We did get to the tax office today, clutching all the documents and it was a very funny experience. You come into the office and report to the front desk. There you are given a bit of paper like at the butchers counter at the supermarket. However, they use a complicated combination of letters and numbers designed to confuse the uninitiated. So unlike at the butcher counter, where you see that number 172 is being served and you are number 198, giving you some time to do the rest of your shopping or have a coffee, at the tax office you get EA0007. Before us they served AO0017 and JA0012 and various other meaningless combinations. This way you are poised in the waiting room for your letter / number combination like waiting for the bingo caller to call your number at random.

There were about a dozen people in the waiting room, but no one behind any of the 9 desks serving the public. When some people started to complain, the boss came out and said they were all on their coffee break. Some people in the back of the room couldn't hear what was going on and asked if there was a strike. Someone in front answered in a rather sarcastic tone that the poor clerks had already worked hard for 2 whole hours this morning and couldn't possibly wait another 2 hours before going home. This started a bit of riot in the waiting room with the boss explaing that the coffee break after 2 hours was in their contract. There was a round of applause when 4 clerks appeared back behind their desks, some still clutching their coffees.

Finally our number came up and I was about to shout 'BINGO', when I saw the sour face of the lady about to lower herself to deal with us muck. Some thoughtful person had given her a cactus for her desk and the pot proclaimed that it's owner was called Elisabetta. We had filled in the form already except were it said 'Activity Code'. Each activity has a 6 digit number code, which of course we could not know. So Elisabetta flung a 100 page booklet in front of us telling us to find our code ourselves. Now there seemed no sensible order to the document, certainly not an alphabetic order. Asking her resuted in a bored shrug of the shoulder. Finally towards the end we found teaching and pointed it out to her. She photocopied Susan's documents and finally printed off a page with her VAT number, with a slightly mumbed 'a posto', 'that's it', dismissing us with an annoyed look. She must have had years of training to become quite as unfriendly as this.

Well, never mind. We've got what we came for and Susan will be able to start work soon.

Cash Crops

‘”It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever,” he said. “Have you thought of going into teaching?”’ Quote attributed to Mr. Liona Keeble, employment agent of Ankh-Morpork on trying to find a new career for Death. Terry Pratchett.

I thought I’ll start with a literary quote this time, more about it in a minute. As this is also meant to serve as a diary for myself (so next year when we have the arguments like: ‘last year December was really warm’ – ‘no way we had snow!’ we can just look back on the blog), some of the more mundane details first. The last couple of days I was busy pruning olives and chopping the larger bits into firewood. Susan in the meantime dug over a new bed for planting veg and lit a fire to burn the smaller prunings. Yesterday we had the first real frost, something we didn’t have at all last winter. Even at lunchtime the lower terraces were still covered in white. Hopefully this means the mosquitoes and other insect pests are not going to as plentiful next year. Today it’s grey and damp, so I have a bit of time to write again.

Now to the quote above. According to John Seymour’s Guide to Self-Sufficiency, every self-supporter needs a cash crop of sorts. It may be one in the literal sense of the word, i.e. something you grow more of than you can consume and sell the excess at a profit. However, everyone knows there isn’t a lot of money to be made in farming, unless you have a top vineyard site where you can charge a premium. The other way is usually, that one or both of the partners do some sort of work to earn some cash, because completely without cash it is not really possible to survive in modern times. In John Seymour’s case it is him writing his books and teaching other people to become self-sufficient on his farm in Ireland. I should think he does quite well with this. In our case this was supposed to be the wine business. However, this is proving to be difficult, firstly because of the economic difficulties in Europe at the moment and secondly, during the times where I have most work on the land, spring and autumn, I am always away traveling to see clients.

So looking at other options we came up with, you guessed it, teaching English. The first qualification they ask for is that you have to be a native speaker, which excludes me. Now Susan has all the right qualifications: a degree in French and one in English, she is a native English speaker and she has taught English and French before. Unfortunately this is Italy and things are never that simple. To apply for a job she has to produce, among other things, documentary proof of her degree, an Italian VAT number, a work permit and preferably references from previous employers, and all that translated into Italian and stamped by the magistrate courts to verify that they are true translations. Not only is the whole process time consuming and expensive, it is also in Susan’s case not possible. In almost 30 years no one in the UK or France has ever actually asked her to show her degree and hence she has no idea where it might be. She asked at Edinburgh University, where she studied, whether it was possible to get a copy, but they do not give out copies of degrees taken before 1989. The VAT registration would pose similar problems as they also demand proof of qualification and/or experience of your chosen field of business, also translated, verified and, in the case of employment references, a verification and verified translation of the existence of the company concerned. When I did all this for my VAT registration it took several weeks, a lot of shoe leather and several hundred euros.

Next plan is to maybe stick up a couple of adds in public places for private lessons, and I shall try and find something in the tourist business during the summer, like life guard on the beach or do tours or something. We have registered with a language translation web-site offering English, German and French, but haven’t had any work from there yet. We’ll just have to eat lots of lentils over New Year, as according to the Italians, each lentil represents money you will have in the coming year…