Bucko's World

Belisima Signoras

And this is an ugly one! Honestly, Italian women are just fantastic looking. They start ‘em young with the most beautiful dark haired, dark eyed, dark skinned children, who seem to, much younger than over here it must be said, bloom into gorgeous young adults. Having endured a bunch of 13 year old girls flirting with one unfortunate young chap on an hour and a half bus journey up the amalfi coast I can vouch for there ability to turn boys into jelly.

And then they reach adulthood and the girls just get better. Sexy, sultry and with come to bed eyes, the local males are powerless before them, and soon end up snared. I can think of worse ways to go. But there is a terrible downside to all this sexual magnatism. There is, it appears, something in the Italian diet that has an adverse effect on the ladies and turns them from smouldering Sophia Loren look alikes into screaming banshee like creatures who beat the unfortunate men into submission, stop having sex with them and causes them to complain endlessly about all and everything. All whilst gaining 50 pounds and losing all their teeth.








Actually, they end up looking like this.....







Be warned this food is called wedding cake……………….

Italian style

The Italian have this in spades. From their famous and desirable couture brands – Gucci, Dolce and Gabbana, Moschino to name but a few – to their beautiful cars, their fantastic shoes and whole sense of design Italian style is something we all aspire to. But we get it wrong so often in the other parts of Europe, and indeed the rest of the world. So here is a handy guide to how it should, and shouldn’t be done:







Italian couple out shopping












British out shopping













Italian lady with a child











German Frauline with a child















Italian lady out for a walk













Americans out for a waddle












Beautiful slim Italian ballerina












Fat Ugly Russian ballerina (not according to me - she was sacked by the Bolshoi for weighing 109 lbs)




The Rossoneri

Imagine you decide on a lovely sunny Sunday afternoon to pop down to your local park to watch a spot of footie only to find when you get there that 2,000 rabid fanatics had beaten you to it and decided to spend the whole afternoon chanting in unison, setting off enormnous flares and are seemingly able to jump up and down in perfect synchronisation for the entire length of the match. Welcome to park football Italian style.

All this and a football match was served up courtesy of Sorrento Town football club and their local rivals Andria Bat. As Sunday entertainment it certainly knocks spots off a trip up Dartford Heath on a cold and rainy winter’s afternoon, I can tell you.

We had five goals, two punch-ups, a red card, a highly debatable penalty, a goalkeeper carted off in an ambulance and a ref attacked by the away team coach after the final whistle and eventually given a police escort away from the ground. It was fantastic. If only more non league games over here could be like that……..

Karmic Vampires

You may notice something odd when you try to book a holiday in Italy. Nearly every hotel will try to make you go half board. This is not only quite an expensive way to do things, but ties you down to just the one place to eat in the evening – when really you want to be out and about exploring the local hostelries and family run restaurants.

I can only assume the reason for this is the enormous amount of waiting staff they employ in these hotels. At breakfast there must be at least thirty waiters to cover the twenty or so tables, which rather looks like overkill to me. You have one guy who leads you to your table, one guy who gets your coffee, another who takes your order, yet more different ones to bring you the grub and finally another lot to clear the table after you. This must cost a lot of dosh, not only in wages but also in tailor’s fees for the subtly hierarchical uniforms they wear. No wonder they need a bunch of extra money from you up front. We, however, managed to wangle a discount for our room so although we are on half-board, we’re not too bothered about eating at the hotel. Much more the bustling centre of Sorrento for as with it’s crowded bars a suicidal moped riders providing the entertainment for us, but even so, we decide we should eat in the hotel for a couple of nights as it is "free".

And so we come to Sunday night and we arrive at the dining room. The menu looked ok with all the usual Italian bits on offer – risotto, pasta, a veal dish, you know what it’s like. What does surprise us though is the thought that we’ve just walked into an operating theatre, the walls are so white and the light is so bright. And there is absolutely no atmosphere – it’s like a morgue. No music, no buzz of conversation, no shouting Italians or raucous tourists singing away – and definitely no geezer with a guitar to serenade you into the night. It like a retirement home with a whole load of oldies and only a few couples our age in view – perhaps they are all so quiet because they have died. Before I can pull Lisa away and say this looks shit, a waiter has come up and asked us our room number. We tell him and he looks at us accusingly and says “You missed dinner last night” Well, no actually, I didn’t miss dinner last night I just didn’t have it here you knob. It didn’t get any better.

Because we had the cheapest room in the hotel, we had the worst table in the dining room, right by the door. The service was perfunctory to say the least and the food was average. What was worst though was it turned up as soon as you had ordered it and immediately you had finished once course the next was thrust upon you. Three courses and a bottle of wine were tucked away in an incredible 35 minutes. 35 minutes during which the loudest sound you could hear was the clinking of cutlery and the occasional death rattle of a pensioner. Thank god it was so quick, the whole time in there I could feel my life being sucked out of me – perhaps in fact it wasn’t a restaurant after all but we had accidentally stumbled into purgatory………..

More to follow shortly.....