Rome Stories

Full houses in the city's new bingo halls, and a lesson in the subtle art of sneering at shop assistants

At half past midnight on a freezing Monday evening, the queue wound its way round the block from the old Rouge et Noir cinema. "Must be some celebrity screening," my husband muttered as the traffic slowed to a crawl, but I knew better. The shivering groups of young people and middle-aged couples were eager to do that very British thing, "go down the Bingo".

When Bingo Trastevere, also a former cinema, opened just before Christmas, I was one of the first through the doors, dying to see how Romans were taking to the game. The 300-seat centre, decked out in cruise-ship blue, burgundy and chrome, was then only about half-full, but judging by the Rouge et Noir queue, bingo is beginning to catch on.

The punters I spoke to in Trastevere – a couple of keen racegoers who fancied a different type of flutter, a group of wealthy-looking middle-aged couples who had opted for gambling rather than going out for a pizza, and a surprising number of young people, sharply dressed and boisterously noisy – were, essentially, curious. All were concentrating very hard on the caller, and the cries of "Bingo" were rather hesitant.

Romans have yet to develop a bingo lingo along the lines of "two fat ladies – 88". At the moment they are just calling the numbers straight, maybe until everyone gets the hang of it. But each time someone won, the room erupted in applause.

There are now at least four bingo halls in Rome, and their operators astutely promoted their novelty value by staying open from 3pm to 2am, even on Christmas and New Year's Day. It's probably just as well that the public here know little about the game's association in Britain with pensioners and pink-cardiganed housewives, nor indeed of the decline in its popularity.

My snobbier intellectual friends have dismissed bingo as part of the "consumerist game show get-rich-quick Berlusconi culture", and movie buffs are moaning about the transformation of small cinemas into anonymous bingo halls. As he filled another card, and sipped his small beer, Bruno, who runs a stall at the weekly Porta Portese market, gave his verdict in a thick Roman accent. "Don't ask me about the rest of the country, but I don't see it catching on here," he said. Why? "Because it's a game that's too simple but that pretends to be too complex."

Plenty of others, though, seem to fancy the idea of winning a sum small enough to be welcome, but not enough to turn your life upside down.

* * *

The headline on the local pages of the populist Rome daily, Il Messagero, was a recipe for despair. "After the holidays, a month of protest marches," it said. Among future marchers would be students protesting against education reform, disgruntled public sector workers, opponents of a new and stricter immigration law ... the list went on.

Protest routes in Rome vary little, and inevitably paralyse much |of the centre – sometimes all day, if you get morning and afternoon marches. Roads are closed, traffic grinds to a halt, buses are rerouted and even scooter riders – normally immune – lose time.

Occasionally someone will tentatively propose that devolution should be applied to demonstrations, and that instead of everyone coming to Rome, they should make their protests at home. They are immediately denounced as anti-democratic, as is anyone who suggests that the rights of Romans should be considered along with those waving the banners.

Even now the memory of two decades of dictatorship under Benito Mussolini lingers. Most people here want no infringement of the right to protest, even if some lobby or other clogs up the streets of Rome every day of the year.

* * *

Two visiting British friends came home shell-shocked from some serious shopping. It wasn't the prices, the euro or the crowds, but the humiliation that only a Roman shop assistant can inflict.

Browsing is not cool here, so saying you are "just looking" earns the first sneer. Then the assistant will follow you, huffily refolding any jumper or jacket you may have touched. Ten minutes of this and you can lose your nerve completely.

There is a solution. Make sure you look smart, of course, but above all be as haughty as you can. It pays to start by asking for something, anything. That puts the onus on the assistant. Then you must be as dismissive as possible as they scramble around trying to meet your requests. Once you have established the power relationship, you can then proceed more normally, and maybe even find what you are looking for.

This practice may trigger your class guilt or offend your sense of courtesy, but if you have to choose, it's surely better to be the sneerer than the sneered at.