To set foot in God's own country

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.