ασέβεια

Is that right? I never trust Google Translate to get it right. Anyway, 'contempt' is what I was aiming for.

New party game for when the topic turns to thievery. Just wish I'd come up with it when my mother was alive and we'd have distinguished guests to dinner and I'd  sit waiting to pounce on any 

'legitimate' cues.

A dead cert was when Mum would go into her routine about Italians being into Thieving and Corfiots merely Liars. 

Anyway, up would come the topic of filching which would be legit cause for discussing San Luca's contribution - at which point everyone would go into spazz-ms of nerves and not know where to look.

"Ooh, dear, 'stealing' ... 'thieving' ... horrid word ... ooh, dear, dont know where to look"

I'd go " 'purloin' 'relocate' 'permanently "borrow" on the sly' ... ffs, people, the stench is the same."

Not that that would put any stiffer balls into the conversation. 'More coffee? Another Ferrero?'

CONTEMPT  - A bit of a breakthrough. Quite by accident. The tsiporo was going round and I was reminding people how many people had been thieved from in the 'Piece of Work' of April 2007. (Corfucius passim) 

• Myself
• My two daughters
• My ex-wife
• And the ones the thieves never remembered - because we haven't even them yet - the two young men out there somewhere who'll make my girls fine husbands and to whom my bling and baubles were ultimately intended.

Six theftees and I was amusing the table trying to guess at the different contempts and varying levels in which each must have been held in order to be thieved from. For instance, none of us has an inkling about what my future sons-in-law are like, so the contempt content couldn't be that high, whereas for me, the owner of the jewels and sleeping mere feet from where I kept them, I must have been held in sewage status, if thought about at all. 

Anyone who breezily asks about the happy family home, I cite the Big Filch and leave them to gauge the level of mutual respect between Sans Lucre and Villa Thefti over in the land of mendacious cut-purses.

GAME But I digress.  The new parlour game - just so everyone can feel part of it - is to think of someone in their  lives for whom they feel such  'contempt' [there, that word] that they could steal even the most precious and sentimental possession ... and explain nothing about the crime to any of the victims.

Of course, the two lads arent here - and nor have they an inkling that they've lost anything - but the joke fantasy was that when they finally slip thru my guard and persuade my discerning darlings to say 'yes', they'll be muscular thugs of the highest order - connections with every top hoodlum across the land - still in murderous good shape.

In true passive/aggressive mewling moany form, I'll let leak a hint of the 'Piece of Work' vileness, the two stalwarts will exchange looks - "So ... are we up for it, then?" - gruff nods, a checking of 'pieces' and sotto voce phonings to contacts on the Dark Side ... then pouf! gone.

A few days later, mystified headlines in the EU press, shocking photographs in the red tops of mansions razed, datura and exotic flora trampled ...