Summer 2021

Publish date 08-12-2021

by Michelangelo Dotta

Despite the gatherings on the beaches, at least the Ligurian ones, which I know and frequent with extreme parsimony, touched, refreshing dip away from the crowded shoreline and escape, the serpentines elbow to elbow in the guts of the Riviera and the various restaurants packed inside and outside of an insatiable horde of tourists finally "free", the general atmosphere that reigns over summer 2021, the second of the Covid era, is not relaxed and much less festive. If the torrid day of mid-August was celebrated in the best of traditions, water balloons, beers and human snakes of swimmers intent more on cooling off than applying social distancing, already in the late afternoon the beached crowd slowly diminished to disappear completely around the hour. dinner; when night fell, the Aurelia was strangely almost deserted, no cars, no motorbikes, not even the shadow of the endless queues of returning after sunbathing. Thanks to the obligatory lockout of the discos and the stop to group dances on the hot sand, but not only for this, the decibels that rose from the free beaches and bathing establishments this summer revealed a completely different atmosphere, a very particular shouting, festive but restrained, games and cackles of innocent children but little desire for partying, on the part of adults tried by the situation; eager to let off steam and recover the summer of the past but forced to live the present one in a sort of suspension pause waiting for better times.

What you can unequivocally read on the faces is restlessness, latent nervousness, impatience disguised as a party. Two years of pandemic have all transformed us, first of all into more domestic animals even if not quite tame, with short-range dreams just like air flights that timidly reappear in the sky, with zero-kilometer expectations like second family homes that are reborn. to new life by replacing Maldivian resorts and excursions in Patagonia. Then a message arrives stealthily, a targeted invitation on social networks ... and as if by magic 10,000 young people occupy a park / reserve, get high on music, alcohol and drugs, plunder the protected territory and shops, even leave us a dead person and if they leave with total impunity with the blessing of a state totally unable to enforce the most banal rules. It consoles us to note that just across the border the head of state of a democratic nation has publicly declared that "... the freedom to do what you want does not exist".


Michelangelo Dotta
NP August / September 2021

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