This is your correspondent live on location at Fontanarossa Aeroporta, Catania, Sicily .....
This is your correspondent live on location at Fontanarossa Aeroporto, Catania.
Not exactly the most exciting place to be.
The duty free is generally expensive and I can buy my exceptional Grappa cheaper on Amazon.
As seems usual in Italy personal space is at a premium, I have had mine invaded with remarkable frequency since I divested myself of my outerwear and removed my belt in order to make my way tentatively through security.
As gates are posted and announced, queues form and, as most of the flights are internal, the queues are friendly and disorderly and even Ryan Air appears almost European in its laid backness.
As I sit here however having consumed the most expensive sandwich in Italy and drunk the most expensive beer, served by the least affable serving staff in Italy, I find myself book in hand engaged in my favourite pastime, people watching.
The babel here babbles away with hand gestures accompanying words in order to emphasise the points being made by the interlocutors in each and every single conversation.
Even, I might add, the conversations that appear to be between people talking with themselves!
Although of course that is not what they are doing, they are communicating with friends and family on their personal communication systems, mobile telephones!
Which of course raises the question what did we ever do before mobile phones?
Ahead of me along the way there sits a rather beautiful lady of African Carribean heritage. She is obviously waiting for an internal flight, I say obviously because sitting on her lap is a small dog. The animal is in a carrying cage and looking around in a very relaxed manner, obviously a seasoned traveller in its own right it peers inquisitively from its cage which whilst open and unzipped and from which it could easily escape, it is clearly only to happy to await its flight being called.
Ryan Air says: 'Here boy, Come'?
Whether it is carried on its mistresses lap or in the overhead locker I will never know because it is obviously not waiting for the same (easyJet) flight that I am.
We will have to wait another day before we can collect our dogs from their carer, although the young ladies dog weighed about 4.5 kilos whereas two of ours probably weigh 45 kilos each, so not lap dogs and they are dogs without passports.
So we wait for our flight to come in from Gatwick or wherever (apparently Turin) for a quick turnaround on Sicilian soil before heading back to Gatwick and the forecast rain and snow.
Of course this could be a last hurrah, as we head through passport control back to the just about still UK we are also heading out of the EU.
Friday will be our last exit from Europe as European citizens so it will be back to England as little Englanders after that.
I regret the decision to leave Europe, much as I recognise that there are legitimate and valid socialist arguments for leaving (although better arguments for staying in and reforming) but as I use the loo here before my flight I wash and dry my hands on a fancy Dyson hand dryer, probably made in China by the kind of capitalist who argued for our leaving.
I think any Socialist arguments do need to be set against the Capitalist argument for out, if there is a democratic deficit when we ae in, as Tony Benn argued so eloquently, it cannot be right to sit back and accept the democratic deficit that Capitalism imposes, without similar considerations.
So as I dried my hands I metaphorically washed them of all of the arguments of Mr Dyson and Mr Wetherspoon and will not be celebrating either our leaving the sun of Sicily today or the our future in Europe later this week.
Not exactly the most exciting place to be.
The duty free is generally expensive and I can buy my exceptional Grappa cheaper on Amazon.
As seems usual in Italy personal space is at a premium, I have had mine invaded with remarkable frequency since I divested myself of my outerwear and removed my belt in order to make my way tentatively through security.
As gates are posted and announced, queues form and, as most of the flights are internal, the queues are friendly and disorderly and even Ryan Air appears almost European in its laid backness.
As I sit here however having consumed the most expensive sandwich in Italy and drunk the most expensive beer, served by the least affable serving staff in Italy, I find myself book in hand engaged in my favourite pastime, people watching.
The babel here babbles away with hand gestures accompanying words in order to emphasise the points being made by the interlocutors in each and every single conversation.
Even, I might add, the conversations that appear to be between people talking with themselves!
Although of course that is not what they are doing, they are communicating with friends and family on their personal communication systems, mobile telephones!
Which of course raises the question what did we ever do before mobile phones?
Ahead of me along the way there sits a rather beautiful lady of African Carribean heritage. She is obviously waiting for an internal flight, I say obviously because sitting on her lap is a small dog. The animal is in a carrying cage and looking around in a very relaxed manner, obviously a seasoned traveller in its own right it peers inquisitively from its cage which whilst open and unzipped and from which it could easily escape, it is clearly only to happy to await its flight being called.
Ryan Air says: 'Here boy, Come'?
Whether it is carried on its mistresses lap or in the overhead locker I will never know because it is obviously not waiting for the same (easyJet) flight that I am.
We will have to wait another day before we can collect our dogs from their carer, although the young ladies dog weighed about 4.5 kilos whereas two of ours probably weigh 45 kilos each, so not lap dogs and they are dogs without passports.
So we wait for our flight to come in from Gatwick or wherever (apparently Turin) for a quick turnaround on Sicilian soil before heading back to Gatwick and the forecast rain and snow.
Of course this could be a last hurrah, as we head through passport control back to the just about still UK we are also heading out of the EU.
Friday will be our last exit from Europe as European citizens so it will be back to England as little Englanders after that.
I regret the decision to leave Europe, much as I recognise that there are legitimate and valid socialist arguments for leaving (although better arguments for staying in and reforming) but as I use the loo here before my flight I wash and dry my hands on a fancy Dyson hand dryer, probably made in China by the kind of capitalist who argued for our leaving.
I think any Socialist arguments do need to be set against the Capitalist argument for out, if there is a democratic deficit when we ae in, as Tony Benn argued so eloquently, it cannot be right to sit back and accept the democratic deficit that Capitalism imposes, without similar considerations.
So as I dried my hands I metaphorically washed them of all of the arguments of Mr Dyson and Mr Wetherspoon and will not be celebrating either our leaving the sun of Sicily today or the our future in Europe later this week.
Comments
Post a Comment