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?
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