With a marathon only one week away, I thought that going to Italy would have been a nice way to train and relax, far from London's temptations. Damn wrong.

I have stories. Some of them are not very nice.

I have to do this. I'm sorry. I sold my soul to the devil for 2 free meals.
My dad worked for a while with my cousin for this celebration of the local Sport Club, something like 100 year of history.
My uncle is the president of the club and my dad gave him a hand to fix the place.
So, in exchange of free meals for me and Gualtiero and my dad at the presidential table, I have to write something.

This is a short sponsored paragraph

The Unione Sportiva San Vittore Olona was born in 1906, and after so many years is still running strong, with a lot of contributions to the local community (a town of around 6000 people).
Their main event is the World Famous (C) Cinque Mulini, a cross country race around the five old mills. Every year runners from around the world (some world champions, some Olympic champions. Not me though) run the race and enjoy the cold weather, the rain, the wind to win and put their name on the long list of champions that won it.

End of the sponsored paragraph

Now you know everything you have to know and I feel like I paid my dues.

The evening was longer than expected, and with the average age of 60 (me, my friend and two 8 years old girls knocked down the average age by 10 years), there wasn't much to do but eat and drink.
Personally I has some fun saying all my stories to a new audience that never ever listened to them before (Gualtiero was soon bored, he knew almost everything, but he was quite surprised by my political gibberish).

I'm a great storyteller. But they usually are quite gross, so I always need to be careful about my audience.
Subjects? Travels, girls, cartoons, booze, aliens, porn, what women should do, glory, football, porn, heroes like me, lesbians and so on, sometimes in a different order.

It's just like wearing a gimmick. With the right audience, I can gross out everybody. With an audience of 60 years old, all I had to do was just replace some common words we youngsters use for the genitalia with something my dad would use to avoid an exorcism by the mostyl catholic crowd.

Anyway, after a long time me and Gualtiero left to reach my usual bunch of friends at the usual pub, where Olga (my great sister) was waiting for me with a drink in her hand.
We walked in the middle of the night the 7km that separated us from the place, through rough roads and spring fields, castles and rivers, gypsies and traffic lights.

We drank. And we celebrated. Not much really, but you don't need an excuse to celebrate.
I had one moment that struck me once I was already in the almost-pissed-but-still-in-control mode.
For once in our life, all my old friends had a girlfriend. The three musketeers (plus me, obviously D'Artagnan) had a girl next to them. It never happened before, not at the same time.
And if I think that some time ago I thought that some of them could have been gay...

The next days were spent pretty much the same way. I had more revelations. Talking with Giorgio, a guy from the old times when I used to go to the local Oratorio in the summer break (a place sponsored by the church where you could play football and other sports plus hang out with your friends without making your parents worried), I suddenly remembered what a true bastard I was.

You know, I always thought that I developed my bastard side (everyone got one) in the recent years, by playing football in the English way, by working in a cynic city, by doing things that would make most of my friends ashamed of.
But it wasn't true. Long, long ago, I was even worse.

We were talking about a time, something like 10 years ago or more, when I was helping the Oratorio and the local priest by working in the bar during my shifts with kids. Instead of playing football with them, I was selling sweeties and ice creams to a crowd of 6 to 10 years old.

Someone reminded me of this guy, called Matteo or something like that. He looked like Humpty Dumpty, with a fat and round  body over two tiny legs.
He was a bit retarded I think, not very sure at the time (everyone aged 10 seemed retarded to me).
Every day he would come to me and ask for 5000 lire (around 2 pounds) of candies.

I still remember the glass jars with the different kind of sweeties.
Different shapes, tastes, colors, with the same price: 50 lire a piece.
When I was a kid, I just wanted sweets. That 1 meter between me and the jar was always too much.
So when I finally managed to work on the bar, to be the sweet meister, part of my childhood was gone forever. I could have everything just by sneaking and reaching a hand inside any jar. Nobody would notice. Nobody.

Anyway, this guy always asked me for the same amount and I always gave him 1000 lire less of candies.
He was too retarded to count, even with me counting the sweeties in front of him.
I would then use the 1000 lire to get me 20 (£50x20 = £1000) sweeties for free, legally.
This way, the bar and the people that trusted me couldn't notice nothing because after all nothing happened.
The amount of money in and the amount of sweeties out was right.

I should feel ashamed 10 years later. And probably I am, but as someone said, the more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

So I guess this makes me incredible respectable (and yes, I spent a lot of time on google looking for same decent shame quote).

This was the highlight of my 5 days. Remembering a forgotten shameful act and finding some quote to redeem myself.

Life is good now though, sweet like a stolen candy.

I can probably spend few more lines of text and telling you about the snake found in my garden that somehow managed to escape in some hole while me, my dad and my dog were hunting him with various tools, or the story of the young American girl named Sarah lost in the Stazione Centrale in Milan, looking for a way to get to her friend's apartment, and desperate to find someone who could speak the language (I probably saved her day and she paid me 5 euros for the effort, but I don't want to brag to much about it).
Or how my digital camera stopped working after on of my friends arrived with an animal on his head (please look at on your right picture), or maybe how Paolo threw at me a his daughter's diaper full of piss and how heavy it was.

But it's late, and I have to get ready to run a marathon. 42km, on hills (I discovered this last fact today). Damn long.

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