It was a bad day at The Florentine. We were up against last-minute translation deadlines, the guys were producing animations for some key client up north and, lo and behold, press day was looming large on the horizon. And the Internet refused to work. Again.
It was The Day of the Cabbage: the proverbial giornata del cavolo.
A diehard optimist and an Italy lover, I pride myself on rarely moaning about life in the bel Paese (as a long-term expat I let all anger subside at about year 7). With the exception of tweeting #tragicTrenitalia hashtags when I’m left chasing like a madwoman to catch my train from Santa Maria Novella’s Platform 18, I embrace everything Italy throws my way. In a nutshell, I really do try my damnedest not to give a cabbage when a Tuscan octogenarian leers at me as I nonchalantly walk home in my tennis skirt on a cold November night or my male colleague sarcastically calls me tesoro (although I know deep down he’s actually fond of me).
Cabbages are a tasty morsel in the Italian language. The cavolo is a green alternative to the much more unsavoury swearword that is the Italian for the male member. Just like the term it replaces in polite swearing, the cabbage can pop up at any time. Like today.
Back to our office dilemma… our team was fed up with continual questions of the cabbage (domande del cavolo) regarding the ‘Slownet’ situation and the router’s being like a cabbage at snack time (stare come un cavolo a merenda). So we took things into our own capable hands: Sandro called the phone company of the cabbage who really couldn’t give a cabbage, Giovanni tried to create a hotspot with his fake iPhone but his computer wouldn’t read it (“where the cabbage is it?”) and Mary decided to do her own cabbages (farsi i cavoli suoi) by borrowing wifi from a neighbouring shop. Alexandra and I, as two heads of cabbage (teste del cavolo), gave up all hope and worked from home. Every single one of us was “black cabbaged” (incavolati neri).
Under pressure, cabbages seem to sprout everywhere, it seems. Well, ‘tis the season.
