The Italian Job or "More tea Vittorio?"

Last Sunday I was walking the streets of Nottingham taking a few interesting photos around the Nottingham Playhouse area. The weather was a brightening up and it was about 10am. There weren’t so many people around. As I returned back into the city centre towards the bottom end of Derby Road and the junction where all the new hotels are I bumped into (not literally) two smart looking people asking a girl for directions. You could tell that from their body language. They were a middle-aged couple in expensive looking overcoats and the girl was pointing generally in the direction of the road running down to the Old Market Square. She also looked like she wasn’t quite sure how to help them.

The girl went her own way and I caught up with these strangers and asked them what they were looking for – being the nice friendly person that I am. It turned out that they were from Italy and were on holiday in the UK and were looking for … wait for it …tea! Well, they couldn’t have asked a better person could they? I am the expert on tea shops and coffee shops in Nottingham.

Now this was a Sunday morning and to my knowledge there aren’t that many places open on a Sunday at 10am for tea. Even the general shops and big stores aren’t allowed to start trading until 11am. Anyway we walked and talked for a few minutes and I pointed them in the direction of Caffe Nero, an Italian style coffee shop. I’d been in there before and it always seemed a pleasant place to relax with a coffee and I was sure that they did what this couple wanted …some English tea. I gave them one of my little business cards for this blog, called Moo cards, said ‘farewell’ or should that have been ‘cheery –bye, toodle pip’ if they wanted the full English experience, maybe not. You can go too far you know old chum!

They seemed a nice couple and meeting them led me to ponder what it must be like to be that foreign tourist/visitor to my city of Nottingham or Great Britain. I am very aware of my surroundings where I live and I know places that it perhaps isn’t safe to go late at night but generally I feel safe in Nottingham. I know the verbal language of the inhabitants; I can make sense (generally) of the body language of people around me in a visceral way. Everything is familiar and normal day-to-day living. I can find my way about easily – even if I don’t always know the exact street names.

Sometimes, however, there are surprises and the urban landscape has suddenly changed; a farmers market may have been set up on the Old Market Square; a building has been sealed off by police perhaps; a main thoroughfare has become a narrow thoroughfare through road works. The mind adjusts and one re-arranges one’s route to cope or linger. And all these things are reliant on an unconscious familiarity of one’s environment.

Now imagine that suddenly you are that foreign visitor or tourist with no idea of how big/small the city is; where the bus destinations are on the front of the strange looking buses; how to pay for things; where the nearest place to rest is and perhaps experience a proverbial slice of Englishness or Britishness.

I would love to be in their shiny Italian leather shoes and be them, actually be them for a day or too. In other words, to see my city through their eyes and perspective and to understand what they got out of that experience. If I had said to them “Would you like to visit my village –now- on a bus with me? I can make you a cup of tea at my home.” what would there reaction have been if they had taken up my kind offer? Remember to them I am a total stranger keen to show them a real English village as part of their visit. I am proud of the best aspects of English life and culture. It would look and feel so different from an Italian village. But they don’t know that my offer is meant in the best natured of ways. I could be a right nutcase who lurks around every Sunday ready to fool innocent travellers or worse.

I guess it is the same as when you go on holiday to a foreign city and everything is a heightened experience; different smells, different sounds, different degrees of personal safety and opportunities to acquire knowledge of new and stimulating things.


It is the thrill of being in a strange place that is literally ‘out of the ordinary’ for you. It is the discovery of a different culture and a need to take some of that home in tangible and intangible forms and enjoying perhaps the common currency of a café and a drink particular to that country.

And all these thoughts arose because some strangers in town asked where they could get tea in a city in the Midlands on a Sunday morning. I hope it has given you something to think about and I hope the two Italian folk had a great experience of our city. Now if you’d come to my house I could have given you some cake as well and showed the church, the pubs, the…. "more tea Vittorio?"