An Italian Home - Settling by Lake Como

Author:Paul Wright [Wright, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Earlswood Press
Published: 2011-06-30T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10 Lavoro Regolare - Regular Work for Nicola

When we left the UK, the recession had really set in. In mainland Europe there did not seem to be any sign of a downturn, but there were warnings from the BBC World Service that the threat of the recession we had managed to run away from was looming and was likely to hit the rest of Europe by 1993.

And then, bang on cue, it happened.

In such circumstances, a self-employed artist like me is always one of the first casualties. His work is a luxury to almost everyone and it can dry up, quite literally overnight. After fifteen months as Italian residents, our bank balance had neither grown nor decreased, and from this, we surmised that we must be doing okay, but to help cushion against financial downturn that might come our way, and help us continue living in Italy, I suggested to Nicola it might be a shrewd move if she found some work. Better still, she should get a permanent job as quickly as possible.

Nicola is not a natural housewife. To her, a career is an important part of her life. She had had a good winding-down period since leaving her job in Godalming and had become a little bored reading Christine’s library for the third time and not doing anything in particular, but the question was, what could she do? Although she had been an experienced legal secretary in England, she had no working knowledge of Italian law, so the chances of finding similar work were pretty slim, if not non-existent.

Ever since we’d arrived in Moltrasio some of the locals would vie to sit beside ‘Powl and Nicol, i due inglesi’ when we were out socialising, so they could practise their very limited English on us. Some others enquired if Nicola gave private language lessons. This gave her the idea that she might set up a private language school, working from home. Her initial idea was to place a postcard in the local newsagent’s window, advertising English lessons. However, the newsagent placed doubts in her mind when he told her that unfortunately he could not display it in his window without having a taxation stamp attached to the bottom corner.

She did not understand exactly why this was necessary, nor how to go about getting one and so, sensibly, she went to the Municipio to make enquiries. No one there knew either, but the deputy mayor advised her to go to Como to ask higher authorities, because the laws regarding taxation had been changed recently and that they would know better. She had no intention of taking a round trip of eighteen kilometres to Como and back to track down the correct office and official in charge for such a small matter and was in a quandary about what to do when, in the village a few days later, she happened to bump into somebody she knew who had helped her sew some of the carnival costumes. She told Nicola

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.