might amputate your leg just because they don't know how to fix your Achilles heel.

And by the way, I know why Carrie had so many shoes. When you live in a big city and rely on public transport, you consume your heels quite a lot. No wonder she had to buy a new pair of Manolo every other week!