What a difference a year makes

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.

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.