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| photographs and Riccardo Ferrari |
London, April 29, 2008. It was my first time in the British capital and all around me could notice I was the only human being without an umbrella under a light rain falling but cold and stubborn. As often happens to me, I felt helpless and embarrassed while people around seemed at ease in that wet. A slight burning sensation in the throat, told me that I was ill and that shortly thereafter I should lie down on a mattress dry. I bought a hot tea from one of the many fast-food restaurants that were in Liverpool Street Station and then find myself even more hindered in their movements. I threw the tea and I took refuge under a shelter to wait for the first of many buses. On a billboard Elizabeth smiled, I remember thinking: "God shave the queen" or "god Slave The Queen" and also "that fucking hat you have, old, why do you dress in yellow?". After 4 buses and 3 miles of walking I reached the house where I have hosted for the night. There was a friend who lived in London for several months and had offered me a bed until he found a new location. Fortunately I had found it before starting the next day I took the trouble and I settled into my new room in a flat half Clarence Crescent near Clapham Common, Zone 2, south-east of the city. What I wanted was a job in London and the chance to do some new experience, but I took off my armpit thermometer told me it would be more appropriate to try paracetamol and handkerchiefs before taking any adventure. I asked my new roommates where is the nearest pharmacy and they advised me to go instead to the supermarket where I also found the drugs. Since I needed other things, like bread, pasta, salt, oil, coffee and water, I thought it was a great idea and went with the one nearest you were at a bus away from my new home. It was my first English expenditure.
Inside the shop there was the music and the speaker announced that a 16 year old boy was stabbed in the center, near Oxford Street, opposite McDonald's. A showdown between stripes or something, was the fifteenth minor who was killed in London since the beginning of the year. "City violentuccia" I thought, and indeed the slight suspicion that London was a city I had come nervous when I saw a middle-aged man to slap a kid on a bus following a discussion of the volume too high ' iPod in the young. In fact, London was full of kids dressed like 50 Cent that just fitted su un mezzo pubblico estraevano dalle tasche dei piccoli e potenti altoparlanti e sparavano musica hip-hop al massimo volume per la gioia degli altri passeggeri. Qualcuno protestava e si litigava, così su ogni autobus e treno della città c'erano cartelli che invitavano ad abbassare il volume, a non mangiare cibi puzzolenti e ad alzarsi per far accomodare gli anziani e le donne incinte. Mi piacevano quei cartelli colorati, semplici, con tanti disegni e poche scritte. Un altro cartello diceva "Smile, you're on camera" per avvertire che gli autobus erano provvisti di telecamere a circuito chiuso. Quegli avvertimenti e quei divieti mascherati da consigli erano però sintomo di un'umanità che faticava a sopportare perfino se stessa e le proprie differenze. Other signs advertise a new chapter in the saga of Grand Theft Auto giant which were scattered throughout the city, others invited to join the army and others in MI5, the secret service of Her Majesty. Public transport is very telling of a city, especially in a metropolis like London, where they are a necessity such as running water or heating in homes. I do not know if there is a link between Grand Theft Auto, the hip-hop and gang wars, it is certain that those children with huge Nike suits, the bandanas and the hat, the Yankees were mimicking the American gang and cleared from the game played on MTV and is still true that some of those little guys ran with a knife. Così, se provi a rubargli la ragazza o a parlare male di lui ti becchi una sciabolata e un articolo in prima pagina.
Ricapitolando, ero al supermercato per comprarmi cibi e medicine. Dopo aver messo nel carrello un dentifricio "appointed by the Prince of Wales" e una confezione di tè "appointed by Her Majesty the Queen Elizabeth II", raggiunsi la corsia dei farmaci e scoprii con sorpresa che venivano venduti esattamente come l'acqua minerale: sui banchi delle corsie, incustoditi. E non c'era solo il paracetamolo, c'era l'aspirina, ovviamente, e c'erano gli sciroppi contro la tosse. Notai anche un preparato che serviva per alleviare i sintomi del day-after o hang-over (ah, in italiano i postumi della sbronza), Resolve mi pare it was called - but, as I discovered later, did not work. Caught my attention the fact that the packaging of the drugs were just as colorful and appealing if it were candy or a deodorant for the man who should not ever ask for. Despite the wide range of cocktails of painkillers - was a chilling, aspirin, paracetamol and caffeine, "if you're going to die but you still have to go to the office here is the solution for you" - I grabbed a pack of paracetamol tablets and silver finished my expense.
While I was on the bus back, I thought it was good that you could freely buy aspirin without having to speak to a pharmacist. But then, reflection in a way, I thought that I would have preferred the presence of a filter between my liver and drugs, even if it was drugs so common and so apparently harmless in their colorful confections. I talked to my roommate Mark, a few days later and gave birth to a little altercation: he claimed the freedom to freely purchase a bottle of aspirin, while I did notice that maybe not everyone is able to understand how to use an anti -inflammatory and maybe it was not a good selling drugs from the same shelves of toothpaste. I imagined an ordinary person who lightly throws in the cart pasta, biscuits and tablets of paracetamol. Too easy. The drug would come, in my view in the normality Instead of spending every day as a purchase had to be exceptional and well thought out, perhaps with the medical examination or advice of a pharmacist. Freedom ... "good thing the liberty," I said, "shame that everyone is sufficiently endowed with brains to be able to exercise fully." Take up arms: there is a regulation, at least in Italy, trying to put a filter between a man and a gun, so that the purchase of a firearm is not a normal, does not become routine and is made somehow a bit 'more difficult. Of course, nothing prohibits an attacker any crazy to buy a kitchen knife and killed his wife, but at least can not easily buy an MG-42 and take out twenty or thirty poor. Reduce the damage, that's all. Certainly, one who is seriously willing to swallow three boxes of pills are not stopped, nor the doctor nor the pharmacist, but a fool who does not know what is the paracetamol, or who can not read English may request the leaflet of the pads aid to the white coat behind the counter and prevent a gastric lavage. Then, those colorful packages so attractive to me seemed just too much because the drugs should not need marketing. In short, nobody has to convince me to buy them if I do not need and that is what makes the advertising or packaging appealing. The best medication your doctor will prescribe me who knows them well (and not the medico che riceve mazzette dalle case farmaceutiche...).
Quei primi giorni a Londra erano per me come la prima burrasca per il mozzo che si è appena imbarcato. Il meglio però doveva ancora arrivare ma io non potevo ancora saperlo. Se avrò voglia, un giorno scriverò anche il resto della storia, raccontandovi le bellezze e le schifezze di quel gigantesco alveare sciamante che è Londra...
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