Spangly Princess

Moving...

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 22:01:00 +0000

SO I am shifting operations, such as they are, to www.spanglyprincess.com

it's still a work in progress at the moment but bear with me as I paint the place pink, put up some curtains, throw some scatter cushions around and so forth. I think it will be nice when it's done.

Italy 1 - 1 Paraguay

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 21:28:00 +0000

As one-all draws go that was pretty encouraging. I was expecting something a lot more static, less exciting and generally less positive than that. Recently we have looked old (well, we are), lacking in ideas and grinta, short on fitness and liable to confirm all the worst stereotypes about the Italian style of play. Instead tonight we looked pretty lively, determined and what I want to call propositive but I know it's not a word in English, so let's move swiftly on. Paraguay offered a bit less going forward than I had expected but actual this was one of the most interesting games so far I reckon.

Some player comments: De Rossi was the Danielino of old rather than the imposter he's been for Roma for much of this season; Montolivo played really well, perhaps unexpectedly transferring his club form to the nazionale which he has often struggled to do in the past; Pepe I thought was great, and Marchisio and especially Criscito both made useful contributions. Camoranesi actually made a difference when he came on, so I will admit I was wrong in my feeling that it was a mistake to take him. Once again the forwards were a little disappointing, though not dreadful by any means. Apart from the error (shared with De Rossi) for the goal, Cannavaro looked much better than I'd expected too, and the defence looked fine if not amazing.

In fact I am much happier with this performance than I remotely expected to be, and I think I would take this over the stale and defensive 1-0 I was mostly anticipating. I celebrated by washing the bathroom floor - let's not get too excited, hey?

emotional manipulation

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 21:01:00 +0000

I have just sunk to possibly a new low, an unimagined and unsuspected moment of patheticness: I have just teared up in a Shakira video. Feel free to cancel me from your list of acquaintances, blogs you read, close family members etc.

In mitigation, it wasn't at all Shakira-related, but instead the opening clip of the World Cup song, which shows Grosso taking his penalty. I hate penalties, always have done, transfixed by that can't-watch-must-watch agony, peering through my fingers like a kid watching a horror film.

Actually just seeing the patented and unmistakeable pre-penalty shorts-hitching manouvre of Fabien Barthez gives me a head-rush of nostalgia. Of course we'd seen it in plenty of other contexts, but now for me it means that penalty shoot-out and no other. You know I hate penalties, right? Did I say that yet? Standing in the Circo Massimo on 9 July 2006 I cried when Grosso scored that final penalty (just, like, a few discreet tears, not big snotty sobbing or anything - I'm not a total freak) and this footage / memory apparently retains some kind of embarrassing emotional hold which Shakira can now wheel out 4 years later in a weird corporate-sponsored FIFA video.

This is what football reduces me too.

Cisco Roma 4 - 0 Catanzaro

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 21:14:00 +0000

Much can be forgiven to a team whose fans sing 'The Final Countdown' and the theme from the A-Team as well as a chant set to 'I will survive': (solo per te io canterò, fino al novantesimo minuto griderò.... etc) which I rather liked. On the other hand, losing 4-0 in a play-off final is pretty poor and no amount of nice tunes make up for it.

What football, you may wonder (if you haven't read the post header) could possibly still be going on as late as 6 June? It's the playoffs, obviously, and to be precise the Serie C2 playoff final, first leg, which offered a chance to enjoy the belated arrival of summer sunshine and catch a last game of the season Or to put it another way, to spend the afternoon surrounded by topless men, some of whom were too drunk to stand. So Cisco - Catanzaro at the Stadio Flaminio, then. Several thousand Catanzaresi had come over 600km to be there, as against less than a thousand home supporters. We were in with the Catanzaro fans - convieniently giallorosso - and if you need to know why, a convenient summary is that Cisco Roma are the MK Dons of Italy and should not, therefore, be promoted.

Unfortunately although the fans had travelled in numbers, and with great enthusiasm, the players appeared not to have. Their energy, ability and tactical awareness were perhaps still in a motorway service station the wrong side of Napoli, since they certainly weren't here in Rome. It took Cisco a whole 17 minutes to score, by which point the Catanzaro keeper had already been forced into a couple of decent saves. After 35' it was 3-0 and on the stroke of half-time the Calabresi managed to get a man sent off for good measure. To add insult to injury they'd missed a penalty when it was still 2-0; if they'd taken it to 2-1 perhaps it could still have been turned around. It was not to be: Cisco had a couple of great players - their right-winger and one of their forwards ran rings round the giallorosso defence - and to describe the game as dismal, dreary and disappointing is frankly an insult to dismal, dreary and disappointing things the world over. Ah well.

In the curva things were a little better, at least before half-time. In the second half, which was very much more of the same, the visiting fans grew understandably disheartened and only the 100-strong ultras group were still singing by the end. On a critical note, they need to work on their lyrics, which were weak and detracted from a nice range of tunes. They also have a truly hilarious (and substantially incomprehensible) dialect, only I'm probably not allowed to laugh at it under Italian football's regulations about 'manifestazioni di discriminazione territoriale'.

