Noisy at the Wrong Times by Michael Volpe Page B

but he did the minimum he had to, and, of course, taking us in the cab of his truck was not particularly legal. The daily drudge was never going to exert much control over him for long; only the odds at Ladbrokes and his overwhelming aversion to responsibility could do that (not to mention the contents of his trousers), so he decided to do something that required less work and, more importantly, did not impose on him a boss to whom he had to defer. However, this repugnance towards any kind of work was in direct and knotty conflict with his love of gambling, so, using an admirably entrepreneurial logic, he bought himself an ice cream van.
    Ice cream had universal appeal. It was cheap to produce (he just bought vats of a ready mixed liquid that he poured into the top of a machine), and the demand for a little luxury on the council estates was high. He would only have to work for a few hours a day and could still earn enough in cash to spend a few hours throwing it away again in the betting shop.
    The predictability of coming from an Italian family with an ice-cream man for a father was obvious even to me. For a civilisation of the richest history imaginable, Italy does have some unspeakably naff cultural icons. I blame the Cornetto ads for much of that. My Uncle Matteo, who also now lived in London, spent a great deal of time and evangelical zeal trumpeting the delights of Italian art, music, fashion and architecture, and I merely repeated to my friends everythinghe said. This was when I first began to hear opera and Italian music; my uncle would preach to me about Mario Lanza and play his records. A strange Welsh chap who lived next door to him used to come into the flat and drink whisky; like many Welshmen, he thought he could sing and wailed along to the records in a creaky tenor voice. Mantovani got an airing too, but curiously, so did Bob Marley, who my uncle was very fond of (what the neighbours made of the musical cocktail emanating from his front-room window I dread to think.) Frankly, the leap from the reverberated strings of
The Greatest Gift is Love
to
Kinky Reggae
is one no man should reasonably attempt to make. Marley and Lanza I thought were cool; Mantovani I placed alongside Cornettos, the circus owner in
Pinocchio
and arse pinchers in Rome – all of them made me cringe. I continued to regale everybody with outlandish stories of summers in Montecorvino and to advocate the wonders of Da Vinci
a la Zio Matteo
, but the advertising industry was busy dismantling the reputation I was working so very hard to establish for Italian cultural superiority. It was a rearguard action on my part – one I think may have eventually succeeded – but since Michelangelo, Caravaggio or Verdi rarely drifted through the collective consciousness of Fulham Court’s youth,
gelato
would have to suffice as a cultural reference. Simply put, my personal status came before that of the Motherland.
    Dad’s van generally arrived in the early evenings. Suddenly, from every balcony, mothers would emerge from their doors behind wet dangling washing and scream the names of their children, beckoning them to attend immediately. Usually, the children had already been alerted and were sprinting to the forecourts below their flats to await orders. Coins and notes would rain down from on high as parents babbled instructions to their children who would then rush off to Dad’s van. I am not sure why there was such urgency – as with life, I suppose,they thought they might miss out if they didn’t get in quick enough.
    For me, the arrival of my father was a moment to be relished. Of course, I would have
preferred
him to turn up accompanied by the roar of a Ferrari engine, not the wobbly chimes of his clapped out Mr Whippy van, but those bells were the starter gun for all the kids whose parents had not anointed them from on high with silver coins. Like bees to a honey pot, from every direction they would gather about me in swarms. It mattered not one