Workers’ recreational Club Nostalgia

Editorial by Stefano Lavorini.

I look on. No pleasure in recognizing myself as different. None of that dangerous arrogance, that comes from that idea of feeling oneself  in someway a cut above the rest, only because one is capable of glibly observing a comedy, of which we are capable of intuiting both plot and purpose.

Sitting at a table in a railwayman’s recreational club, one of those that hark back to the days of yore, I wait to eat while I hear the voices around me, their color: «some squid and fried potatoes».

The relationship between customers and the landlord is resolved in all its necessity, to reciprocal satisfaction.

Everything seems organized to satisfy the appetites of the people there and the expectations of the club owner, who diligently and meaningfully carries out his work.

A bell tolls the hour and I glimpse a bell tower with illuminated clock face, marking a time that by now seems anachronistic, albeit totally real.
Anything but digital!

The waitress smiles affably who, with almost brazen naturalness, chats with lads and men of all ages and origins. She smiles at life that, even if tough, appears to her to have a sense in its daily repetition. She does not take the orders but, with garb, like an unwitting midwife, gently coaxes out the culinary desires of the people, the men she is standing over.

«Coffee?». «Three’s more than enough! But bring us a grappa» I hear people with tired faces and huge arms say, that first and foremost don’t order a drink, but that urge a greeting… The rest comes after that.
A familiarity that sounds even more intimate than home life, free of any obligation, chosen for pleasure each time you decide to cross that threshold.
«No turkey I only have pork cutlets…But if they are small, I will do two»: a sentence that sweeps away all the trollop about customer satisfaction written in a hundred books.

Here they do not sell mildewed, mouldy ideas, but actualness of fact.
There is talk of internet, of Sky, of coffee capsules, but everything seems under control, as if part of a world in which an action is followed by a reaction, that can be understood, foreseen even.
«My boyfriend… has left me» I just manage to hear the words of Veronica the waitress, who answers the question of a curious, dilapidated lady: words that almost make me feel as if, in the end, over the last fifty years, everything that had happened in the world had occurred inevitably.
As if the will, the commitment, the sacrifice of many had been metabolized and absorbed, like an essential, inevitable occurrence.

«Two nil the bastards»: the comment rises strongly to the flicker of the television that, with the sound down, illuminates the room with the images of that night’s match.
The girls move between the tables, still light as butterflies, they don’t seem to be affected by tiredness. They smile at a future that, first and foremost, they want to be better.
The dishes are by now empty, only a few people linger at the tables, the expectation of oncoming sleep and tomorrow now dominates.
And yet one more smile, one more kind word, to seal the fact that another day has passed, as the toll of the bell reminds us.
Tomorrow we shall see.