I can't imagine that even the most optimistic of Catanzaresi - currently sat in a slow train south, or possibly stuck on the notoriously awful Salerno-Reggio Calabria road, an ongoing national scandal - think that they can possibly win promotion now. The fact they've failed to win promotion in no fewer than 5 playoffs in the period 1996-7 to 2008-9 possibly means that they weren't that optimistic in the first place. In fact lots of them were wearing tshirts saying "I hate playoffs". So it looks like Cisco will be going up into C1 (sorry, the Lega Pro 1 - fucking horrible pointless rebranding exercise that is - everyone still says C1 & C2). And that's that, I imagine, for another season. Next Sunday: the beach.

The Huntress

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Tue, 25 May 2010 09:05:00 +0000

I wake slowly and lie in bed wondering why. The half-light coming in through the uncovered window tells me it's still early, before dawn even. Then I identify the reason for my wakefulness: it's the zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz in my ear of a mosquito.

CURSES

I am instantly wide awake. I spring out of bed and turn on the light. I espy my quarry resting nonchalantly on the wall -its delicate legs and tell-tale tiny shadow - just above the head of the sleeping Chelsea Boy, who seems oblivious to the light, the springing or the whine of the insect.

I seize the first weapon which comes to hand. It is a Penguin paperback, one of those colour-coded horizontal grid ones from the inter-war years: orange for general fiction, red for drama, pink for travel, blue for non-fiction and so on. This is green for crime, and to be precise is Agatha Christie's Parker Pyne Investigates, a mediocre collection of short stories which I picked up for €0.50 from a street stall in Piazza Sonnino. Parker Pyne Investigates in hand, I climb stealthily onto the bed and advance carefully towards my prey.

Splat: a swift swipe and it is done. Blood spills forth, possibly mine, possibly Chelsea Boy's, and I think of John Donne's The Flea (1633):

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deny'st me is;
It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea, our two bloods mingled be;

Cruel and sudden, I have Purpled in the blood of innocence the front cover of Parker Pyne Investigates, to which also adheres a stray leg. My glorious victory is acclaimed with a sort of grunt from the sleeper at my feet. But wait! I am poised, motionless, balanced on the bed. Still the whining zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz continues.

CURSES AND YET MORE CURSES

there is another one.

Diana, on her nocturnal hunting expeditions, favoured the bow and arrows as a weapon over the collection of short detective stories and who is to gainsay her choice? However the bow & arrows might not prove wholly useful against the mosquito, so with Parker Pyne Investigates in one hand I equip myself with a can of doubtless highly environmentally unfriendly mosquito spray in the other and prowl about the room. Diana also favoured, we are given to understand, some form of abundant rather impractical white drapery. The modern Diana is better served by cotton pyjamas and an old 'Italia Campioni del Mondo 2006' t-shirt, admittedly a little faded from washing, but less liable to trip one up as one balances on the edge of the bed scanning the room for tiny flying prey at 4.10am. What the modern Diana lacks in glamour she hopes to make up in effectiveness.

The hunt, alas, is slow. It requires patience as well as stealth. At one point the quarry alights on top of Chelsea Boy's slumbering form but I pause, uncertain as to whether he would be more displeased to be awoken by Agatha Christie or a squirt of toxic gas, and miss my chance. But determination, persistence and inflexible will are mine and so too eventually is victory.

sleep is slow in returning, though. Chances are Diana liked a lie-in.

Chievo 0 -2 Roma

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:56:00 +0000

My sleep patterns have been fucked lately so when it was no surprise to awake with a start at 5.20am. I lay in bed waiting for the alarm to go off and took advantage of the time to try to mentally prepare myself. Since the Samp game I have been studiedly not deluding myself, and in all honesty I never really believed - on an intellectual level - that we were going to win the league, even when we went top. The heart is disobedient though.

We took the 8.05 Eurostar to Verona (having, to the unvoiced disapproval of ultra friends, actually booked & paid for our tickets). The train was 95% full of romanisti: lots of families with small children and nicely dressed chaps in their 40s and 50s. Not the usual away crowd, in short. This was a rare mass exodus of the fans who usually sit in the expensive seats and watch the away games on the TV. Roma's home gates have been massively up all through the second half of the season, too. The Curva Sud sings 'il tifoso occasionale alla Roma porta male' at them. As the most occasional of away fans I should probably pass no comment here.

The weather in Rome has been dreadful this spring, and had been aggressively raining without pause since Friday, but Verona was bathed in very warm spring sunshine when we arrived. It's a short walk into the city centre from the train station, and the Piazza by the Arena was full of romanisti, mostly sitting in outdoor cafés having belated breakfasts or drinking a quiet beer. The local newspaper, L'Arena, proclaimed: 15,000 Romanisti. Città sotto assedio [City under siege]. Under siege? The citizens of prosperous, right-wing Verona must have been shaking with fear as giallorossi terrifyingly admired their landmarks, aggressively ate ice-creams in the sunshine, and most alarmingly of all, unrestrainedly spent money in their restaurants. Scary stuff. Actually they got the number wrong too, according to most estimates there were 20,000-23,000 away fans present. The ground holds just over 30,000 and was fully sold out, which tells you all you need to know.

