Thursday, June 16, 2005

When Grandfathers Turn Bad...

Do any of you remember the nice old Italian gentleman who put himself up for adotion as a grandfather?
Unfortunately things haven't worked out well for the family that adopted him:
Two weeks ago, the adopted grandfather vanished, but not before leaving his trusting hosts with various unpaid debts and stealing a couple of post office cheques. In the end, Mr Angelozzi had selected Elio and Marlena Riva’s home at Spirano, in the province of Bergamo, from the many offers that had flooded in. Apparently, his loneliness was at an end. There was going to be a happy ending. Eighty-year-old Mr Angelozzi charmed everyone with his erudite conversation, the mania for precision that he had “acquired in all those years of strict Jesuit schooling” and the old-fashioned courtesy that prompted him to say “Marlena is my angel. Her voice is just like that of my dear wife,who passed away twelve years ago”.
But the fairy-tale was destined to end in tears. The truth began to come out at the beginning of May. “We discovered there was an unpaid bill for 3,500 euros with one of the local dentists. ‘Granddad’ had been having treatment without telling us”, say Elio and Marlena Riva.

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