You get beggars in every country that you go to and Italy is not the only country to have them, but I saw one old lady that was priceless. Since I arrived in Italy I’ve mostly seen our Black Business Men doing this kind of work, but when I reached Rome is seems that there are many more different ethnic groups doing this kind of work and their is a lot more competition for your Euro. Now some are quite genuine, you only have to look at them and see the sadness and despair in their faces. Their whole demeanour tells you that they are having a bad time.

But then you get the other ones, the chancers and they are no more a beggar than I am. This old dear pictured below was a prime example. Her clothes were very clean but made to look old. She moved with such perfect grace in are shaking of the walking stick and crying “Grazie Grazie” and other things that I don’t understand. She knew how to work a crowd, but I noticed that she kept her face well covered, but her scarf slipped a little and you could see that the eyes behind this wee woman were very shiny and there was no sign of despair or sadness. The rhythm of her voice matched the rocking and shaking of her frail body, in my opinion she was full of shit and this was her day job and no doubt makes quite a bit of money by doing so. I should have got her on video to let you see this Oscar winning performance. And you know when they say” Grazie” their voices just break enough to make you think they are going to greet. There were about 3 old women working at St Peter’s but this one was the most active, the others were either sitting or begging beside a pillar. This guy above, well I don’t what he was on.

Around the Coliseum our Black Business men, or BB for short, were selling the usual selfie sticks but they had sub contracted some lighter skinned workers to help. They had moved into selling bracelets and cubes with etchings, you know the kind of thing? I just ignore all of them when they approach me as I find it the easiest way and to be honest you get sick of saying no. But one tactic they were doing here was this, they come up and say “Hey I like your shoes” “Hey I like your hat, beard, whatever……..” “are you from……..?” Now I know they want to engage you in conversation but I was not sure after that what angle they were playing, but as I did not speak to them I will never know. If you do speak with them you will not get rid of them so easily, it’s a bit like stepping on shit and you have to scrape it from the sole of your shoe, you will get rid of it eventually but it will stay with you for quite a while. My advice………ignore them.

Oh I did hear one of them saying, “Why won’t you help me feed my baby in Africa?’  and this is another scam that you will see more with younger women. They approach their mark and then show a picture of young children and/or baby and plead with them to help. As soon as the money has exchanged hands she is off like a shot to her next victim, the urgency that was there moments before has disappeared in the wind. This is also a big problem in London and it seems to one ethnic minority to blame but of course these days you are not allowed to point the finger at the blinding obvious.

When you are standing in one of the many queues to get into venues you are approached by another kind of leech, and these are the kind folk that will let you jump the queue by joining a group tour. Now these guys are not all bad but remember that you are just a means of a making money, you’re another meal so don’t be coerced into something you may later regret. I have been on some tours in my life but to be honest, after listening in to a couple of tour guides in Italy rambling on I know it’s not for me, especially when English is not their first language. A racist you say, I say no it’s just bloody annoying if you have to listen for an hour to someone killing the language when it’s supposed to be informative and especially if their idea of fluent is different to yours.