So we had our lunch and admired the town, and walked back out of the city centre to the ground. Here's where the story gets less fun. Let's imagine that you're in charge of the stewarding & ground management at the Stadio Bentegodi. For days the papers have been full of stories about the huge numbers of romanisti coming to Verona for the game. Chievo's ticket office tell you that the entire Curva Nord (the away end) is sold out, and in fact the last few tickets for the side stands have also sold on Sunday morning. You know that unprecedented numbers of families will be part of the visiting crowd, and that many of them have never been to your stadium before. You know that it will be relatively hot for the time of year, and that the crowd will be good-humoured but anxious.

How many turnstiles do you open to admit the 20,000+ travelling fans?

a) let's open as many as possible to get the fans easily & safely into the ground, avoiding potential crushes against the inexplicable iron barriers everywhere and minimising the amount of time spent trapped in large metal cages under the mid-day sun, especially given that there are lots of children here. After all, you've read the Taylor report, you know how important it is to manage entry to the ground in a safe & responsible manner.

b) 2

If you chose option B, congratulations, you have a career in Italian stadium management ahead of you.

So getting into the ground was quite remarkably unpleasant and your correspondent nearly had a full-on panic attack, of the hyperventilating kind, and narrowly avoided swooning, like a missish Victorian lady, into the heavily tattooed arms of an irate gentleman pressed uncomfortably close in what can only be described as a giant cage. Lovely times. Note to authorities: if you want to bring families back to football, rather than compulsory ID cards you might care to take a look at your appalling public order arrangements.

So, the game. We won. We lost. The end.

foto from lamiaroma.it

I am holding up the lower banner, behind the second 'e' in perde!

Great atmosphere in the ground. Sunshine, smoke bombs, flags, singing. Great goals from Vucinic, who has had a super season, and De Rossi, who has not. At half time, with us 2-0 up and Inter still drawing 0-0 with Siena, I had to give myself a stern talking to about hope and realism. Behave, unruly heart. The Italian media like to use phrases like 'Champions at half-time' which mean nothing, but to be 45 minutes from the title... well. After 2008 I had hoped to never feel like this again.

fotos from lamiaroma.it

A note on the home support: behind their 'North Side' banner the couple of hundred home ultras (should there be, perhaps, inverted commas around that?) supported creditably through most of the game. They put up a striscione proclaiming that for the last 10 years they have 'realised the dreams of this city', giving me frankly a poor impression of the imaginative capacity of the people of Verona. They also put up a banner addressed to their own fans inviting them to gather in 'Piazza Chievo' after the game - who knows, perhaps to celebrate triumphantly staying up for another year? This was greeted with a resounding chorus of 'We'll come too' from the Roma curva - free barbecue, anyone? There's no real aggro between the two sets of fans or particularly strong feelings either way, so when news of Inter's goal came through and they all began cheering and celebrating our general reaction was one of fury and outrage (expressed in the time-honoured medium of whistling, of course). Petty provincial schadenfreude at its most small-time.

So yes, Inter won - of course. I never expected anything else. Our win was for nothing but pride, in the end, but that, I think, we can all have in abundance. Considering our size, our budget, above all the way our season started, we came further than we ever dreamed of doing at the start of the year, and we had a great time along the way. Yesterday was amazing and heartbreaking and exactly what I expected, and now we have to pick ourselves up and wait until next year and do it all over again.

Roma 0 -1 Inter

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Fri, 07 May 2010 18:16:00 +0000

I really, really, really wanted this. Partly because I fucking hate Inter, partly because of the debacle of Sunday's nights Lazio game, partly because it would be kinda cool to wrap up Coppa Italia no. 10 and be the first team to get the little silver star on our shirts, partly because I have the rather English notion that cups matter. (Oh yeah, and to make sure that unutterably bloody Mourinho doesn't win the treble, something no Italian team has ever done as the media never ceases to breathlessly inform us). But mostly because since we're no longer realistically likely to win the league I was hoping that we would at least win some kind of trophy in recognition of a really phenomenal season.

When we came out of the ground it had started to rain and we walked through the lines of riot police in damp silence. I felt angry, fed up and faintly nauseated. And you know what? not about what happened on the pitch - though that was infuriating, frustrating, and ultimately unsurprising.

No, what ruined my night on Wednesday was something which I haven't seen mentioned anywhere in the press coverage: it was the racist chanting in the Curva Sud. From a few isolated monkey chants here and there, it grew steadily as Balotelli became more and more provoking, right in front of the Sud. I think I won't repeat the comments /chanting from the people directly around me, they made me feel sick enough at the time. The stuff directed at Chivu wasn't much better.

