Autumn in the city

Rome in the autumn is magical. For many people this is the best season to visit the city. The stifling heat of the summer is replaced by milder more bearable temperatures with only the first chilly notes creeping in in early November. There are also less tourists so it's easier to visit the sites without jostling elbows with sweaty neighbours.

 The trees of which there are thousands, not all are evergreens like the distinctive umbrella pines, change colour to rich auburns, reds, light browns and yellows before their leaves flutter down ready for the winter. The parks lose their summer parched yellow look and turn green again. Starlings come to Rome to winter and flock in large, impressive formations known as starling murmurations. These are truly beautiful dances in the sky, thousands of birds swirling back and forth, round and round at what seem to be incredible speeds and without colliding into each other. They are breath-taking to watch. However, should you ever find yourself caught under a murmuration, an umbrella might be handy.
For food lovers this is the season of the porcini mushrooms, pumpkins, chestnuts, artichokes, novello wines…. There are food fairs (sagre) aplenty, some in the city some in the outlying regions such as the wine harvest celebration in Marino where wine pours from the towns central fountain, the castagnata in Anzio, the porcini mushroom fair in Lariano or the polenta feast in Nerola. Autumn plenty is amply celebrated. 

However, the autumn also brings its fair share of problems. The end-of-summer storms or beginning-of-autumn storms, when warm air clashes often violently with cooler air wreak havoc all over the capital. Water pouring down from torrential rainstorms flood the streets and the underground as the gutters are too clogged up with fallen leaves to provide effective drainage. The city sweeping system already inadequate can't deal with the added load. Roads turn to streams and  underpasses can trap unwary motorists in their rising waters.
This autumn has been blighted by high winds, gusts of over a hundred kilometres an hour, which  have brought down trees.

The city administration yet again has come under fire for lack of preparedness. Public schools were closed down for 2 days in early November,so as to minimise the amount of people out on the roads in perilous conditions.
The rain and the guano left by the starlings made the roads so slippery and dangerous that some such as  Lungotevere Cenci had to be closed down. City authorities drafted in the help of animal experts who suggested releasing falcons, a natural predator of the starlings, over Rome to encourage the starlings to move on and find new wintering ground. The suggestion was controversial as it went against a ruling that forbids the introduction of wild animals into the urban area. Not that Rome lacks wild animals.
The forever overflowing dumpsters have allowed gulls to make their homes on the monuments and the roofs of buildings even though the sea is 30 kilometres away. On the outlying hills of Rome such as Monte Mario and the area near the Gemelli hospital families of wild boar foraging in the rubbish have been seen. The park of Villa Pamphili is home to  foxes. And of course there are hundreds of thousands of rats, too many for the city cats to deal with.

This autumn has also seen a referendum which had it been successful might have seen the city's public transport system fall out of the mismanaging hands of ATAC. Sadly, not enough people voted so the referendum was null. The saga of late or non existent buses as well as exploding ones is set to go on for the forseeable future. As is that of the uncollected refuse!

But enough griping, there is much to enjoy. The rainy days won't go on for much longer and will be followed by cooler, sunnier days. Christmas decorations will start going up for the extended Italian Christmas season, from the 8th of December, the feast of the Immacolata to the 6th of January, the feast of the Befana - a transition period from which the city will slip out of the autumn into the winter.

Notes from inside the scaffolding

Once, a very long time ago, I was invited to a dinner party in an apartment in the San Giovanni district of Rome. I was disconcerted by my hostess' insistence we remove our shoes (she had lived in Japan) which made me wish my not-quite-as-white-as-they-were-supposed-to-be socks didn't have a big-toe-sized hole in them. Indeed, had someone let slip about this pecadillo I'd have worn appropriate feet-covering hole-less apparel. So I tucked myself around the very low coffee table, and slipped my feet out of sight while the guests discussed the relative merits of the word 'pussy.' A ginormous platter of fried stuff with nachos and gooey melted cheese on top appeared and my hostess invited us to dig in with our fingers. It was a communal platter. Could things get any worse? I looked up towards the window hoping for a glimpse of blue sky or a ray of sun.  All I got were the billowing linen curtains and a white dusty net. Then I saw metal, lots of metal: poles, planks, shafts, nuts and bolts. I noted that some of it was rusty. I realised we were under a shroud and wrapped in scaffolding. There was nothing to see. There was no view. Fortunately, as it was a Sunday there was no sound from the scaffolding. "how does she put up with it?" I wondered as I walked away from the flat later that afternoon.

