Jimmy'll Fix It

So Thursday morning was to see a massive exodus from Baiardo and indeed Sanremo. Kitty and the other Canadians were off to Cinque Terre, my Sanremo roommate was off to Monaco with her new friends, and some people were even headed for home.

As it was to be our final night altogether we decided to have dinner together. At this point I feel it is appropriate to tell you a little something about Jimmy...

If you have ever been to Baiardo, you will have met or heard of Jimmy: he is a part of Baiardo folklore. He is not Italian. I don't think he can even speak Italian. He is a handy-man. From London. With very few teeth. Now Jimmy is a great person - he fixes stuff and so we had no reason to believe that he wouldn't fix our dinner plans.

'Now Jimmy' we said. 'We all want to have dinner together. Can you fix it for us?'
'Sure' says Jimmy.
'We have two very simple demands: cheap, and no set-menu.'
'No problem.'
Jim was going to fix it.

So that evening we met Jimmy and he walked us down to the restaurant. It looked a bit ropey, to be fair. We sat down and I got used to my surroundings.
'Yep,' I say to myself, 'that is a stuffed squirrel behind me, just above a large hunk of cured meat. Nice.'

Our first course was brought to us.

Hang on.

Our first course was brought to us? But we didn't want a set menu. Oh well. It was probably the cheapest option. Jimmy knows what he's doing.

The first course was pasta in a sauce - vegetables and the like. It wasn't the best I'd ever eaten, but it was passable. Oh well, it's only the first course. We were soon brought the second course - bolognese. Lovely. I take a mouthful. Not so lovely. There is a hum that goes round the table - don't eat the meat.

So far, not so good.

We were brought the meat dish next. We were understandably a little tentative at this moment in time. We passed it round - 'Oh, rabbit, my favourite.' Now I did have rabbit with the Brescian banquet my host family treated me to and it was ok. This was not. It was incredibly dry. I put a dollop of vegetables on my plate to moisten it a little. I have never eaten something so repulsive. I kept eating them as I couldn't work out how it was possible for a courgette to taste that bad.

By this point we were on a downhill spiral. Then dessert came. We realised that we'd been looking at dessert all evening. Next to the cured ham and the squirrel was a tray of profiteroles. No, not refridgerated, and yes, covered in a selection of neighbourhood flies - the very same flies that we watched crawling over stray cats and dogs outside.

Boke.

We ate as much as we could stomach so we wouldn't go hungry and then asked Jimmy if we could settle up. Jimmy has a word with the restaurant owner and walks over to us apologetically.
'That'll be 15Eur. Each.'
Silence fell in the restaurant and then the murmurings began: 'I can't pay that'; '15Eur! He must be joking!' and so on. I was sitting at the end of the table with Kitty and the other Canadians. We made eye-contact and decided against saying anything. The murmurings became louder and the tension began to augment. This was not going to end well.

Kitty made an executive decision.
'Let's pay.'
We looked at her.
'We ate their food, so let's pay for it. It's so disrespectful to refuse - what kind of impression are we giving!?'
I agreed with her and could tell things were about to get nasty. We collated 60Eur between us, handed it to Jimmy and left.

I believe at that point the poo hit the fan.

Thankfully we were long gone at that point, walking back to our house with a smashing view to boot.

We watched this stunning sight and hung around for the other diners to return. It transpired that most people had left within a few minutes of us, putting down any pile of cash - 5Eur, 10Eur, 0Eur... The other tutors couldn't understand why we had paid up - Kitty played the disrespectful line; I said that although we hadn't got what we wanted, we'd paid for an experience we certainly wouldn't forget - when Jimmy didn't fix it.