Red is for ladies in Como

Como, Italy

There is something happening in Italy, at least in Como as I sit on my lakeside bench. Around me are the seeds of change. I can feel them, sense them, smell or even hear. The Italy I once knew is slowly vanishing, replaced by a newer version that I can only hope is fit for the transformations lying ahead. Hope is not always reliable. Ask David Cameron at the Brexit referendum.

Could it be the nearly 200,000 migrants, mostly economic, who crossed the waters only last year, the 150,000 the year before? Sudan, Gambia, Cote d’Ivoire and Guinea, added to lands between and beyond. The more than 3000 escapees who drown annually, the 22500 who have perished since 2014, bobbing across the Mediterranean waters from Libya, then the sinking, then the doggy-paddle, then the inevitable death. Your chances of meeting the Grim Reaper on that journey sit today at 2.1%. Crossing the sea to Italy is more hazardous even than base jumping. The 7600 kilometres of Italian coastline leaking like a sieve, a Government in trouble and feeling abandoned, as it spends more than 5 billion euros every year failing to solve a problem not of its creation. Yes, Italy is a land under change. No wonder there is so much interest in the political extreme right. The country is almost bust.

The Italy I remember was Bella Italia, Tirrenia, Ausonia, Esperia - poetic names for a poetic land. Italy was Corelli’s mandolin. It was utterly haphazard. It may have been the country whose air force had sunk my father in the Second World War, as his ship had lain at anchor in Crete’s Souda Bay. But Dad made it home in one piece and Italy remained our favoured holiday destination. It was the realm where if you had an appointment with officialdom at half-past ten, you knew it would not happen before eleven. Most likely it would not happen until a day later and only then after five espressos, 40 Nazionali cigarettes, and the occasional backhander.

Should you speak the lingo - Italian has never been my favoured skill - it was impossible to hold a conversation without hand signals, nay full-arm antics, half decapitating your companion while you tried to make a point. I once came across a whole-day course on Italian gestures although decided it was better to remain a stiff and humourless Brit. I do that well.

And Italian driving? Pull the other. I come from an era when a four-wheeled Italian on a potholed motorway would have put a North Korean missile to shame. I come from a time when I parked my car on a Naples side street, and returned an hour later to find its four wheels stolen, although Burglar Bill had kindly left my tiny Renault 5 lifted on wooden blocks.

But now, well embedded in the 21st century, Italy is becoming so…well the only word is normal. I am in Como attending a conference where the lectures started, to the second, on time - 8.50 clearly means 8.50 in Como. Many finished early, unheard of in the Italy I once knew. Only yesterday, okay I mean 20 years, I watched a Nobel-eligible Italian professor being led physically from his podium by the chairman, thanks to overshooting his speaking time by nearly 300 percent. The modern-day Italian can put John Cleese and the ‘80s film Clockwise to total and utter shame.

Italy, it appears, is transforming, if social development is your thing. Maybe it is the effect of Europe, not always a happy experience, so I can see why the Italians may be next to leave. Slowly the European monster is making us behave like clones. One day, I will wager, a Swiss will smile like an Italian while an Italian will yodel his way home. A Pole will be mistaken for a Romanian, a Spaniard for a Belgian, while a Greek will tap his foot to the Marseillaise. The European engine is slowly eliminating individuality. We were the first to do something about it in Britain. Just watch the others follow suit.

But some things cannot change, or if they do it will take generations. Top of my list is the Italian recognition of fashion. It is hard, as a male in Italy, not to wander the streets with mouth open. The ladies are something else. Young, old, tall, short, fat, thin, or indifferent, you see it first in Italy and in Como you see it for sure. Curvaceous forms strut its cobbled streets in teetering high heels, offset by tight dresses that leave nothing to the imagination. Ask an Italian lady which is more important, fashion or food. In return will come a sympathetic gaze, justified by the statement, “Ladies suffer to be fashionable.”

I am told an Italian lady can take 90 minutes to ready herself for public appearance - hair, make-up, clothing, plus the extras of femininity. No wonder so few eat breakfast before their working day and no surprise so many collapse from sugar deprivation. Oh, to be a dietitian in Bella Italia.

The colour red is where it is at, at least that is this year’s pigment. Red shirts, red hats, red trousers, red skirts and, wherever I look, red shoes. Red is the colour of fashion, red is the colour of style, and red is the colour of protest, specifically for women’s rights. Public displays of red shoes are commonplace in Italy, especially on International Women’s Day, globally chosen as March 8th, this year and hereafter.

The men have taken to wearing red as well, although their fashion sense to a lakeside Brit is more questionable than impressive. Red trainers with a pin stripe suit? Come on, you must be joking. Red Converses, black swimming thong and knobbly sun-deprived knees? Given half a chance I would take to the bottle. And as for the hugely overweight tourist, a Texan I sense, walking around Como’s Duomo, megaphoto camera dangling from his shoulder? Heaven help me. The scarlet desert boots laced above the ankle did nothing for his checked nylon shirt and beige Chinos. Both were in urgent need of a press, their owner in clear need of dieting. Leave it to others Mr Tourist, they do it so much better. Red is for ladies in Como.