A day in the life (of a farmer).

People will cheat and lie. They always have. It’s a dirty world.

Hypocrisy is very tough to accept, whereas stupidity can often be forgiven as not really their fault. Yet at some point, naivety loses all its charm, and just looks like you deserve what’s coming your way. Roadkill.

And though the holes were rather small, they had to count them all; now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. 

This isn’t the Sunday Column I thought it would be. There was a half-idea about comparing the growing “Economy of Experiences”, around passion for live music and sport, with what we are now offered via the Goggle Wars between Apple and Meta, or Sora video making.

Where are we really going? Intimate human interaction, amongst throngs of people desperate for the belonging of tribe, or into the opposite world of fake AI fun and intense solitude?

As usual, the answer is likely to be polarisation.

But I just didn’t fancy the grind of writing that Column, and that’s the beauty of having no subscribers or sponsors. You owe no one a show, if you’re not feeling it yourself.

It would, therefore, be a blank Sunday for the Column, dead air, blamed on an extended hangover from the 60th celebrations.

 

But my alter ego, as a farmer, had another idea.

Need to go to Chianti to help manage the crisis at my client’s BIO vineyard, after a truly horrendous harvest of grapes in 2023, devastated by insects and fungi, all now unprotected by the usual pesticides. The whole industry got slammed last year, and it is certain that the general population doesn’t understand how climate evolution is utterly devastating agriculture. Especially, in my humble opinion, if you insist on BIO.

Everything has changed, as water gets scarse and temperatures become extreme, swinging wildly from deep frosts to baking heat. Vines and crops are losing significant productivity, and the farmers you see on TV, protesting in tractors, is only the start. The politicians won’t tell you this, but it is dramatic. We are on a sticky wicket, and Mr Warne is warming up.

This BIO stuff has never ever convinced me. It always smelt forced, similar to green energy, DEI, and trans athletes. All these things have absolute merit, but not just as dogma, without common-sense pragmatism.

Hell is paved with good intentions.― Samuel Johnson

Medicines like Penicillin have helped humanity, no? Why can’t plants have their own Penicillin? But the groupthink told us the future needed to be BIO/organic, especially for wine. Difficult to sell Italian Chianti if not BIO. The Scandinavian markets and Canada want BIO. Virtue-signalling as marketing strategy. So many doing that these days.

 

We followed the money and went BIO. 

I am a IAP (Imprenditore Agricolo Professionale), a recognised qualification as an “entrepreneur of agriculture”, which unlocks a significant amount of grants and tax breaks for anyone still making their living from the land. I sat that exam for this English wine-making client of mine, frankly just to access the government help.

The actual process of passing this test is possibly the most Italian day I’ve ever experienced, and that’s a high bar for me, having worked in music and sport.

I was told it was easy and a formality, so I only crammed “Agriculture for Dummies” the night before. The location on the day, instead, was packed with people wearing worried faces, and devouring satchels-full of very thick books and yellow post-its.

You said it was a shoe-in. Apparently not.

You go in a room in front of 7/8 people seated at the big table, like at the end of Flashdance, and they quiz you orally. I didn’t even know that, but it actually saved me, as I’d never have passed a written exam. In desperation, I deflected, and told them of my mother’s family from nearby Lucca, and Paolo Nutini as a cousin, all in deliberately bad Italian. Anything, rather than being exposed to actual questions about soil and irrigation.

I got through, in what was a victory more for anglophile simpatia (charm) than real knowledge. You do what you need to do, and whilst I am not a farmer, I can bluff it get by if needed. Leaving, I looked at those to follow me in, with their post-its, and condescended without pity.

20% content, 80% presentation muthaf*****!

I’m well aware that I’ll burn for these sins of pride. Hell is indeed paved with good intentions.

 

From Como, it’s an early start to get to Tuscany if you want stuff done in a day. You need to get up at Grumpy O’ Clock.

 

Woke up, fell out of bed.

Dragged a comb across my head.

Things always seem different at sunrise, and it’s called the twilight zone for a reason, as the half-light takes your brain to different places.

Found my way downstairs and drank a cup…

The regular bar on the corner is quieter, with a different clientele and a bigger selection of pastries. The newspapers on the tables are pristine, and not yet stained with espresso, where the ever-present Gazzetta talks about AC Milan  “not completely closed to staying at San Siro”. That’s a story Italian football has been writing for 30 years, about new stadia in Milano, Roma, and Firenze. I reflect that La Gazzetta has lost 90% of its circulation in that time.

The local mechanic, Ugo, normally unreachable, is actually there at this hour, chatting with a young Moroccan immigrant of bright eyes and wide smile. They are commenting on the football, between one racist joke and another, all of which Said seems to genuinely find funny. They have, I suppose, the commonality of a simple working-class life, like Saturday evening in Billy Joel’s piano-bar. The owner, the mechanic, the immigrant bricklayer. The old man tragically feeding the slot machine completes the tableau.