Now I know that Balotelli is a nasty little wanker, and Chivu was out of line and annoying, and I am has happy as the next irate fan to insult them, I just wish that Italian fans weren't stuck in the 19fucking80s where angry people search for the most inflammatory thing they can think of to shout and let rip with no thought for the consequences. It was noticeable that from 'inoffensive' insults, people descended into racism as tempers frayed - as though it was this latent force ready to burst out under sufficient provocation. I hate it, it makes me feel sick & dirty and in the end I stopped caring about losing the cup. I don't have any answers to offer right now, just a kind of nausea & despair.

sorry, btw, if you were hoping for a cheery welcome back post.

sorry guys

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 08:56:00 +0000

I know I should be posting about Roma, calciopoli II, what I refuse to acknowledge as a title challenge but prefer to think of as a battle for 2nd, beating Inter, going to Athens, all these things I haven't written up, even Padova-Cittadella last week, but I have 5 courses to teach, 2 honours sections, an independent study, translation, research, writing, a roughly 55-60 hour working week & currently also labyrinthitis so it's not going to happen for a while, not till the sensation of permanent sea-sickness goes away anyhow

azionariato popolare stuff

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:31:00 +0000

So one of the things which has been keeping me busy of late, as I'm sure you are aware, is the Azionariato Popolare AS Roma stuff, ie the supporters' trust we are trying to set up.

Since the launch press conference on 22 February things have got more hectic, and I haven't had the time to write about it for this place yet, BUT if in the mean time you would like to read some further info I strongly suggest you go here:

http://theliquidator.wordpress.com/2010/02/22/azionariato-popolare-as-roma/
http://theliquidator.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/azionariato-popolare-as-roma-part-2/
http://theliquidator.wordpress.com/2010/03/01/azionariato-popolare-as-roma-part-3/

to read what him indoors has to say about it.

or go to the official website, obviously.

this week

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 10:10:00 +0000

I am mostly singing....

anche se a dire la verità penso che l'abbiano cantato prima a firenze, non contro il palermo

athens

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 21:14:00 +0000

yes I did go to Athens, and yes it was both infuriating and amazing, and yes I will write about it. but not right now. Oh yes, and about Roma-Catania too. patience.

Il Corpo delle Donne

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 13:12:00 +0000

So this week at work we had a film screening & discussion evening based around a short documentary produced last year called Il Corpo delle Donne - Women's bodies. It is a very personal examination of the way contemporary Italian TV depicts women. The film-makers chose to focus only on entertainment shows rather than drama/soaps, news or criticism, all of which might have been equally worth of attention, but which probably fill less time than the endless entertainment shows. I REALLY REALLY urge you to go & watch this film: it is only about 25 minutes long and I think it is very powerful and important.

Contrary to what some people appear to believe I am no ranting feminist, and indeed am very frequently a severe disappointment to more feminist friends and colleagues. But this film had a really extraordinary effect on me. By the end - and the end is particularly shocking - I felt literally nauseous with rage, a kind of boiling sickness in my stomach.

The film-makers are taking this documentary around the country and organising what I suppose are kind of 'media literacy' classes for high school students, encouraging them to challenge what they see and unpick the implications. The director recounted some very interesting reactions from 17-18 old students, both male & female, which were at least encouraging. I don't want to post up all our discussion though before you see the film. Come and leave me a comment after you've watched it if you like.

original version:

http://www.ilcorpodelledonne.net/?page_id=89

with English subtitles:

http://www.ilcorpodelledonne.net/?page_id=91

day in the life of

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 20:58:00 +0000

someone asked me recently what I actually do. I do this:

07:45 alarm.
07:50 alarm. decide to ignore monday.
08:00 haul self out of bed. shower, dress, tea, blow-dry hair, do makeup, choose hat.
09:10 grab bag of books, papers, dvds assembled night before, stagger downstairs to bus-stop.bus then tram then walk to work.
09:45 arrive in office. print off lecture notes for classes 1 & 2. print off class handouts, readings, primary sources etc for classes 1& 2, make 27 & 16 copies of them all respectively. check through notes, flick through class textbook, refresh memory.
10:20 rush downstairs with piles of papers, dash across road to bar, scoff cappuccino & cornetto (breakfast! woo!)
10:30 class; discuss relationship between statism, totalitarianism & dictatorship.
11:45 class ends. go to office, find remote controls for projector, dvd player etc, do battle with forces of technology, prepare dvd
12:00 class; background to French Algeria; discuss 3 scenes from film Days of Glory (Les Indigenes)
13:15 class ends. drop dvd in library so students can watch the rest later (ha!), drop papers back in office
13:30 lunch! grab Corriere dello Sport, shovel pasta e fagioli down face while reading match-reports, interviews & pointless speculation about Fiorentina- Roma. Coffee at bar, ask faux-sympathetic questions about life in Serie B to Laziale barman.
14:15 back at desk. Finish preparing for class 3, print notes, print & photocopy handouts, prepare assignment instructions, print &c, prepare readings on Defense of Realm Act 1914, print &c.
15:30 meet students to discuss future class presentation
15:45 class - mobilization, cultural & social responses to war, preprepared powerpoint presentation etc
17:00 class ends. go to library, make arrangements to leave personal copy of King Albert's Book (1914) & other original publications on reserve, discuss logistics with librarian.
17:15 print off 3 journal articles to prepare for advanced honours tutorial. repair to bar, order large tea & banana/choc-chip muffin. Make way through articles, annotate, prepare tutorial.
18:45 advanced honours tutorial. students enthusiastic & well-prepared. feel disconcerted and mildly confused. students discuss historiographical debates, critique arguments, offer original ideas. feel faint, disorientated. enjoy self.
20:00 tutorial ends. go back upstairs to office, file away papers, reluctantly fire up computer. answer student emails. receive bizarre academic spam from vanity publisher. research, prepare & email presentation instructions / reading list to students.
21:10 realise time, reel in horror, call CB and leave building. walk, tram, bus.
21:45 home. stumble up stairs. jab key in lock. fail to open door. stare dumbly. realise lock belongs to someone else's door. trudge up more stairs to correct door. fall over cunning auto-deathtrap in form of home-made draught excluder.

