Seventy years old, a widow, a grandmother and retired (she formerly taught chemistry), Patrizia Mariani now has a new job. In fact, in addition to training to qualify for the Senior Swimming Olympics, since the beginning of the crisis Patrizia has been studying economics. Today she heads the Nonne da marciapiede [Grannies on the Pavement] Movement which protests against a world of “incompetent and corrupted men who threaten our homes, our children and our pensions”. They’re on the pavement for two reasons: because these Grannies do not block the streets and because they want to point out gracefully that politics has descended well below pavement level. The appointment was for 31 May: at ten o’clock in the morning they met in Via Nazionale to welcome the highest authorities gathered for the annual assembly of Bankitalia. And the Grannies asked the shopkeepers for a demonstrative gesture: to lower their shutters for half an hour, exactly as was once done when a coffin passed through the city streets.