On being a real-life Monica

Post-holiday cleansing, animal-friends and seafood pasta

I have returned, my sweet children. And I am ready and pumped for my post-holibobs rituals. It is time to cleanse my aura and ready myself for a hot-boy-autumn… and that starts by putting my Marie Kondo hat on and reassessing my relationship with my surroundings and material belongings.

I’ll start by chucking half the content of my wardrobe into Ikea bags and get a one-way ticket to the nearest Oxfam. I have come to learn that every piece of clutter I do not get rid of represents an obstacle in my path to success. So fill the bucket and grab the mop, you girlboss, we’re going cleaning.

So I am currently getting quotas for professional carpet cleaners while I watch YouTube videos on how to maximise storage space in the kitchen while maintaining a pleasant colour palette that doesn’t sacrifice beauty for the sake of functionality. I am ready to live love laugh my way through the rest of my twenties.

I was after all brought up in a culture where everything is done for the sake of la bella figura, the very Italian art of making a good impression, a state of affairs where even the most basic day-to-day activities, such as cleaning, are understood as a performance act. The way your house looks has the same weight in the opinion people have of you as the way you look and the job you have. Whatever it is you do, assume you’re doing it for an audience, and a very critical one at that.

It follows that, daily house-cleaning rituals are effectively a contingency plan for de-facto impromptu inspections from hawk-eyed family members and friends who are guaranteed to start gossiping about the state of your house the moment the door closes behind them.

I am known for being slightly over-concerned (i.e neurotic) when it comes to cleanliness and tidiness. And I have tried to change but have failed miserably every single time. I am, as the title of this week’s newsletter suggests, a real-life Monica. I feel physically sick when my standards of orderliness are not met, which is of course very counter-productive because I inevitably end up spreading chaotic energy all around me. Nobody’s living or loving or laughing when I get like that.  

If I don’t make my bed in the morning, I feel as if I’ve failed my future self. I know for a fact that the Valerio of tonight will be very disappointed with the Valerio of this morning when he sees the state of his room… how dare he be so inconsiderate?

I read this back and believe me, I see how nuts it sounds. I am indeed trying to find a healthier, more positive balance between trying to achieve an environment where one has the option to perform open-heart surgery on the living room table and simply learn to live with a base-line level of mess (I wince just writing this) which comes from being human and doing things and having a cat that sheds lots of hair.

But I do not intend to stop. Coming back to a clean house means one thing: you have not lost the plot just yet. You retain some control over your surroundings, and over yourself and what happens to you.

Life might shit on you but you’re the one who gets to decide the last word on whether you sleep in fresh linen sheets tonight or Doritos crumbs from the time you binge-watched Too Hot To Handle in bed last week. Yes, I’ll come out and say it: I feel something akin to sexual pleasure when I walk into the laundry detergent aisle at the Big Tesco. Je ne regrette rien.

Even now, as I am self-isolating and nobody is coming to visit and my flatmate is on holiday, I simply refuse to skip Henry time and let the dishes pile up. I am not doing it for anyone else. Remember when Alesha Dixon said never brush up, he never brush never cleans up no he never cleans up? I don’t want to be that guy. Fear not, Alexa, for I shan’t disappoint you.

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AM I REALLY AN ANIMAL PERSON?

I spent most of my childhood believing I was an animal person. I liked looking at them, petting them, feeding them and occasionally behaving like them at all-you-can-eat buffets.

Back in Naples, I have always had dogs and cats and parrots and I felt like St Francis in the morning when I stepped onto the patio and allowed them to jump on me and worship me like the god I appeared to be to their untrained canine eyes. Being an animal person was easy when I was not actively involved into their maintenance and my contribution to their wellbeing was limited to taking photos of them for a Facebook Album called “Me & My DoGz SuMmEr 2009”.

Becoming responsible for myself and my surroundings and having succumbed to the pressures and frustrations of modern living meant that I simply did not see how I could cope with the responsibility of having a pet. I lost my animal-person membership. I don’t like them, I told myself, they’re hairy and messy and needy and there’s already a hairy, messy, needy guy in this house (i.e me) and God knows I can’t cope with more.

Then lockdown came and we got a kitty, Tonino, who is originally from Edgware, North London, but is being raised as a bilingual, bisexual East London cat by me and my flatmate Silvia. He is fairly low-maintenance but boy… does he poop all the time. The regularity of his bowel movements is the cause of bitter envy on my part, for I am constipated, and great frustration, for I am the one who has to literally clean his shit up.

Once I was able to look past the relentless pooping, however, I fell madly in I love with the little furball. Of course, having him only intensified my well-established neuroses: he has destroyed every house plant in sight, triggering an immediate identity crisis (without houseplants, am I even an East London millennial anymore?), has eaten half the carpet, destroyed the corners of the kitchen furniture and of course…  he sheds hair. Insane amounts of black, shiny, tick hairs are scattered on every surface of the house. I clean and sanitise but I just can’t seem to keep up.

Yes, animals are cute but often disgusting and very high maintenance, but then again so are most of my exes. But I find myself going back to the litter tray, scooping up little cat turds, and rejoicing at the fact that he is happy and healthy and therefore loving him all the more for it. I regret to admit I might be an animal person, after all. Might it be time for a dog?  

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WHAT I LISTENED TO

I’m late to the party but I’ve finally discovered Ms Rodrigo and wow, I have officially turned into a blonde teenager from Pocatello, Idaho. I’m jumping on my bed, singing angrily about the imaginary teenager who broke my heart while using a hairbrush as a prop microphone. I now spend my days waiting for the part of this song in which she screams LIKE A DAMN SOCIOPAAAAATH. I live.

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WHAT I ATE

I finally got a chance to visit the iconic restaurant Zi Teresa (Aunt Teresa), conveniently located on the Neapolitan seafront. I drank two glasses of Prosecco and nearly collapse in the scorching Italian heat, but this dish brought me back to life. It’s scialatielli with frutti di mare: long, square-sided spaghetti with seafood. Admittedly the best I’ve had in my life. The name, Scialatielli is said to derive from the union of two words from the Neapolitan dialect: ‘scialare’ (to enjoy) and ‘tiella’ (pan). And boy did I enjoy what came out of that pan. Zi Teresa doesn’t share the original recipe but here’s a decent one I’ve found on the world wide web if you want to give it a go. Buon appetito.

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