total contact hours: 5. total working hours: c. 10.5 loss of brain function: total

Sensation on discovering delicious risotto mid-way through cooking on stove: rapture.

now: sofa. maybe Angel.

sunday morning

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 13:51:00 +0000

so on weekends when we're not at morning football or hungover, Sunday morning in the Spangly/ChelseaBoy household tends to mean cleaning. If the two of you clean the flat together it doesn't take too long, though we seem to have the dustiest location in the world - I think it's the smog, as the Italians call it, coming in through the windows. Roman air: not that clean. So repeat dusting is always the order of the day.

Today is a gorgeous sunny day which means washing the floors and doing two loads of laundry so they can dry on the balcony - nothing is more depressing than the endless way wet washing hangs around in the winter on an airing rack in the living room, drying infinitesimally slowly and making you feel like you live in a damp cupboard under the stairs.

Sunday morning breakfast of fresh cornetti (Italian style croissants) from the baker round the corner served with home made lemon curd (so tasty, so unhealthy) helped get us off to a good start. Now everything is clean from top to bottom and smells faintly of lavendar, the sun is shining, the balcony door is open to let some fresh (ish) air in, and a nice chilli/tomato pasta lunch has finished the whole thing off. This means the afternoon is free to finish preparing for tomorrow's classes, read some more of Neal Stephenson's The System of the World, maybe play some more Assassin's Creed II on the Xbox, and knit a bit more of the blue & white scarf I'm making for CB.

However the essential prerequisite for companionable sunday morning cleaning is the correct sound-track: no music, no mopping. Today's sparkly clean assortment was: Vampire Weekend, Kano, the La's and classic 80s Jamaican dancehall. Fundamentally you need to be able to sing along and/or jig whilst cleaning.

Juventus 1 - 2 Roma

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 16:24:00 +0000

A simple equation: Juve - any ideas on the pitch + Roma on a decent run of form x Ranieri's revenge = a memorable away win. Hfd. Juve were also minus any fans, seeing as the Curva Scirea was shut after the umpteenth incident of racist chanting about Balotelli. Of the c. 19000 hardy souls who braved the -5°C Turin evening, about 5000 were romanisti, and they made pretty much all the noise. Juve ultras went to watch the bianconeri kids instead (the Pulcini, 8-10 year olds) and then protested against their club's board of directors. Sounds vaguely familiar.

The run-up was enlivened by Alessandro del Piero's entertaining pre-match love-in with Totti via his personal website, and Totti's response in kind: it boiled down to 'we're the only two real bandiere left, men of values, honour, tradition, bla bla bla true greatness comes from playing against truly great players like you, Francé' followed by 'ahò Alessà! semo vecchi ma bravi!' Del Piero also scored a smashing goal for a 1-0 lead early on in the second half, to confirm my secretly pessimistic expectations. Things had already started badly with Toni coming off injured after about 5 minutes, and the first half was fairly cagey - we looked solid at the back but weren't creating anything concrete.

But then a penalty neatly taken by Er Capitano (his first ever away goal vs Juve) was followed by a classic example of the professional foul by Buffon, who spectactularly took down a bizarrely breakaway Riise and pretty much immediately began to walk, like a cricketer who know's he's out. No pen, since this was way outside the area, but about 10' to play with numerical superiority - not that I thought we'd be able to capitalise on it. Instead the consistently excellent Pizarro put a perfect ball into the box for Riise to get his head to and it was 2-1 in the 4th minute of injury time. Woo and also hoo.

so we are now 3rd, just 8 points off the top, with the Milan derby tonight. Hands up who thought we'd be here now when Ranieri first arrived?

Roma 3 - 0 Genoa

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 21:55:00 +0000

Well I'll be damned, we've only gone and bought a centre forward. The big, lumbering, scores lots of headers, holds up the ball, lump it up the field & smash it, attacks the ball from a corner kind of centre forward. The kind that I've bemoaned the lack of for ooh, at least the last two years. Luca Toni, prize-winning carthorse, precisely the man for the job. Welcome. And what a nice way to get off the mark - two solid goals (which enabled us to overlook the missed sitters earlier).

Genoa were shocking, mind. Apart from a 10 minute spell after the break they offered nothing, really. But we looked solid and committed, we created lots of chances, everyone played well and that was without De Rossi or Totti, which is good news. Crowd less whiny too (if disappointingly small).

Term starts tomorrow so I'm off to watch Domenica Sportiva and have an early(ish) night.

SpanglyPrincess 3 - 2 Festive Season

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 22:05:00 +0000

been here, as you may have guessed:

great pic, less good for travel arrangements. Also not so good for health and safety.

