A Different Beat

“What do you call those Italians that nobody likes?”

That was the question I was asked four times over lunch this week, and I had no idea at all what to reply. Would you know the answer?

I had flown home to attend a funeral in Scotland, God’s favourite holiday destination, where it usually takes me a few minutes to rediscover my roots and embrace the accents, the slang, the weather, and the wonderful sarcasm. Scotland is my kind of big town, obsessed as it is with sweets and cake shops on every corner, and I even ended up wearing a suit made of puff pastry. But more of that later.

What would sound amateurish and twee elsewhere can sound homely and comforting in Scotland, although the jury’s out for me on the serious debate I heard on Radio Scotland about the state of football north of the border which was signed off by someone, who I assume considers himself a journalist, with the words “Toodle oo the noo”. Either he thinks only his granny listens or I have been away far too long.

In Scotland they do things differently. I picked up the Valentine card sent from my mum to my dad and she’d signed it “Lots of love from Jean. Guess who?”. I’m not sure that after almost sixty years of marriage she’s got the hang of this romance thing yet.

The crematorium is situated in a place called Castlemilk, a renowned district given a bit of ironic class by locals who call it Chateau du Lait. Looking at the floral tributes from previous funerals I spotted one bunch of flowers with the message “To Dad. Lang may yer lum reek.” This is a traditional Scottish good luck saying, expressing the hope that you may always have enough money and security wherever you are. It translates best as “long may your chimney have smoke” which, as we were at a crematorium, could be seen as maybe just a wee bit ironic, no?

I’ve mentioned before my mum’s visit to this crematorium where, in a badly timed gap between hymn verses, she sniffed and said loudly “there’s something burning in here”. But in Scotland there’s no such thing as inappropriate, just different.

At the funeral lunch afterwards I sat beside a nice, kind, elderly man of ninety five who regaled me with stories of the war and how he had got himself involved with “those Italians no one likes.” I couldn’t think of what he meant, so the stories simply started over again as I heard about him being blown up and losing his hearing, then being sent to Kenya to recover.

Listening to another generation like this of course makes us think of how lucky we are that we haven’t lived through world wars, but it can also re affirm how kind people are. On returning to Italy after the war he was given a hero’s welcome by the village where he’d been in charge of Italian prisoners of war. They respected him simply because he’d been fair, even though he had been doing business of course with those Italians no one likes.

Unfortunately, before I could work it out, our meal carried on with sausage rolls, the flakiest, messiest foodtuff it is possible to find. And when the person eating it has ill fitting dentures (that’s not me incidentally) and speaks at the same time as munching, unfortunately everywhere within two to three feet gets decorated with pastry. My suit, hair and face ended up covered in the stuff as the stories started all over again.

But I wouldn’t have missed it for the world. There is something slower, easier, less fraught about life in Scotland, almost as if everyone bonds and gets on, if for no other reason than to simply survive the weather. It may have been a lightning quick visit, and it may have been for a sad occasion, but I came away with a smile. They even arranged for me to stay a bit longer than expected as I arrived at the airport to find my flight delayed by two hours because the co pilot had called in ill. You would think he could have dragged himself from his sick bed to bid me “toodle oo the noo.” Probably eaten too many cakes.

I’m now back in London and my suit is off to the dry cleaners, but I did in the end “get” which unloved Italians he was talking about after he eventually added the clue that “they are a wee bit naughty”.

He was talking about the mafia.