I started writing this 9 January 2007. You might remember that January was a bad month for us. We moved out of the urban cave on 6th January and spent the whole month staying with friends, sleeping on floors and looking for a new place to live…
The school started up again this week. Our temporary homelessness meant that I had to take a bus to get to work. Not knowing how long it would take to tackle the traffic and the freeway I crawled out of bed at 7am. The other impacting factor was that as guests in the apartment (and considering that our hostess herself is still overseas) we are trying to be as invisible as possible, which means not interrupting the regular routine of the household. This is particularly important in the mornings when people are preparing to go to work and using the one and only bathroom. After sneaking in for a quick shower, I scurried back to the bedroom along the cold tiled floor to find Gigi still in bed, snuggled up under the duvet, pretending that the alarm hadn’t gone off.
I caught the C30 bus at 8:10am from just nearby the apartment block and it did a twenty-minute loop of the surrounding suburb picking up other commuters before easing through the traffic to hit the ring road that floats above the city on concrete pillars.
Whenever we drive on the freeway or ring road, I try not to think about the fact that we are way up above the mess of residences, businesses and schools. I have on a couple of occasions voiced my surprise that we don’t hear more reports about cars and motorbikes driving straight off these sky high freeways into the buildings and houses below considering the risks some of the local drivers take.
Gigi, with his reignited sense of Neapolitan superstition, told me I had now jinxed them all. He calls me a blackbird, as it’s my habit to ask ‘Why doesn’t this happen more?’ or ‘Wouldn’t you think that such and such would happen?’
Naturally if you wait long enough disaster will strike. A truck crashed through the concrete barriers, driving off the freeway, into an apartment block underneath. Upon hearing the news, my husband proclaimed the accident was my fault.
I told him it was bound to happen, the way everyone drives in this city.
As my morning commute bus drove over the city towards the central business district I tried to ignore the fact that the orange capsule of death I was in could just as easily slip off the ribbon of grey and end up in someone’s kitchen, interrupting their morning coffee ritual.
I arrived at school just before 9am, with time to print out some lesson materials and prepare myself for my first class at 9:15am. It felt strange to be teaching again after a two week break. Similarly, I started my big class at 2:15pm with some trepidation, only to find that most of the students arrived some forty minutes late.
Forty minutes late? Yes, it seems extraordinary but of course, this is Naples and there is always a good reason.
The building where the school operates is part of the Centro Direzionale zone built during the later part of the 1980’s. The school occupies most of the 13th floor. There are four elevators. Two of the elevators have been out of service for some time. Today a third elevator went on strike, leaving fifteen floors to be serviced by one elevator that was, at best temperamental. The lifts are supposed to transport about six people at a time. To add to the inconvenience, the lift was refusing to move if it registered more than two people inside.
That’s countless trips up and down, as the lobby filled with people, all running late but pleased to have a legitimate excuse. Not that Neapolitans need an excuse for running late. The traffic, the undisputable need for a coffee/lunch, an unavoidable conversation, a public transport strike, and imaginary work commitments…trucks flying off the freeway into your kitchen. It’s a city of a thousand excuses.
The school started up again this week. Our temporary homelessness meant that I had to take a bus to get to work. Not knowing how long it would take to tackle the traffic and the freeway I crawled out of bed at 7am. The other impacting factor was that as guests in the apartment (and considering that our hostess herself is still overseas) we are trying to be as invisible as possible, which means not interrupting the regular routine of the household. This is particularly important in the mornings when people are preparing to go to work and using the one and only bathroom. After sneaking in for a quick shower, I scurried back to the bedroom along the cold tiled floor to find Gigi still in bed, snuggled up under the duvet, pretending that the alarm hadn’t gone off.
I caught the C30 bus at 8:10am from just nearby the apartment block and it did a twenty-minute loop of the surrounding suburb picking up other commuters before easing through the traffic to hit the ring road that floats above the city on concrete pillars.
Whenever we drive on the freeway or ring road, I try not to think about the fact that we are way up above the mess of residences, businesses and schools. I have on a couple of occasions voiced my surprise that we don’t hear more reports about cars and motorbikes driving straight off these sky high freeways into the buildings and houses below considering the risks some of the local drivers take.
Gigi, with his reignited sense of Neapolitan superstition, told me I had now jinxed them all. He calls me a blackbird, as it’s my habit to ask ‘Why doesn’t this happen more?’ or ‘Wouldn’t you think that such and such would happen?’
Naturally if you wait long enough disaster will strike. A truck crashed through the concrete barriers, driving off the freeway, into an apartment block underneath. Upon hearing the news, my husband proclaimed the accident was my fault.
I told him it was bound to happen, the way everyone drives in this city.
As my morning commute bus drove over the city towards the central business district I tried to ignore the fact that the orange capsule of death I was in could just as easily slip off the ribbon of grey and end up in someone’s kitchen, interrupting their morning coffee ritual.
I arrived at school just before 9am, with time to print out some lesson materials and prepare myself for my first class at 9:15am. It felt strange to be teaching again after a two week break. Similarly, I started my big class at 2:15pm with some trepidation, only to find that most of the students arrived some forty minutes late.
Forty minutes late? Yes, it seems extraordinary but of course, this is Naples and there is always a good reason.
The building where the school operates is part of the Centro Direzionale zone built during the later part of the 1980’s. The school occupies most of the 13th floor. There are four elevators. Two of the elevators have been out of service for some time. Today a third elevator went on strike, leaving fifteen floors to be serviced by one elevator that was, at best temperamental. The lifts are supposed to transport about six people at a time. To add to the inconvenience, the lift was refusing to move if it registered more than two people inside.
That’s countless trips up and down, as the lobby filled with people, all running late but pleased to have a legitimate excuse. Not that Neapolitans need an excuse for running late. The traffic, the undisputable need for a coffee/lunch, an unavoidable conversation, a public transport strike, and imaginary work commitments…trucks flying off the freeway into your kitchen. It’s a city of a thousand excuses.
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