Valediction to a lovely man

The last time I saw him Luigi Matteo Antonio Criscuolo didn't look very well but I couldn't be sure that he was ill. He'd always been very thin. He worked in the forests in the Lattari Mountains that are the spine of the Sorrento Peninsula.

I was thoroughly amused, when I first met him, by this Italian who had an archetypal Englishman's tan - the white T-shirt tan.

He really was a lovely man. Generous to a fault. Didn't say much. Only spoke when it was necessary to do so. When he had something to say or to ask.

He'd married when he was a young man - I don't know how young - but it seems that the marriage never worked out and he shared a house in Amalfi with his wife for no more than a few months before moving back to the family house in Pontone and spending the rest of his life sharing the house with his sister who never married.

He'd spent a few months - probably not much more - in Hastings in the '60s working in his brother's restaurant - Il Saraceno. Now and again he'd remind us with a single word of English spoken with a heavy southern Italian accent and a massive smile.

From him I learned loads of those little things that you normally learn from your nan and grampa but these came from a different world to the ones I learned from mine - always let the spring water run over your hand and wash the sweat off your hand before you use it to scoop the water into your mouth (not the sort of thing you learn in Buckinghamshire ... or Crewe). Don't drink while you're eating; Only drink between courses. He taught me how to make real lemonade with lemons the size of grapefruits. He showed me how to make vino paesano, how to set a pizza oven going, how to carry a crate of grapes without doing myself a mischief and how to get the lemon trees ready for the winter.

My son adored him. He wanted a hat like Luigi; he wanted this, that and the other like Luigi.

He smoked and drank but not in any way that we'd recognize. Half a bottle of Peroni or Moretti with dinner and one fag afterwards.

In the middle of May 2007 - I don't remember the date exactly - I got an email from a friend in Bari to say that Luigi was very ill. I phoned the mother of a cousin in Amalfi. He had liver cancer. That's why he'd looked so ill when we'd seen him the previous summer. I phoned my cousin and asked her to tell me the moment she got any news - good or bad. A few days later, on the 27th of May, she texted me - Stamattina Luigi è volato nel cielo (this morning Luigi flew to heaven). He was 71.

He was buried next day. I didn't even get to fly over to pay my last respects. I was gutted. Gutted almost sounds trivial or flippant but it's the right word. I felt like my guts had been ripped out.

He and his sister accepted me as family, no questions asked on that day in October 1999 when we first met them. They took me into their house, no strings attached and made me one of them. Generosity of spirit like that is rare.

Luigi was one of those people whose whole face lit up when he smiled and he smiled a lot.

it's been a while

This is the first time I've logged on for a good while. Over a month. I'm not sure why but it seems to me that it's because the story was becoming repetitive ... or monotonous. What I wanted to do when I started this was to explain how I went from being a boy born in Buckinghamshire to being an 'Italian' to discovering who I really am.

The story got lost somewhere along the way; or I lost track of the story. I'm not sure which. Since the 'story' (I use the term loosely) in the last post, my wife and I have been to Venice, Verona, Peschiera del Garda, Longarone, Pisa, Lucca, Siena and Pistoia.

I have enjoyed all of them although I have to say that I find the denizens of la Toscana rather strange. I have spent the last ten years wandering around Italy with a red-haired, Irish wife so that - whether I look Italian or not - I am clearly identifiable as a tourist. When we sit down to eat or drink, I open my mouth and I speak Italian with a southern accent and, although there are mistakes in there they are not very frequent. That visual contradiction has the effect that wherever we go, Italians talk to me ... except in Tuscany (Toscana sounds so much better - or is it Etruria?).

In Veneto people talked to me. In Friuli-Venezia-Giulia people talk to me. In Campania people talk to me. Nella Toscana they say nothing. Perfunctory. Brusque. Taciturn. Not Italian? There is a theory that the Toscani consider themselves to be something better than Italian.

In Italy people are loyal first to their 'region' and then to their country - especially where food is concerned. However, the Toscani elevate this to another level.

I wouldn't say that I've 'done' Toscana. I've been to a few places there. What I don't understand is the English love affair with the place.

Have you ever taken the train from Venezia Santa Lucia to Longarone? Have you ever driven across the mountains from the Autostrada del Sole to Vietri sul Mare and along the coast road on the south coast of the Sorrento Peninsula (la Costiera Divina)? Have you ever taken the bus from Caserta into the Apennines to tiny villages like Alife? Have you ever driven up into the Dolomiti? Have you ever been to Lake Garda on an October's day when there isn't a tourist within 100 miles of the place? Have you walked along the banks of the Adige in Verona or the Arno in Pisa? Have you left the Piazza San Marco and the Canale Grande behind in Venice and allowed yourself to get lost in the backstreets? Have you sat in a bar and sipped on a glass of wine or a cup of coffee to the mellow sounds of Pino Daniele? Have you sat down to a meal with a group of Italians and watched them argue with the chef about how he should cook the meal you've just ordered?

Before you tar Italy with Tuscany's brush, do all of those things. Tell me then where you'd rather be.

I've done all these things and thoroughly enjoyed the sublimity of them ... and there's still so much more to do. So much more! It is entirely possible that 'the promise' has become and obsession but ...