Holiday got off to a lovely start with the far-flung Spangly family reunited in Nottingham for an early Christmas with a great deal of eating, followed by a big night out in London with loads of old friends, and a great deal of drinking. The spirit of Christmas then brutally reneged on us in an unpleasant way: the PrincessSpanglyMother slipped on ice in Russell Square and broke her arm. We took her to University College Hospital, which was great under the cricumstances, but not how she (or we!) had wanted to spend her day. She has had to be wired back together and is currently floating in a codeine haze and learning to type with her left hand. Get well soon.

Christmas itself and New Year were both lots of fun, along with a little shopping, a night out in town to see a comedian, drinks with an ex and some very good food. Less successfully, I couldn't get anything done in the British Library because I had no proof of address with me and my old card had run out. Nor could I find ANY of the books I currently need in any of the half a dozen book shops I tried. But Chelsea Boy & I went down to Somerset to visit a very close and dear friend who still lives in the place where I grew up, which was lovely. We got trapped there by snow & ice, which was less lovely.

Other lovely things from the last 3 weeks: the British Museum, roast beef, a Diptyque Tuberose candle, Chelsea-Fulham, Thai hot & sour soup, a cashmere cardi & top, walking on the beach at Burnham on Sea with two huge dogs, new embroidered silk satin dressing gown, England beating South Africa, Assassin's Creed II for the Xbox. Sleep. Wine. An imperial purple mock-croc patent handbag.

Travel in the last 48 hours (Street-Oxshott, Oxshott-Rome) has been not awful but along way from great too. We have also suffered sundry losses, inefficiencies, wasted tickets, unexpected expenses &c. Hence I think that on balance we can set it down as a hard-fought win. 3-2. Nice to be home.

in praise of.... me!

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 14:36:00 +0000

This morning I received an email which is so touching and which made me so happy that I thought I would like to share it with you.

I love teaching, for all that I moan about it sometimes. I am very lucky to have a job that I really enjoy, but this last few weeks of the semester I was so stressed and busy that it's very easy to forget that I do actually want to be doing this. I had started to reminisce fondly about things I have done in the past like being a librarian, or a make-up counter girl, or selling gifts and cards and second-hand books, or being a home-care assistant for disabled children (actually that was incredibly hard work and I don't really miss it).

But then something happens to make you remember that it is all worthwhile after all:

Dear Dr. [SpanglyPrincess],

I'm sorry that I was not able to do this more formally, however I would like to extend my deepest thanks to you for all of your hard work, compassion and the way in which you have educated me this semester. Studying abroad in Rome has been one of the most paramount and meaningful experiences of my life. Your limitless dedication has been one of the determining factors in enriching my total experience abroad. I wrote this on my evaluation, but I wanted to reiterate how much I feel that I have learned from you this semester. You are easily the most knowledgeable professor I had in Rome, and one of the most knowledgeable I have encountered in my college experience thus far. Your knowledge is contagious. I came away from your class feeling empowered and intelligent and I simply cannot thank you enough. I wish you all the best and hope our paths will cross in the future. May you have the merriest of holiday seasons!

I don't do this very often, I think, since I usually tend more towards self-deprecation. But this has made me extremely happy and so I thought I would post it here and let you share in my moment of pleased-with-self-ness. Normal service will be resumed shortly.

political discourse all'italiano

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:02:00 +0000

so someone has clumped Berlusconi in the face with a model of the Duomo in Milan, as you doubtless have seen on TV or in a paper somewhere. The greatest example of Italian Gothic, the Duomo is an almost uniquely spiky building and thus ideal for smashing people in the head with. Indeed it is in many ways the idea weapon since no-one is going to confiscate it from you when they search your bag, especially not if you are stood in Piazza del Duomo clutching your souvenir. Really it is a miracle that more people have not been smacked in the gob with great Gothic churches over the years. Thump Sarko with a miniature marble Chartres! Biff Thatcher with a scale model of Salisbury Cathedral! Fling Santa Maria del Mar at Aznar!

Perhaps not. Actually my sympathies lie more with Noel Godin, the Belgian custard pie-throwing anarchist. A pie to the face is messy, takes the recipient down a peg or two, and is both harmless and entertaining. Whatever you think of Berlusca I don't feel that throwing metal objects in the face of 73 year olds (even ones made substantially out of plastic) is particularly big or clever. He has broken two front teeth and a bone in his nose, and is still in hospital where apparently he is struggling to eat. I imagine that partly this is due to the ceaseless flow of visitors from all sides of the political spectrum who have been falling over themselves to be photographed caringly visiting the prime minister and sanctimoniously eschewing all violence in grave and measured tones. (Violence against politicians, that is. Violence against immigrants, Afghanis, epilectics on bail for drug possession, ultras etc is all fine and dandy). Members of Berlusconi's Popolo della Libertà have been assiduous in never leaving the injured man alone for more than 2 seconds, presumably in the (entirely well-founded) fear that a political rival will somehow nip in and secure a vital bedside moment of intimacy.

