THE COLLEGE YEARS

Combe Martin or C'Martin

I was 18 years old. I'd grown up in the country - Buckinghamshire and Devon - and I was living in the city. Everything was beautiful and it was made more beautiful by the fact that the vast majority of the people with whom I surrounded myself were Italian. Grampa's dream was coming true.

From September 1978 until May or June 1979 I was in my first year of study. I didn't do any work. I didn't have to, remember? Languages were my thing. I could do it in my sleep. Besides ... I was too busy trying to learn how to be an Italian.

In the middle of this new world, I met a lady. A lovely lady with whom I fell in love. Of course she was Italian. Her name was Mina. Mina Matania. She was beautiful - and I imagine she still is - and, young and all as I was, I had decided that I wanted to spend my life with her. Of course a lifetime to an 18 year old is short but I was sincere. I believed myself to be in love with her.  I had all the symptoms. Shortness of breath; total lack of concentration; irregular heartbeat; compulsive obsessive behaviour; intense feelings that tear your guts apart; really intense feelings that made me feel like I was truly alive.

She let me down gently and for that I am eternally grateful. I ended up apologizing for superimposing on her an ideal that it was probably unfair to superimpose on her. She was beautiful though. She wrote me a lovely letter that I am ashamed to say I no longer have and told me that emotions are never to be undervalued, no matter what the circumstances.

I picked myself up, dusted myself off and decided to start again. My Pinocchioesque quest to become a real Italian would start again. I am fortunate that I was born an optimist and even though I cried over Mina's letter, it was never going to lay me low.

In the summer of 1979, I finally made it to Italy. Not to Amalfi unfortunately but to Italy.

Basically, I managed to get some money together doing agency and part time work. I worked stuffing envelopes for Barclay's Bank, as a receptionist for BICC's offices in Bloomsbury and a couple of other largely unexciting jobs. When I thought I'd got enough, I packed my back, went to Victoria station and bought a return ticket to Turin - getting the ferry from Dover to Calais and changing at Paris Gare du Nord.

Over the next week or so, I zig-zagged across Italy spending the days in whatever the city was that I'd ended up in that morning and then getting a night train to the next place. In order to be able to sleep on the train and get a decent kip, I always made sure that the journey was long enough. I went from Turin to Naples, from Naples to Venice, from Venice to Rome, from Rome to Milan, and so on and so forth. I went to Pisa, Parma, Florence and Bologna as well.

What a trip that was. I was awestruck by the things and places I saw. I was speaking Italian to real Italians and they didn't turn their noses up at me the way those girls had done four or five years ago in C'Martin. This was jumping in at the deep end. I don't think I ever spent more than a day in any of the places I went to.

In Napoli Centrale, I had a fella (who I've always assumed was gay) sit next to me and grab my balls. Poor bugger got a shock when this young, baby-faced, foreign tourist told him 'va fancul' e' mammete'. I never saw anyone run so bloody fast in my life.

I fell for a rip-off story and gave some fella about £20. Gullible? You bet I was.

I tried to get to a little village called Alife in Campania (province of Benevento I think) to find some friends of nan and grampa's - Salvatore and Carmela Iameo. I can't remember what happened but I didn't find them.

On the train going back up country, I got talking to a couple of American matelots (US Navy for the uninitiated). I'd a couple of sticks of JPS fags that I'd bought as presents for Salvatore and as I didn't smoke at that time, I was trying to offload them. I asked these lads if they liked English fags. Their turn to be worried! They weren't big on English fags but they took the ciggies.

I ended up having to get back to Turin with the last bit of money I had left and headed for home. The money hadn't lasted long but it was my first taste of Italy and one that very quickly grew on me.

I failed the exams at the end of my first year - Italian, German, Linguistics and Specialized and Technical Translation. I can't remember which I passed and which I failed but that really isn't important. I'd failed and only had two options. Get a job or repeat the year. It was a no-brainer. I repeated the year.

In some ways this wasn't a very good year. Nicking milk and bread off people's doorsteps at 5 o'clock in the morning. Raiding the hotdog stands late at night for onions, rolls, odd tins of hotdogs and stuff like that.

Margherita Spezzapria,
Domenico Capasso &
another

In other ways it was a fantastic year. I met two people with whom I have remained firm friends - Pegro and Crow (Domenico or Mimmo and Mike). Pegro is Italian. Born in Naples and lived there 'til he was about five when his family moved to Luton. Crow is a star too. German mum and Cuban dad. The two lads went to school together in Luton and Crow learned Neapolitan from Pegro and the other lads from Naples. It was from them that I started to really learn what the language felt like from the inside.

