In June 1976 I went to Cuba. And luckily I brought a pullover with me. Because in the hotels the air conditioning was, as they say, like a ball. Usa style, to understand. And we Italians, who came out of the energy crisis three years earlier, which inflicted on us on Sundays on foot (a pain, because running was not fashionable at the time), the air conditioning did not even know what it was. In July 1977, however, I crossed Spain, from north to south, passing through the fiery plains of La Mancha in a Seat 127. Cooling? Nisba. Only the air (hot, by the way) that entered through the deflector. Don’t know what a deflector is? It was a triangle of glass, opening and rotating on a pivot, which completed the window. Turning the tip of the base towards the driver’s or passenger’s chest, it generated a scooter effect. And subsequent pains in the sternum …
Air conditioning or peace: this is how much it will cost to keep the air conditioner on in the summer
Finally, in December 1986, when I arrived at the house in Stresa, on Lake Maggiore, with his wife and daughters, I found the broken boiler. Absolute frost. While waiting for the plumber, we survived a couple of days in triple pullovers, double blankets, a few more glasses of red wine and a few generous cups of hot milk. Now that I think about it, another memory comes to me: summer 2003, the year of the infamous heat wave. With his wife and daughters by the sea, in the house in Milan I kept all the shutters down and all the windows closed: so as not to let the heat in.
Today, however, I have air conditioning in the house. And, therefore, the question of Mario Draghi, the plushly rough leader, it’s about me too: “What do we prefer? Peace or be quiet with the air conditioning on all summer?”. I vote for peace, president. Because I was born in 1954 and when I was little at home they only had a kitchen stove. So, I’m ready for the thermal sacrifice. Which, to throw it into a joke, it doesn’t make me hot or cold… But in Italy there are 24 million air conditioners, 80 million smartphones, 45 million televisions, 22 million personal computers. Ergo, we are a people of energy eaters, softly lying in the digital comfort that few are willing to give up.
And we are even more and more tending to comfort, as evidenced by the proliferation of riders who bring ready-to-eat food home; or the coarse swarm of infernal electric scooters, which guarantee an adequate number of deaths and injuries as well as dramatic progress towards obesity. So, when I see the Ukrainians, armed, behind sandbags or locked in the cellar, helpless, by candlelight, I ask myself: would we be capable of it? In other words, would we, the Italian big babies of all ages, be ready to defend the borders and sacrifice their lives for their homeland? Here comes the dragon crossroads: air conditioners or peace. But the very thought of the double pullover in the living room already makes you grumble. And the idea that, without artificial cold air, we have to rely on the natural air current between the kitchen window and the bedroom window, sows panic. So, those who NATO made mistakes are in excellent, hedonistic and selfish company, Kiev must surrender, who cares about the Donbass who don’t even know where it is… Moral. In 1968 they shouted “Hands off Vietnam”. Today “Hands off Ukraine”. Will we hear the shouts “Hands off my split” tomorrow?