Sharing a cup (of coffee) they call loneliness, to forget about life for a while.

 

This is Italy in 2024. Resigned to its fate. 

I didn’t have Ugo down as knowledgable on football; so, I am pretty impressed. Less so the bar owner, who knows of my background, and always asks my view on his Juventus, as if I’ve got some special insight or interest. I am not in the mood for it at this hour.

A cappuccino to go Giorgio, per favore. And Juve are shit. 

By now he knows me, laughs, and returns to his clientele.

Già! (Sure).

I’m unsettled by how they get so animated, discussing the current journeymen players in Serie A, as if they were still opining on Van Basten, Nesta, Ronaldo, Del Piero, Maldini. The quality doesn’t matter to them and I reluctantly conclude that most fans are in it for the craic and community, not the excellence of the product.

I, instead, prefer it the way we were.

 

But it’s me who is different, so best hold my tongue.

What point is there in lifting the veil of delusion that makes their lives a little bit more bearable?

And looking up I noticed I was late…
Found my coat and grabbed my hat, made the bus in seconds flat. 

With this lake, better to walk, and it’s 25 minutes along the water to the station. I take a photo and tweet it out. Even after 18 years, it seems the very least one can do in the face of such beauty. Like the shy nod and blush you’d have offered Virna Lisi, if you had ever met her.

Those, like The Como 50, now familiar with our little town, will know that the stadium is right there on the water, beside the marina where the water-planes take off.

They’ve invited me to the next game there this weekend, Como v Parma, to take in a crucial match which will go a long way to deciding the promotion to Serie A. Parma is top, Como third.

The Indonesian owners of Como Calcio, a tobacco conglomerate called Djarum, have invested heavily in the team and its marketing, and I’ve never seen the colours so present in the town, with merch in every shop window. They’ve done well, but I am sure their P&L is a blood bath. Has to be.

How do you make a small fortune? Start with a large one and buy a European football club. Boom-boom.

I walk past this decrepit stadium, and realise that I am actually looking forward to the live game on Saturday. Many of my wife’s Cardarelli family from Parma will be coming up, and we’ll make a day of it. The younger generations, the lads, are getting into football at the sharp end, and have away-supporter tickets with “I Boys”. They’ll be bused to the stadium with a police escort.

God, this location is beautiful, but totally absurd, most unsuitable for the big crowds of Serie A. What will they do if Como actually goes up? There is no parking whatsoever.

 

What actually is the future of Italian football?

The old sports bar, Giorgio and Ugo, La Gazzetta, the Indonesian ciggie billionaire, the new young ultra fans wanting a ruck, the awful Meccano stadia.

A doubling down on ultra tribalism, and belonging? Or what is called sport family tourism, around a fancy stadium in a destination like Como, Verona, Roma, Genoa, with expensive shopping trips and fine dining? Either way, the local politicians will always call the shots, and continue to hold back Italian football. They are the ones guilty of losing the total leadership it had in Europe a generation ago.

Sport investors always underestimate political risk, especially in Italy.

In thought about the Column, I walk to Como Lago station, instead of the San Giovanni one. A senior moment.

Panic. Skin of the teeth stuff. Made it.

There is someone in my seat on the train to Milano. I stand over him, stare, and say nothing. That’s the Glasgow dialect for these situations. He moves. I mean, how difficult is it to work out seat numbers? Likely, he just doesn’t give a shit, like the guy across the aisle, who seems thrilled that he’s on the train WiFi and can access the news channel on his PC. Annoyingly he insists on sharing the headlines with the whole carriage.

I scowl at him too.

Scusi, I know, I know, I can’t find the volume button on this fucking computer.

That’s credible, and we laugh, as the caffeine starts to kick in. I’m finally awake.

They pass with more coffee in their little trolleys, with snacks of either “sweet or savoury”. It’s Lent, and I reluctantly need to pass on the Biscottone.

 

These trips to Florence are always a treat.

It also feels like going home. My great-grandparents in Barga were real farmers, and I think they would have been amused by this IAP charade of mine.

I love trains, especially these fast ones, cutting a neat efficient line from A to B, with a gentle rocking motion, in contact with solid ground, but far enough away from the road-rage traffic. The sensation of movement, looking out a window, is good for thinking, but best suited to noise-cancelling headphones. It is truly astonishing the private and reserved conversations people have in trains. Do they think we are deaf? Like people picking their nose in a traffic jam. We can still see you.

In Italy, “point A to point B” is usually a landscape of superior beauty, especially as you approach Florence, the cradle of the Renaissance. Here ended the Dark Ages that had plagued Europe since the fall of the Roman Empire.

