Thursday 2 August 2007

Cold Cuts

Denounced for an underground tractor shelter ( putting agricultural machinery close to the house is very noisy very early), it is not permitted to know by whom. Three Forestale in green fatigues and heavily armed, at least by any reasonable standard of what arms might be worn on a farm visit, photographed a dry stone wall supporting a raised field of olives with a pair of dark wooden doors let into it; nothing else can be seen.

The whole village is dying to tell who did it, a full scale game of fire,fire, ice,ice has been going on for days every time we speak to anyone. The reason no-one will say the name (because that in itself would be enough to generate a mini affront) is because of Revenge.

Revenge in Italy is an art form. It is extensive (hitting any known relative and sometimes relatives who are officially unknown, just for the added pleasure of Embarassment), it is inventive, (unforgettable the man who presented his wife with a dish of figs tastefully arranged around her lover's severed head), it is reverberating (there are repeated reassurances that the denunciation is part of a generalised denunciation to irritate other landowners altogether ), it is required.

The first and immediate action was to deal with the authorities. Italian authorities are slow to anger but once roused ... so the architect has been disturbed from the seaside, the lawyer is sweltering in Florence instead of sitting with his feet up in the hills, appropriate delicate discussions have taken place with a charming (armed) chief forester, the town hall has given an entirely off the record view of its view, and the tractor shed remains, tucked away displaying only its discreet wooden doors while the agricultural plan gains a clause or two and we pay 500 euros for il processo.

Required, though, really means what is to be done in revenge. The getting of things by 'raccomandazione' - jobs, contracts, permissions, connexion, standing, opens a broad field of fire. Allies are coming forward, kinship links reviewed, discreet gestures of support made, distaste at this treatment of the family (ours, not the institution) is being intimated by those families with ours for generations (in this kind of matter) as kindnesses and courtesies from decades back are acknowledged. There's no hurry - we'll get him.

9 comments:

Newmania said...

Revenge and blood feuding wrer replac ed at a very early stage in out country by the spotaneous develoopment of Common Law. Sahme we are so detremined to get rid if it really

hatfield girl said...

Shame we're so determined to get rid of much more than common law, N.

This isn't quite so much a matter of law, as a matter of buon costume, of the observance of the unspoken but very clear rules. It is this aspect of life that is going down our drains too; the comportment of a moral person in public dealings.

When did this start happening in England? I would place it precisely with the choice of Edward Heath as leader of the Conservative party; Heath was very inept, stupid, and vainglorious man with a mean conception of the uses of power, and an arrogant acceptance that he was the person to wield it.

Newmania said...

This isn't quite so much a matter of law, as a matter of buon costume, of the observance of the unspoken but very clear rules

You should read Roger Scruton`s book Elegy for England it has has gentle well....elegiac tone and is about the invisible bonds and structures of England. I would buy it for you if you had a coporeal presence.

hatfield girl said...

I had hoped to goad you with the very word 'Heath' N, and you offer me Scruton?

There needs to be a consideration of why and how Heath came to power, why he lost it, and why Margaret Thatcher was pushed into such violent confrontations when these are not the English way and they damaged her ability to close down the remnants of the command economy that had been needed in wartime and immediately afterwards.

There was a great political consensus to return to the small state and self -reliance, and she was doing just that, removing the vile state-run society that Heath had been involved in continuing and extending while pretending to be a Conservative. It is noteworthy that Heath and Brown are interchangeable in personality and politics. Widmerpools.

Newmania said...

Oh you wanted me to defend Heath !!! Ha ha ha ha ooo deary *wipes mithful tear*. Hardly HG although I don`t really go that far back with much confidence. I am not sure that a Conservative and a Thatcherite are that closely connected.

hatfield girl said...

For the first time, despite, determined setting out of lines, we are at cross purposes N. Defend the indefensible? The public, political and moral disgrace that was the appointment of Edward Heath!

He is the root of evil in modern Conservativism.

But forgive me, Conservativism is not mine to tear at.

My despair is the failure to build what should have been built after socialism was no longer competent.

I notice Lilith is none too pleased from more or less the same viewpoint either, but I may be misinterpreting her.

Newmania said...

He is the root of evil in modern Conservativism.

There is no evil in modern Conservatism HG. To admit to being like Heath is to invite the sort of look generally reserved for the appearance of a hideous yellow fanged apprarition from the closet.
Evil in any case is reppelled by the inate goodness of all Consevatives which , sadly prhaps , in some ways I actually believe .

I do not regard Thatcherism and Adam Smith as more than Part of the Story. Margaret Thatcher would agree I`m sure.

LILLITH ...well she does know a thing or two .. she has a sensitive instinctual antennae that woman.

lilith said...

My ears were burning! You are spot on HG... Wasn't Heath a total weirdo?

hatfield girl said...

Lilith, you do finance with feeling, politics with passion, socialism is in a shroud so what do we do now? as well.

There is a wolf in power wearing the dead sheep that was Geoffrey Howe, and before him weirdo Heath, and before that Wilsonian 'pragmatism', and before that Butskellism, and before that the Atlee using wartime command economic and social control powers to redress the outrageous injustices of the 19th and early 20th century.

There is this important standoff between putting back the small state, and low taxes, and localised governance responsive to localised requirements, while ensuring that our particular world and its reassuring culture is maintained - what Newmania claims for the Conservatives as their inheritance offered to us all; and the continued installation of the central, authoritarian state whose purpose is its own maintenance in power, redistribution to ensure its sycophants and pensioners, and micro-surveillance of state members to ensure their allegiance to the project - what the Labour party claims to be socialism offered, no imposed, upon us all.

Newmania says he doesn't want to talk about Heath because he isn't 'confident' 'that far back'. None of us can require that only those in power during our adult lifetimes should be part of what we take into consideration.

There's something to be discussed about statist Conservatives and about the confrontations precipitated against Margaret Thatcher when a determined attempt to return the state to non-command economy size was made.