I also met two Italian girls from a small town near Vicenza - Paola Panozzo and Margherita Spezzapria. I used to help them out when they had questions about how English works. Not simple questions. The subtle stuff. The numerous meanings of 'to put down' or 'to put up'. Stuff like that. They were brilliant girls though and I spent a lot of time with them.

I'd moved from the halls of residence on the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker Street to the grandly named International Students' House on York Terrace East ... on the Outer Circle of Regent's Park.

Downstairs in the cellar was a large common room with a kitchen in it. This was the beginning of the age of the Spaghettata. Loads of the kids (we were still kids) from the Poly would come round - Livia La Camera, Luigi Guarnieri (played the guitar), Nunzio di Dea, Angela Charalambous, Ann Smith (her mum was Italian), Loredana Formaini, Gianni Bruggi (brilliant banjo player), Paola and Margherita, Pegro 'n' Crow ... loads of them; and the girls, armed with ginormous cooking pots, would cook up the most stunning spaghetti and it'd all be washed down with wine.

I was in my element; in the middle of a crowd and loving every minute of it. All those people to talk to; all those people to have a drink and a laugh with. Sweet. The good memories unquestionably drown out the bad ones.

I've only ever proposed marriage twice in my life. The first time was in 1979 and I really, genuinely and sincerely believed that it was the real thing. I was 19 and I was totally, absolutely and madly in love.

Her name was Angela. Her father was Greek and her mother was Italian and she was beautiful; from head to toe and from the inside out ... and she'd been engaged for some time to a 'nice' Italian boy.

I was, and am, painfully shy. Talkative. Very talkative; but painfully shy nonetheless. I know I tried not to make it obvious. She was engaged after all. I don't know whether I succeeded in not making it obvious. Not making my feelings obvious is something that I've never been very good at.

I got to meet her parents a couple of times. Once at a party as I recall. It wasn't a mad 21st century party. It was a very civilized social event and I showed my immaturity by getting stupidly drunk.

Her mother was a lovely lady. Eminently sensible and practical I thought. I spent several very pleasant hours in the kitchen with a coffee and a fag chatting with her about the world in general and Angela in particular. I like to think that she quite liked me. Her father struck me as a very taciturn man. Pleasant but very taciturn.

Then I got my break. At least that's the way I saw it. A friend of Angela's bumped into the fidenzato (in Rome I think it was - he was doing his national service as I recall) and he had a young lady with him. The friend asked the fidenzato who the young lady was and he practically dismissed her as 'just a friend'. The description obviously didn't please the young lady in question because she lost it. Threw a dicky fit. The story got back to London.

I saw that as the ideal opportunity to try to press my suit. With hindsight I can see it was probably the worst time to move but I moved anyway and proposed. I meant it. Every word of it. I wrote to her. I wrote to her because that way I could consider carefully every word whereas I was sure to make a total hash of it if I tried to say it face-to-face.

When she got my letter, she phoned me and was incredibly gentle with me. Generously so when I look back on it. She told me that neither of us were ready for such a massive commitment ... but I was convinced that I was and I was gutted. Again.  I still have a few photos and every now and again they appear on the screen saver and remind me ...

It was around this time that I decided that I probably needed to be a Catholic. With hindsight (there's a lot of that in this story), it was an awfully teenage and superficial observation but I made it nonetheless. I didn't see it as being a shallow, teenage decision at the time. In my quest to fulfil my promise it seemed an obviously necessary step to take.

I was living in York Terrace East on the outer circle of Regent's Park and I'd decided I needed religion and not only religion but the Roman religion. When I was born, I'd been named (not christened or baptised or anything like that) in a ceremony in the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosæ Crucis (AMORC or the Rosicrucian Order). When I started school, I went to St Mary's Church of England Primary School. I didn't have the first idea what it meant to be a Catholic.

Medieval church in the province
of Vicenza

Anyway, (shallow decision No. 2), I'd heard that St James' church in Marylebone held a Latin mass. I'd loved my dalliance with Latin at Comprehensive school so I decided that was the one for me. I went religiously for the guts of a year. I never really understood the significance of the whole thing. After all, I'd never had to learn the catechism that way that good Catholic children have to. It wasn't part of my history or my upbringing. It was totally foreign to me ... apart form the language.