I reflect on the ugliness of our own Dark Ages today. Crumbling cities of violence, war, political strife, poverty, lawlessness, drug addiction, intolerance of thought, and intellect, and the rise of Big Brother. Luckily we have no debt 🥺.

So the approaching dome of Firenze is uplifting, as it is here that the rebirth in humanity started, in the arts, sciences, banking, and commerce. As if Italians were saying,

We left you alone for a while, after giving you Rome, but you have no fucking clue on your own, have you? Don’t worry, mummy and daddy are now back. Watch this. 

It was a time of great humans and the polymath. Perhaps, never again will one single town host so many of these remarkable people at the same time. Leonardo and Michelangelo swore at each other, as they passed in the town square every day.

The Renaissance and the Enlightenment are under-studied, especially today. The Renaissance ended the darkness; The Enlightenment brought the reason.

 

Great humans have always been the answer.

Not AI, not Goggles, not Sora.

It’s a a short walk to our restaurant near Santa Maria Novella. The Asian tourists, like the daffodils, are arriving sooner every year. It’s packed.

We sit down, me, my English client, and our enologist (himself, one of those extraordinary humans). He, a world class operator with top vintages to his name, is also an operating exorcist assistant. Let’s call him Daniele, from Umbria.

This is Italy, with its constant tales of the unexpected, and our man has, shall we say, a good few of them. Stories to grab your attention, and your balls, but only listen to him in broad daylight, would be my advice. His story about an eighty-year-old lady throwing four guys against the wall is chilling. The devil is never ever very far away.

Take this all of you and drink from it. This is the cup of my blood. The blood of the new and everlasting covenant, poured for you and for all men, so that sins may be forgiven. Do this in memory of me. 

Transubstantiation, of wine into blood, is the heart of the Catholic faith, so with our exorcist enologist, and his 100-point wines, this always makes me laugh. You will understand that.

Etruscans, like Daniele, are famously direct blunt people, and he is no exception. His opening gambit, once the Fiorentina steaks arrive, doesn’t miss and hits the wall. He speaks as if it’s just him and me sharing a secret.

Your/our problem is that we, and our English friend here, play fair. Don’t you think all BIO producers came to me in panic this Summer, when the fungus hit, begging me to save their harvest? Whatever it took.

Mario Draghi is an Italian, and we all have those Niccolò Machiavelli genes to some extent. Nicky M was another one hanging around Florence in that moment. The list is mind-blowing. 

The end justifies the means, and the Catholic Church is always there afterwards to wash away the guilt. What a smart set-up. 

 

“Whatever it takes” means using non-BIO pesticides.

With my head still full of the glory and romanticism of Petrarch, Medici, and Descartes, this was the cold-shower of everyday reality. The anti-naivety pill.

You mean they are cheating? They call themselves BIO, but are using the old treatments?

Our exorcist friend stands up and explains that these “molecules”, like performance-enhancing drugs, leave a trail, and you need to be careful. If you get tested, and you’re over the BIO limit, say bye-bye to your wine business.

This is the story of sport, EPO, nandrolone, et al.

I shall now leave for the toilet. Here I have written on the napkin the name of a molecule that is completely undetectable, and can be used to kill the fungus. It is available on Amazon. Whether you use it or not is up to you. I don’t do this myself for my own wines, but you pay me for holistic expertise and advice. So I tell you that this is what your competitors are doing. Reflect whilst I am away.

I have no evidence if this is true. I am just the narrator here. Allegedly these chemicals exist.

Our Englishman is a true gent, old-style, and has never cheated in his life. It was an immediate flat no.

I’ve got this far, and have had a very decent and successful life. I know this puts us at a competitive disadvantage with these cheat BIO producers, but so be it. I prefer to lose, or stop making wine.

I grimaced in both disappointment and admiration, and thought of Gary Neville, with his viral video on playing against doped Italian teams. Such surprise and indignation from all and sundry.

 

In what world do people think they live?

Seriously? Have they looked around?

Any superficial google search will throw out a selection of articles, like the ones below. Pharmaceuticals are everywhere, Gary, in sport and not.

 

 

 

 

 

Yes, many teams were juiced, Gary. You really sure you weren’t? It’s a very thin tightrope between isotonic, vitamin, and over-the-line.

We are all scandalised at the Russian guy dying. What about Assange? Wagner falling out of the sky? Check out the Epstein suicides, or #ClintonBodyCount. Look at Nancy Pelosi’s astonishing success of share trading. Biden’s son?

It’s all an act, a pretence, in one way or another.

”People lie constantly”, Gary. Grow up. Let handsome Marlon tell you how the world works.

 

I headed back to Como convinced of two things. That I’m very fortunate at 60 to hang out with extraordinary people of talent and moral fibre. And that this state of affairs is very rare.