Seppo Down Under

Spaghetti Londonaise

First off, I have to make a couple of comments about the young Italians, as witnessed by yours truly in London. Technically it was late winter in London, and was quite an enjoyable temperature for the UK in February. I was comfortable in a long-sleeved shirt, with a light jacket to cut the wind. Much to my dismay and delight, almost every Italian woman under the age of 25 was wearing a cropped T-shirt, exposing their beautifully olive-coloured, goose-bumped midsections. In most cases, they also wore jackets or coats, but more times than not, the coats had completely non-functioning fur-lined hoods and reached about as far South as their shirts. Far be it from me to criticise fashion, but when fashion overrides functionality, there is a major in-pass. I can sympathise with high-heeled shoes that could otherwise serve as medieval torture devices, because sometimes you really need to make your butt look higher, elongate the calves, and add 4 inches of height. But, it is an entirely different situation when you are wearing a stocking cap, scarf, sunglasses the size of ski goggles, and a shirt that was intended for a toddler. Combine this with skin-tight stove-pipe jeans and a slight pot-belly with absolutely no concern for the “muffin-top” effect, and you have a picture that may be revered on the streets of Milan (or the trailer parks of BFE, Mississippi), but does not play in Pomgolia. Maybe I’m just old.

Now it’s on to the young Italian chaps. I spend about 80% of my time in an unshaven condition. That is because I am, above all, lazy. I am not all that particularly fond of wearing a beard, but it makes for less area to shave when I do get around to it. I find myself using the trusty beard trimmers at skin level to reduce a 3-day stubble back to a more acceptable day and a half stubble so that I do not appear to be 3-day lazy, but otherwise just temporarily sidetracked from grooming for 24 hours. The young Italian chaps seem to have the fashion-induced voluntary stubble down to an art in the image of Dr. McDreamy from Grey's Anatomy. Nevermind the blazing uni-brow as long as the stubble is a perfect 1.5 millimetres in length at a density of 3 hairs per square millimetre, and reaches no further up than 4 centimetres from the eye sockets and no further down the neck than 3 centimetres past the main break-line of the jaw. It is of great benefit, then, to have been blessed with perfect bone structure, so that the stubble template mask (sold at participating La Wal-Marte's) fits your face, making grooming hour in the morning more manageable.

I do believe there are stubble inspectors carousing the streets of Rome, employed by Armani and Dolce. They are armed with stubble gauges, monitoring the quality control of the intentionally unshaven faces of the Italian machismo. And it must be amazingly simple to buy clothing for the modern, urban youth of Italy. There is no longer a concept of boys’ and girls’ clothing. Interchangeable fashion has never been so simple since the days of Garanimals separates. But I digress…

So I’m in Perth, having arrived from London and Singapore…soon to come.