My Sicilian Diary keeps coming back to haunt me

In May I posted a blog about our wonderful visit to Sicily. I would have thought that my enthusiastic tone would have shown how much we enjoyed ourselves, and what a beautiful place Sicily is. However, my comments on the traffic and the dog mess on the pavements of Palermo has have really stirred the ire of Sicilians. I have already published one, with a response straight after the blog itself, but the following has been received this week from someone called Steve. He gives no other name and no way of my contacting him personally. He takes my criticisms very seriously, ignoring all the obvious enjoyment we had. This is what he wrote (nothing added or subtracted).

Buongiorno signor Philip,I'm Sicilian and I've been living in
England for the past 14 years. Do you know what? I prefer the
shit on the pavements in my island to the miserable, arrogant and
unfriendly attitude that the british (and of course....yourself) have
towards the rest of humanity.If you were an intelligent man(like
Goete or D.H. Lawrence who adored Sicily!) you would have
looked behond the traffic, the "dirt" and the noise!!!Perhaps our
culture and our natural beauty is too much to take on board for
your brain(?), so i suggest you go and visit your own town or
village! I hope you'll be brave enough to publish my comments
and I am pretty sure that all the comments you are going to
recieve will be only from upset Sicilians!Have a good day!

I would like to make the following comments. First, I am sorry he thinks the British miserable, arrogant and unfriendly. They aren't perfect, and as someone who only came to live here in my mid-twenties I can sympathise a bit with Steve. The people take some getting used to. However, if I felt as bad about Britain and its people as he obviously does I would get out of the country as soon as I could. What is the point in living in such an awful place when one has such a lovely place as Sicily to go back to?

Second, I resent his accusation that I didn't look beyond the traffic and the dirt and see the culture and beauty of the island. The whole blog is a celebration of the wonders of Sicily. Quite frankly I don't think he bothered to read the rest of the text properly.

Thirdly, if he came to Cambridge and wrote blog which had some criticisms of the city as well as some praise I would be pleased. I would go to the Council and say, look, this is what foreigners are saying about us. Can't we change things for the better? If there is any arrogance around it is in people like the anonymous "Steve" who think their own countries are totally beyond criticism.

I shan't say any more, except that I love Italy, am trying to learn Italian, and hope that we can all learn from other countries and make the European Union a real commonwealth of peoples who appreciate each other, warts and all, and have the openness to accept and deal out criticism between each other without getting uptight.