ROMAN NEW YEAR

Roman New Years are quite an experience, sometimes used to dispose of discarded lovers or spouse. This event is carried out at midnight. When else , to throw an offending party out of the window, upper stories are generally best. I had only been living in Rome for a few months, when my first New Year's Eve experience occured. Still suffering from languare shock, so I knew few people, I decided to take a strollto see what kind of action was taking place. Christmas of course had been a disappointment being very family focused. Boxing Day sstartedeemed to be the main event when presents were distributed to the city's poor children in Piazza Navona. An Italian Christmas proved to be far a  more religious affair than experienceed in most Anglo Saxon countries.

At first as I strolled along, it must have been around 11.45pm, I noticed the odd item falling from the sky. They were fairly light, cusions, clothing that sort of thing. As midnight approached heaver things started to fall, flower pots, small furniture, framed pictures of out of favour lovers were popular. The down pore became so heavy I found it necessary to walk in the middle of the road for fear of injury. All sorts of household items were now raining down onto the street, rubbish of all sorts, empty on my head as wbottles, old plates, it seemed that what ever could be thrown out the window was fair game. it was a torrent. Even wardrobes were hitting the pavement with force and shattering into many pieces. Many of these items were falling from several stories up, some six floors or more. The Roman motto, out with the old, in with the new was taking on a new meaning. If I had known better I would have put a saucepan as I did during wartime air raids

By morning the central city blocks looked more like a war zone, rubbish as far as the eye could see. You had to step overobjects everywhere just to reach the corner cafe for breakfast. It seemed that it would take days to clean up the mess, unfortunaeely in some of the poorer quarters it took weeks. The papers were full of how many wives had been thrown out, no mention was made of husbands, no doubt they were too heavy to move for the wives. How many broken bones there were I have no idea, nor do I know whether manslaughter charges were laid for deceased lovers, but there was no questioning the intent.
Happy New Year!