I loved the Latin mass. I loved the gravity that the language gave to the ceremony. I loved the choir in the balcony. By the end of a few months I knew the mass off by heart and, what's more, I understood every word of it ... more or less - credo in unum Deum Patrem omnipotentem, factorem cæli et terræ ...

I always came out of the mass feeling somehow uplifted but, even then, it seemed to me that it had more to do with the spectacle than it did with the meaning behind it. After all, I didn't understand the background. The only thing I understood was the language - and I loved the sound of the choir.

It didn't last long of course. Adherence to any religion requires understanding ... or fear. I had neither. Within about a year of my first visit to St James' I had returned to my heathen ways. Even the attraction of the Latin language had gone. After all, they used the same words every week and I knew all of those words now. I wanted to learn new ones.

Anyway. Grampa had never gone to church. It was just that, for a while, it seemed to me, in a terribly, superficial -almost Hollywoodesque - way, that being a Catholic was an integral part of being an Italian.

In the summer of 1979 I went back to Italy. This wasn't a multi-destination holiday though. I was heading down to Alife in the province of Caserta. I was going to find those family friends that I failed to find in '78.

This time I'd done a little preparation though. I seem to recall that I wrote to them and told them I was coming and that I wanted to stay for three weeks. They'd agreed to have me and ... Davy was on the road again.

I got the train down to Naples and then got another train to Caserta. From their I stumbled around until I found the bus station and got the bus to Alife. The bus journey must have been the guts of an hour through pretty mountainous country which inevitably meant narrow, twisty roads. It was wonderful. It was in places like this that I was born to be, I was convinced of it. It must have been July or August and it was hot as hell. So hot, you can't breathe ... especially if you've been born and bred in England.

Having asked directions a couple of times, I found the house and I was welcomed with open arms. Salvatore and Carmela had lived for years in Buckinghamshire and, as far as I was ever aware, had managed to make enough money to go back, buy a bit of land and build a small-holding - a large-ish house in between two fields. One field had wheat in it and the other had maize and vines.

In return for my food and board, I was expected to work and I did. No complaints whatsoever. This was just another lesson in my Italian apprenticeship. We worked hard and in temperatures that I never knew existed. We ate well too. Carmela could cook up a storm and how. They had three kids - Appolonia and Tomasino and, to my eternal shame, I simply cannot remember the name of the other daughter. Those three weeks were idyllic. Perfick.

I was dragged out to Mass one Sunday. I'd protested that I wasn't a Catholic but I was an English guest and it was compulsory for me to go ... even if I couldn't take Communion. I was sat where I was told to sit - at the end of the pew nearest the aisle. I didn't understand why that was; especially as I had to get up to let everyone out to take Communion. It was only after everyone had taken Communion that I understood. Salvatore nudged me. I looked at him. What? He nudged me again. I looked around and saw that all of the men were walking out, leaving the women and kids to see out the end of the service. The men all disappeared into the various bars in the town square. Lesson No. 1. Mass is only for taking Communion.

I returned to England a new man. Pinocchio was possible. I had been initiated into the ways of Italian peasantry. I had feasted on dry bread, salame, cheese and wine in the middle of a field. I had worked that hard that I'd fallen asleep at the table on the patio after dinner. I'd had my first taste of vino paesano; my first taste of grappa. I sincerely regret not ever having gone back, but I didn't; for a number of reasons.

I moved into 1980, the end of my 20th year and the beginning of my 21st. Remember this was a repeat of the first year. This was none of your namby-pamby modular stuff. At the end of the 1st year you were tested on everything you were supposed to have learned in that year. At the end of the 2nd year you were tested on everything you were supposed to have learned in the first two years and so on and so forth 'til the end of the 4th year.

Firuzeh, Marco & Livia

I started off the year with a party. It was my 20th and I shared it, almost, with two of the most gorgeous women I have ever had the pleasure of meeting - one an Iranian lady called Firuzeh and the other an Italian lady called Livia. If I remember rightly, Livia's birthday was the day before mine and Firuzeh's the day after. I've almost certainly got it wrong but it was something like that. In any event, we organized a joint party and it rocked. Big style. I even tarted myself up and that was almost unheard of.

Looking back I think I had fallen as much in love with Livia as I had with Angela but, having twice been knocked back, I seem to have gone to all sorts of lengths to deny it. What fools we men are.