Mud is of course being thrown in all directions over the vexed question of the 'political climate' and whether the 'avvelenato' (poisonous) tone of political discourse in Italy is not at least partially responsible for this event. It should be noted that the man presumed responsible has been in psychiatric treatment for the last ten years (perhaps this was a unique moment of clarity). But Rosy Bindi of the Partito Democratico and Berlusconi's arch-enemy Antonio Di Pietro, leader of Italia dei Valori, have both suggested that the prime minister himself is at least partially to blame for creating a culture of rhetorical violence characterised by the routine demonstration of opponents, highly aggressive posturing and a continued escalation of ritual hostilities.

This argument interests me a lot. Certainly it is clear that Berlusconi and the right have helped to contribute to this political climate - which undoubtedly exists - though I would say that plenty of politicians on the left have also done so. What I think is more interesting though is the relationship which this posits between language and violence. Does aggressive rhetoric and violent language directly lead to acts of violence, and how can we trace that relationship? This is one of the themes I am interested in, in the context of my research, and I have been to a couple of workshops & conferences dedicated to this theme. It is very generally accepted that verbal incitement to violence can be highly effective. Witness the principle of laws against incitement to racial hatred; or more poetically consider this:

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'erwhelm it
As fearfully as doth a galled rock
O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,
Swill'd with the wild and wasteful ocean.
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit
To his full height. On, on, you noblest English.
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war-proof!

Henry V (III,i)

This speech only works if we accept the basic premise that words can lead to actions - and specifically that rhetorical violence spoken by one man can lead to actual violence on the part of others. But how this actually works remains, I think, to be interrogated more fully. How does a climate of political aggression incite psychologically unstable men to throw cheap replicas of architectural wonders at elderly politicians? Some of the government are reading this as a clear attempt to assassinate Berlusconi but myself I wonder if we shouldn't be reading this symbolically. It is, after all, the image of Berlusconi with a bleeding face which will linger in the public mind after this event, just as Berlusconi was attacked not only as an individual but as a symbol of what he and his government stand for.

Apparently, from his hospital bed, he has asked (rather plainively, it must be said) "I don't understand why they hate me so much." If he has contributed to creating this poisoned political discourse of hatred, demonisation, good vs evil and ultimately violence, it seems that the results are not quite what he was expecting.

derby part II

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 08:29:00 +0000

best Roma striscione of the night:

STATE FERMO CHE VE CONTAMO... [stand still so we can count you]

followed shortly by:

AOH! SETE MENO DEI BARESI! [there's fewer of you than of the Bari fans]

I never had the time to write about the extraordinary following that Bari brought a couple of weeks ago - somewhere between 10,000 & 12,000 mentalists:

But back to the derby. As usual there was a lot of attention to Lazio's 11 years in Serie B, and the suggestion that they might soon by enjoying a 12th:

CONTRO L'INFLUENZA 'A' - PROVATE LA VITAMINA B-12!
[against Influenza A (swine flu') try vitamin B-12]

CONTINUATE COSI: PROSSIMO DERBY COL FROSINONE
[carry on like this your next derby will be with Frosinone - both a reference to joining Frosinone in Serie B and their supposedly country origins - though in fact there's a possibility Frosinone could pass them in the other direction, which would be beyond hilarious however unlikely]
The pre-match coreografia was well done too. First the difficult effort to get everyone to shut up & pay attention, so that we could do this:

(This is the Curva you [the authorities] would like - ie sitting down in silence)

followed by a coloured card display involving not only the central section of the curva but also the distinti, and a huge central banner which was bizarrely self-referential - a picture of the Sud itself, complete with some recognisable banners which are in there every week:

and then after the full coreografia:

QUESTA E' LA CURVA SUD!

lovely stuff. the Sud was in much better form than it has been for ages, and victory temporarily erases the memory of how godawful most of the performance was. Still, as AussieRomanista comments, it's a sign of how reduced our horizons have become this season that this was such a big deal for the players. De Rossi was like a man possessed after the final whistle, though I can understand that from him and other born romanisti. As for the others, I can only presume that relief was a predominant emotion: after the amount of shit the team has been getting this season a loss in the derby would have been intolerable and undone the good work of the last few weeks' efforts at recovery. I think that sadly given our financial position and the situation with the current owners it may be some time before winning the derby ceases to be one of the season's big goals, alas.

Roma 1 -0 Lazio

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 23:21:00 +0000

I am not sure I am really capable of writing nice prose tonight, but wanted to put something up while the soup finishes cooking (late supper). A truly dreadful game of football but it's the win that matters. In fact, it was a pisspoor performance in which Lazio had bossed the midfield and we looked totally lacking in ideas and movement for 80 of the 90 minutes. But you know what? that's fine. It might even be better. Make them suffer more.

More commentworthy than the actual game was the fact we did a coreografia beforehand for the first time in at least 18 months, maybe more like 2 years. will put up a foto in the morning. after about 14 minutes the game was briefly suspended after scuffles broke out in the tribuna tevere (pre-arranged between some extreme right groups who met up in a bar in Prati on Friday to make an appointment for tonight, I hear from within Lazio circles). We scored in the 77th minute (Cassetti, number 77) a spwany goal somehow bundled in after a good ball in from Vucinic. We all celebrated like we'd won something and a man behind me appeared to break his leg (he managed to recover enough to watch the rest of the game - pure adrenaline though, I think).

pics tomorrow. hfd.

tessera news...

