Vita had come to England in 1968 when the student riots took place in Milan, and gone to live in Oxford. Where she’d grown up, in the mountain area of northern Italy (near Monte Rosa), the local practice was to drape the duvet and other bedclothes over the window sill first thing in the morning, if it was sunny and dry, to air them. She continued with this practice in Oxford, but the locals said it was a bit vulgar, as it looked like she was announcing, and showing off, her bedroom activities of the night before. She was horrified they should’ve taken it that way, and thought they were a bit racist towards her.
As she was studying full-time, she got a local woman to baby-sit her son for a small fee, and they got on well. One day, the English woman called her “duck”, which is apparently offensive in Italian. Hurt, Vita terminated the woman’s baby-sitting services and never spoke to her again.
It wasn’t until years later, she told me, that she found out the Brits use it as a term of endearment.
duck 3 |dək| (also ducks )
noun Brit.
dear; darling (used as an informal or affectionate form of address, esp. among cockneys).
ORIGIN late 16th cent.
(England, 1968)
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