She was Hollywood's idea of the typical Italian woman. Dark curly (or wavy) hair. Olive skin. Dark smouldering eyes. Extrovert. Demonstrative. Gesticulative (is that a word?). For the shy boy from Wessex she was fascinating ... like the candle for the moth; except that this moth was doing its damnedest not to look because it was frightened of what might happen if it did. She was Sofia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida and Anna Magnani all rolled up into one.

Unfortunately, I was no Marcello Mastroianni - much and all as I should have like to have been - and if ever there was an opportunity I ignored it. That's not to say of course that there was. It is simply to say that, if it was there, I wasn't man enough to take it.

I went back to popping entire packets of Pro-Plus tablets every couple of weeks in order to get assignments in on time and it paid off. I passed my first year exams at the second time of asking. It was becoming clear that this quest of mine was going to be no walk in the park. If I wanted to walk in Pinocchio's footsteps I was going to have to work at it.

My next trip to Italy was in the summer of 1980. I'd passed my first year, as I've already said, at the second time of asking and had managed to scrape together a few bob to get myself over to Italy and to spend a few weeks there.

Where did I go? No. You're right. I didn't go down to Campania at all, let alone to Pontone. I went to the other end of the country. A small town called Piovene Rocchette in the province of Vicenza. It was a pleasant little town that benefited enormously from its proximity to the mountains - the Dolomites to the east and the Alps to the west and both equally impressive; equally beautiful.

I love mountains. Fell in love with them the first time I saw them in 1979 when I went to Alife which lies in the middle of a plain surrounded by mountains. Gorgeous.

I went to say with Paola Panozzo's family in a lovely house on the outskirts of the town. They were lovely people. Couldn't do enough for me and that went for all of them - mother, father, two sisters and brother ... and Paola. Paola took me all over the place to some of the most beautiful landscape I've ever seen.

This was different to life in Alife though. Completely different. This was like Western European but with Italian class. Alife was just pure, raw, stereotypical Italian. Here I was introduced to polenta and a host of other northern ... local specialities that left the taste buds racing. Whenever I was taken to visit anyone, there was always a meal served up in front of me within half an hour of my arrival no matter what time of the day it was. I loved it. I'd never eaten so well, so often and for such a sustained period of time in my life.

These were good people. Good livin' people too and I felt distinctly out of my depth; out of my league. Still, I watched my Ps and Qs and at the end of my stay I was told that I was welcome back any time. I ended up going back twice more.

I have to say that the local dialect here was as opaque as the Campanian dialects I'd struggled with a year earlier. The result was that unless they were talking to me - in which case they spoke standard Italian - I could barely understand a word that was spoken. Some Italian I was turning out to be. Still, I studied every word spoken, every move made, every mouthful of food I ate and every drop I drank. I had to learn to reproduce every tiny detail. It was all part of the learning process. It was all part of the journey towards achievement of the ultimate goal - to release the Italian in me; to fulfil the promise.

When I got back from Piovene, I started preparing for my expedition into the 2nd year of my studies. I was back and I'd got a full grant for this year. I'd managed to pass the 1st year. Surely that would be the boost that I would need to get me through the rest of the course - 2nd year in London, third year abroad and final year to finish theses (or dissertations) and take the final exams. Easy.

I got dead excited when we had to make arrangements for the two places (one in Italy and one in Germany) where we would spend our year abroad and I finally settled on six months in Siena (Toscana) and six months in Konstanz (Baden-Württemberg). I had decided that I was going to do my Italian thesis on the history of the Mafia and had given no thought to what I would be the subject of my German thesis.

I have to admit that that was a reasonable reflection of my attitude to the whole thing. Idle. Lazy. I can do this without breaking sweat. I hadn't learned a damned thing.  When I turned up to pick up the results of my 2nd year results they were awful. I retired to the bar on the ground floor of the School of Languages behind Euston Tower and got absolutely blind drunk. Polluted. Twisted.

I went back to Deb'n for the summer having promised one of the lady lecturers to give serious thought to repeating the year. "You can do this, Marco, and well", she said, "if you'll only put in the work."  When it came to it, I bottled out. I couldn't face another year without a grant, stealing from people's doorsteps and all that rubbish. I never went back.

Instead I started writing speculative letters to everyone who might conceivably have a job for a lazy git who could speak a few languages (French, German, Italian, Latin and Spanish at that point to varying degrees of fluency).

Life on the dole. Not pretty. It was looking as if my idleness had brought the quest to a grinding halt. What was the promise worth now?