Tao in June part 2 - An Italian wedding and a Radiotherapy Ablation complication

Part 2

He's big, he's bold, he's 60 years old.....

You can take the boy out of Sydney...

As a celebration, Tash took Ken and I to 'Rhodes on 24', a restaurant owned by the British (was super famous in the early 90's) chef, Gary Rhodes. This restaurant is on the 24th floor of the NatWest Tower in the heart of the city, the second tallest building in England after Canary Wharf by the way and no it is not the most imaginative of names for a food business. I think that revolving restaurants are the height of kitsch and Sydney has two of them (which cancels the kitsch aspect out somewhat, to have one is embarrassing, but having two is celebrating the fact!), the best we could do was this, static, but with better food. Though I did suggest to Ken that if he wanted to rotate his chair around during the course of the meal, he could obtain the same Centrepoint Tower (Sydney) effect, should he desire.

But you cannot take Sydney out of the boy.

By six in the evening, we had arrived at the pub and were sat in front of the big screen, pint in hand ready for the big match, Australia Vs. Croatia. We were joined by most of our extended social group (who you might recognise from previous entries); representatives from "the girls", Marisa and Nathan, Vic and Bonney and 'last time we saw you, you looked like a Greek fisherman and tonight I see that you have progressed to dressing like a Kebab shop owner' Matthew.

As you might know, Australia won over Croatia only to loose out to Italy. We celebrated that night and I have only heard moaning about how they were robbed since. This is despite pointing out to them that this is the best showing Australia have ever managed and that England will probably go out 'like girls' at their next match, no valiant battles lost by a piece of bad luck for the great England squad, oh no, just embarrassing under achievement all the way.

Photos of the night here

Laura, one of the twins in Natasha's Italian host family was getting married to Piero, her long term boyfriend.

Both the wedding and day were out of character for a normal Italian matrimonial event. The day started hot, carried on being hot and ended hot, ohh and did I mention that it was humid too?

I don't know if this bit is standard for such situations, but I was getting a bit concerned as we left the Bortesi house in convoy heading for Verona's main church, we were guests and the bridal car was right behind me for the entire way. You would usually think that there might be a gap of about, ohh I don't know, enough time for the guests to park their cars (not abandon, as I noticed some did), casually walk to the church, get seated and cool down, apparently not here!
Ali, Francesca's boyfriend and the driver I was following, cheerfully advised me not to worry as Churches in Italy were made of stone and it would be much cooler in there as we marched across the square sweating in our suits and then trying to find an open entrance as the wedding had already started. HE WAS WRONG!!!

Apparently the marriage ceremony was lovely, particularly the sermon which drew attention to how wonderful it is when each partner compliments each other, it was very stirring and romantic, well at least that's what Roby, one of the Groomsmen told me later on in the evening, but he had been drinking all day. As it was all in Italian I had to take him at his word "I expect <sweeping hand gesture> that you guy's will put that on your website, yeah <another sweeping hand gesture, almost colliding with his girlfriend next to him>, but I am drunk and we are all feeling romantic tonight". Yes Roby, you are quite correct, I have included it.

Spending 13 hours in sweltering heat with a large number of heavily drinking men would in England, almost certainly end in a fight or two, but not here.... Italian men are here to love, feel romantic and as I noticed as the evening drew in and everybody either sloped off home to get changed, or as the boys did, just slowly disrobe down to there undershirts, not showing any sign of being sweaty at all but continuing to dance like loons.

As you would expect, photos are here, of the occasion, not of sweaty men. This is Enrico by the way, he is Roby's brother, he doesn't usually look like a nightclub bouncer, which is the reason for this picture.

Italian weddings are big food affairs, as we were informed earlier on in the day by our slightly less inebriated (at the time) 'social narrator' Roby, couples try to out do each other with the number of courses on offer and so it is not unheard of, in the south where this happens more (think the wedding scene from the Godfather), for guests to be seated for food for 8 hours or more. We managed a glorious 4 hours seated by the Adige River that runs through the middle of Verona before making our way back into the Castelvecchio (Old Castle) for more drinks and dancing to an outrageous 70's cover band.

