I was very fond of 'Toto' Schillaci at Italia 90.
That sense of a relatively ordinary footballer rising to such prominence in a brief flash of glory.
Around those years Ms Felicity and I were very Italophile- a fair few holidays; language classes and frequent visits to Newcastle's then most authentic Italian restaurant which was run by a family from Puglia. And was pretty cheap to boot. ('Boot'-geddit?)
They had a regular crew of cousins and hangers-on as waiters, one of whom had the look of Schillaci, so thus was he named, to us at any rate.
He once knocked a bottle of Barolo into my lap, all over my chinos, so we always got a wry comment from him on subsequent visits.
Anyway this place shut down as a restaurant years ago-that part of the city is full of trendy bars, and they make more money from alcohol, so it went the way of the small record shops and the greasy spoon cafes: extinction.
And hey, if you want Italian-there's Pizza Hut! Zizzi! Pizza Express!
Posh Jesmond, of course, has a couple of good Italian restaurants still, and a deli, just as it retained its cinema and its swimming pool through posh parent power long after equivalents in the East and West ends were shut down.
Anyway, I was in Sainsbury's this morning and there he was, Schillaci, loading veg into the racks. Sure, he stopped to chuck the cheek of a passing bambino, and he still has a twinkle in his eye.
But I couldn't help thinking, in grumpy old man/modern life is rubbish mode that it was symbolic, or at least representative of some wider distasteful decline.
NB not that there's anything wrong with shelf-stacking at Sainsbury's. Or trendy bars per se.
That sense of a relatively ordinary footballer rising to such prominence in a brief flash of glory.
Around those years Ms Felicity and I were very Italophile- a fair few holidays; language classes and frequent visits to Newcastle's then most authentic Italian restaurant which was run by a family from Puglia. And was pretty cheap to boot. ('Boot'-geddit?)
They had a regular crew of cousins and hangers-on as waiters, one of whom had the look of Schillaci, so thus was he named, to us at any rate.
He once knocked a bottle of Barolo into my lap, all over my chinos, so we always got a wry comment from him on subsequent visits.
Anyway this place shut down as a restaurant years ago-that part of the city is full of trendy bars, and they make more money from alcohol, so it went the way of the small record shops and the greasy spoon cafes: extinction.
And hey, if you want Italian-there's Pizza Hut! Zizzi! Pizza Express!
Posh Jesmond, of course, has a couple of good Italian restaurants still, and a deli, just as it retained its cinema and its swimming pool through posh parent power long after equivalents in the East and West ends were shut down.
Anyway, I was in Sainsbury's this morning and there he was, Schillaci, loading veg into the racks. Sure, he stopped to chuck the cheek of a passing bambino, and he still has a twinkle in his eye.
But I couldn't help thinking, in grumpy old man/modern life is rubbish mode that it was symbolic, or at least representative of some wider distasteful decline.
NB not that there's anything wrong with shelf-stacking at Sainsbury's. Or trendy bars per se.
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