Roll on years and years and years, after persistent rumours of imminent work on the condo balconies, they'd become almost an urban myth,somehow, the condominium committee after years of trying, managed to get the work underway.
Notification to all tenants was brief, ten days before start of work, and rather vague. We were told to clear our balconies of all plants, furniture etc... within 'useful time,' (in tempo utile). This was then followed by a list of prices the company doing the work was charging to remove attached items such as window shades, air conditioning units and satellite disks which might get in the way of the largely unexplained and undefined work.

The day the work started, actually a few days after they were supposed to have started, I gazed four floors down to see the workman carry large metal planks  and poles onto the ground floor terraces. By the end of the day the first tier of what would turn out to be a massive structure was up.

I pondered upon the words 'within useful time' and decided to move my plants away from the edge of the balcony. A needless action as it took another two weeks for the scaffolding to reach my floor, by which time some plants had been moved inside and others onto the roof of the building where they would face some of the worst autumn storms in recent years.

Trying to find out what the work was going to be or in what order it would proceed proved impossible. There were different versions according to who I asked. The only thing everyone acknowledged was that each balcony would have a new marble rim like other buildings in the complex. No one seemed too sure what was the use of the marble rim. It was hypothesised that it would prevent leaks onto lower balconies. However, most people seemed clear that the balconies needed the rims. All the other buildings had them, we couldn't be the only building that didn't?

A lone protester pinned a notice in the foyer, he didn't sign his protest, just argued that there hadn't been enough notice. He was sure he spoke for everyone else. He was barking in the wind, no one took any notice and the scaffolding monster grew unperturbed.
As the scaffolding reached my floor, the old rusty metal rim , whose existence I'd ignored till then,was prised off. I thought the scaffolding had reached full maturity and work on the balconies was imminent but no. Another tier was added and a platform was built that led up onto the roof of the building.

At night the monster was lit. It was to prevent would-be thieves. Though I was assured by a neighbour that when the same work had gone on in her building the flat next to hers had been burgled. In fact, scaffolding represented a great new window of opportunity for burglars. All those floors that had hitherto been inaccessible now had steps leading straight up to them. This was not reassuring talk.

Work on the balconies, I discovered,started early. This also meant it finished early. The workers arrived at 7.30 and the power tools began at 8am. Swiftly, the tiles along the edge of the balconies were removed in a perfect line. Owners were given the option of having their whole balconies retiled. The new Tiles, there were four colours to choose from, were less attractive than the originals.
The workers drilled and scraped on the ceilings  of the balconies to reveal metal rods embedded in the cement. These were just as quickly covered in cement again. iI wasn't clear why this was being done.

A chance encounter with the owner of my flat left me perplexed, he told me there was no painting work planned. I'd been informed by others that the ceilings were to be repainted. From what I could see they needed to be painted over otherwise there would be ugly grey slashes of cement left visible.
The next day earlier than ever, a worker jumped onto my balcony, and began painting over the ugly dark streaks of cement. The previously white ceiling was now a rather ominous dark grey. My dog raised her head from her position asleep on the bed then lay down again. She couldn't even be bothered to bark.

In the meantime the bad weather was raging. The Veneto was flooded, the stradivarius forest (a red wood pine forest) in the Dolomites was destroyed, the tourist village of Portofino on the Ligurian coast was isolated as its one access road was swept away and in Rome trees came crashing down, uprooted by the strong gusts that whipped the capital. The ominous weather system moved South where it continued its destructive and murderous path.
For the most part. work on the scaffolding continued undisturbed. The workers clocked off early on the windiest day and took cover when the rain lashing down became too heavy. Balconies where the floor tiles had been removed for a total refurbishment flooded onto the dirty granite, leaving unattractive large puddles which would have to dry out before work could proceed.

I came back from work one day to find the marble rim in place. It did dress up the balcony, gave it a touch of elegance. I still wasn't convinced it was necessary. That same night I was startled by a sound out on the scaffolding. I switched on a light and looked out at a young man. "I'm with the company," he said, backed off and went down the hatch. As he made his way down I heard him repeat his mantra. I wasn't the only one alarmed by a night apparition on the monster. 
Now my outdoor plants indoors are dying, my rooftop plants are drowning and the work is going on. For how long? Six months, they say.