Piero is one of my most favourite Italian's, he is is funny, appreciative of my British sense of humour (always a bonus) and happy to share his emotions with you - which speaking as an Englishman is something that I am always impressed with. On this day, he put a lot of Love into the proceedings, a couple of bottles of wine in his stomach and a few songs into the microphone, culminating in the evenings final tune 'Albachiara' (Sunrise) by the very famous Italian rock star Vasco Rossi. Now I haven't a clue who this dude is, but it is a Rock love song, so I was told and well what can I say, in front of every one he belted this tune out to Laura, his wife with such passion, it makes me teary eyed just writing this down. By the way Piero can sing, this was no crappy Karaoke-in-the-pub-on-a-Friday-night job. See what I mean here with the song Vita Spericolata (Natasha apologises for the odd video work, she now realises that turning the camera 90 degrees whilst filming only produces on-its-side video footage and more work for me to fix it)

In England we have rain, odd looking 'contemporary' new churches (mostly built in the 1960's when the future was brick and concrete), shit buffets in village halls and the pain of that first shuffling bride and groom's dance, followed by the hell on earth that is the macarena and the birdie song whining out of a mobile Disco. These guys get married in a medieval church, lunch in a Castle and then the groom sings to his bride - we are soo out classed.

At about 3 in the morning I awoke to find Tash doubled over on the edge of the bed complaining that she had pains in her liver. From our previous ablation experience, Tash was expecting to have a day or two of discomfort as her liver can 'flare up' at any time in the six weeks after the treatment, but this turned out to be something entirely different indeed.

We made our way back to the Bortesi house for lunch and it turned out to be another 40 degree day. Piero and Laura came over to open our wedding presents to them, if there was a Italian tradition for giving and receiving of gifts we managed to ignore it, but it wasn't a problem. Tash had managed to find some typically 'funky' salad bowls for the newly weds and as you can see by the pictures we also gave them a Addis mop, which I had prepared with almost Industrial strength cardboard packaging (which inadvertently ended up looking like a missile, not so good for air travel!) - the previous attempt to get one to them had ended at the hands of the Ryanair baggage handlers who without any display of guilt sent the previous one round the airport carousel with a neat 90 degree bend in the middle of the handle.

During lunch both the heat and the pain started to get to Tash and her discomfort was obvious, eventually she disappeared inside the house and then 30 minutes later I was tapped on the shoulder by a concerned Laura simply saying 'Tash'

Even though both Stefania and Lorenzo practice in very different fields of medicine (orthadontics and pathology), in Italy they had to qualify as Doctors first and then specialise, no half measures for these guys, which was lucky for us. Tash was found in the girls bedroom in a bit of a state with concerned host parents and sisters fluttering around. It took a while to calm her down, no mean feet on such a humid day and so far from home, but the pain was stubborn no matter what painkillers we gave her so in the evening Stefania drove the three of us to the hospital, just in case.

I can report that the Verona Accident and Emergency department, Pronto Soccorso, as they like to call it, is a considerably better place to spend time than any of the English ones that I have frequented. Not only were they quick, 3.5 hours vs. 8 hours the last time I had need to be in one, but there was a refreshing lack of weirdo's in the waiting room. Ken and I sat out there whilst Stefania accompanied Tash into the treatment area. Being the master linguists that we are, both of us realised that we would have been absolutely no help, so spent our time observing that most accidents in Italy involve motorino's (small motor scooters) and old people (though not necessarily at the same time), apart from the brief excitement generated by one fainting woman, it was an uneventful stay.

After a moderate work up and ultrasound (moderate for an A&E department any way) Tash reappeared dosed up on liquid painkillers, clutching a 4 page blood and liver report (in Italian). They could find no inflammation or other obvious cause for concern in any of the tests and so did what any A&E department would do and patched her up to send home.

<< It gets worse! Read the Tao June post part 3 -oOo- Find out what we were doing here by reading the first June post >>

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