Back to the beginning again

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 - without a grant but with a loan from my dad to cover the fees. £300. I had to work for the rest.

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.

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.