It's breakfast time in foggy Verona, and writer, Tim Parks, juggles kids, cereals, plaits and assorted Italian cats ...
Some people have an affinity with clockwork. Mick wakes up.
Stef has to be woken. Six thirty – ouch - It's breakfast
time – School at eight in Italy. Your turn, my wife says.
It's the moment when routine weighs most heavily. But it's
freezing! Tiled floors, stone stairs. Life is a treadmill.
Where are my slippers? Other people are just part of the
works. Or even worse IN THE WAY. Can I get to the sink
please? Is someone going to pass me the milk? The family
that can turn a winter weekday breakfast a happy social
event is… probably unheard of.
Still we do have our days. If routine is a monster, it's
only fair that it should be slain from time to time. I rush
downstairs to the kitchen, unarmed alas.
Can you say, the kids 'grunt down' their cereal? I've said
it. They sigh it down, they heave it down. It seems at
breakfast time they have no resistance to the grossest
chomping sensuality. If I mimic them – hcch, hrm, ah - they
don't even get upset. They are en-grossed in a gloomy
private gratification. Animals! I shriek. Unicorn, Michele
mutters with his mouth full. A reference to the morning
presentation of my hair. But better not speak ill of
beasts, fabled or otherwise. If anything can excite a spark
of fun these wretched mornings, it's the cats.
Signora M-mosh! I push open the shutter onto a wall of
freezing fog. Verona's fogs are not mentioned in Romeo and
Juliet. This one's been with us for weeks. Signora
M-moshsky! Not there. I close the window. But only thirty
seconds later – wham! Not one but three fat cats appear on
the sill and press their frozen whiskers to the glass. The
kids jump to their feet, suddenly all thoughtfulness and
generosity.
No one recalls how Signora M-mosh got her name. Mother of
the other two, she returned one afternoon with her ginger
tail in shreds. Sadists, the vet said. Now the kids give
her most favoured treatment. They fork out the gunk, a job
I hate. But after a night in the ice the animals are only
interested in warmth. It's each to a lap. And so as always
the naming game begins. M-mosh, p-posh, Michele simpers.
Torero, Stefi purrs, Torero Camomillo. Only recently the
beast's become Pompilius. A pompous cat. Pontifex! Michele
decides this morning. The Pope has been on the radio
worrying about fertility rates. Pontifex Maximus! Stefi
laughs. The poor beast has recently been castrated, but
looks the better for it. Senatore, I call the grey one.
Dottore. Avvocato!
In the middle of giggles, Dad! We're late. My hair! I have
to plait Stefi's hair. I'm not fast enough. Now a teacher's
note has to be signed. They need money. Michele reappears
with his scalp smothered in grease demanding a comb. Huge
backpacks are shouldered. They're not allowed to leave
books at school. Recently a kid died falling off his
balcony with his ludicrously heavy bag on his pack. Nice.
Pompilius Maximus give me a kiss! Get out! They're off in
the fog for the seven o'clock bus. No, Michele is hammering
on the door. Forgot to pee, he gasps.
James Joyce said you could judge a man's character better
from the way he ate his morning egg than by the way he went
to war. Routine was more revealing than drama he felt. I'm
not sure about that and anyway we don't rise to eggs at
breakfast. I see routine as terrible deadener, a mortal
foe. How will we get through all these winters without
becoming zombies?
Cincilla! I look up. Lucia's appeared. The baby of the
family, for some reason she has completely different names
for the cats. Kittina, she decides, Cincilla. Moshmilius.
Perhaps a constant re-naming of the animals will keep
creation alive.