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 18:21:00 +0000

at the joint meeting of Serie A & B presidents yesterday it was agreed that the tessera will not be introduced in January, as the minister for the interior Roberto Maroni had wished, but instead will be postponed until the start of the 2010-11 season. Meanwhile a commission has been set up (including several 'tessera-sceptics') to "improve & modify" the scheme, according to today's Corriere dello Sport.

What does this mean? well, the government's hardline position - the much repeated line that 'If you oppose this card then you support violence' - has not managed to win round the clubs or the football authorities. Secondly, fans have made their feeling sufficiently clear to their club owners that it has become impolitic for presidents to support the scheme too aggressively. Did our march last week (hilarious described by some visiting spurs fan as 'a riot', apparently) help to win this reprieve? I'd like to think so. Some of the coverage was quite positive - and suggested that the protest was taken more seriously than some of us had feared. Whether this will change anything in the long term of course is another question; maybe Maroni is hoping that by the summer we'll have forgotten all about it andwe'll shut up & go away.

national ultras' demonstration

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 19:32:00 +0000

The battle against the fans' ID card, the Tessera del Tifoso, continues. Today a national demonstration washeld in Rome with ultras from all over Italy attending. The march began at Piazza Esquilino, behind the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, and went down via Cavour, along via dei Fori Imperiali past the Colosseum and through the Circus Maximus before culminating in Piazza Bocca della Verità, a really nice route and a bit of a change from the usual demonstration routes the authorities allocate.

CB and I went along, partly out of curiosity but partly out of a commitment to the cause. We went with two guys from Lodigiani, about which group I have diffident feelings of semi-belonging self-doubt in a way which my brother might identify with and other people would find preposterous. It was fun and interesting.

The idea was to avoid localism and rivalries and instead to put on a show of unity. Club colours, banners & scarves were banned, instead all groups were invited to wear a plain white t-shirt bearing the message 'No alla Tessera del Tifoso". On the back they were free to put their city/club/group names, a way of showing to fellow demonstrators where they were from without disrupting the overall show of coherence. Some wore shirts with the official slogan 'Se i ragazzi sono uniti non saranno mai sconfitti', classily translated from the Sham 69 song 'If the kids are united'. Juve had produced expensive looking white hoodies with their club crest and group name embroidered on the back and 'No alla Tessera del Tifoso' on the front. Flash cunts. They even had an embroidered arm logo on. Most people just had the plain tshirts, which the Irriducibili Lazio were selling (always out to make a profit, they are). We didn't buy one.

Chants were many but not terribly varied since the repetoire of songs suitable for all is not that huge - most chants are for or against some team or another, after all. So mostly we sang against the police, the carabinieri, the tessera, Spaccarotella (the policeman who shot Gabriele Sandri) and Roberto Maroni (minister of the interior, promoter of the Tessera, alround slimeball). And in favour of the ultras movement, and justice for Gabriele, and for Stefano Cucchi killed in police custody last month. 'Noi non siamo dei criminali': why should the innocent majority suffer infringement of their civil liberties rather than the convicted?

Will it change anything at all? probably not, but maybe someone will at least notice. The police apparently say we were some 5000, the organizers claim 10,000 (looked to me like 3,000 but what do I know). Some local politicians from both parties gave nervous speeches at the end. If nothing else it was a fun morning out; it would be nice to think that it was more than that.

per non dimenticare

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:45:00 +0000

Gabriele Sandri was killed two years ago today on his way to watch his football team. The policeman who killed him continues to deny wrongdoing, and a court case is grinding slowly on through the slow spiral of appeals. His family are still waiting for justice. They may be waiting a long time.

It feels like just a few months that I drove past the remains of the riot outside the Olimpico which followed the league's refusal to cancel the days' fixtures. That anger - wrongly expressed but entirely justifiable - lives on, like the memory of a young man shot while he slept in the back of a car.

Roma 2 - 1 Fulham

noreply@blogger.com (Spangly Princess) — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 19:13:00 +0000

when we went 1-0 down I really did think oh no not again, there was a terrible inevitability about it. I just sat there thinking oh my god we're going to lose to fulham at home. I have a friend who is a huge fulham fan so I was pleased for him with at least, ohhh let's say 0.0000000002% of my brain. Then some sendings off, some effort on the part of our players to remember they're actually quite talented, and suddenly we had scored two goals and it was all good. For values of all which mean a tiny bit.

Still at least our support was better and the booing was replaced by a determined singing. progress perhaps. and we can still go through, it's in our own hands (ha!)

On Friday I went out with the Fulham guys, we went to a bar which serves micro-brewery beers coming in a a minimum of 6.5%. They were thirsty. This entirely wiped out my Saturday, I am badly out of practice at drinking with Englishmen. Even CB cooking me poached eggs wasn't enough to revive me. All my weekend plans were entirely fucked by this, I haven't felt so terribly ill for a long time.

I am trying to write a research proposal so that's your lot. We're away at Inter tonight, kick off in 20 minutes or so. I might eat some soup and try to prepare for tomorrow's class.