Requiescat in pace Alfredus Criscuolo

It was a gorgeous day as I recall, the 16th of October 1976. I was out in our very small back garden and it was early afternoon. We didn't have a phone in them days so, funnily enough, we didn't get any calls.

Out of the blue though, one of the kids from next door came running round like a bat out of hell. "your nan's just phoned. You've got to go up to hers. Your grampa's poorly."

It was about a mile from our place to nan and grampa's and though I ran like I'd never run before in my life, it seemed to take ages. To get to the house, I had to run up a long flight of concrete stairs to a terrace of four houses that sat on the side of the valley. Their house was the third.

I banged on the door and nan let me in. "He's at the bottom of the garden", she said pointing urgently. I don't know what I expected to see or do but I ran to the far end of the garden. There was a flight of concrete stairs at the bottom of the garden that went up to the garage. Grampa had been working on the car.

The doctor had signed him off sick because of his heart and told him to take it easy. Of course he didn't. He was lugging the car battery around - recharging it.

When I got to the top of the stairs, he was lying on the gravel with the car battery on its side beside him. I knelt down beside him and took his hand. He was still alive - I'm certain of that. He looked at me and then he died. I could almost see the life leave him ... as if it were something visible, tangible.

I wasn't allowed to go to the funeral. I wasn't old enough; something like that. He was buried in a cemetry in London together with his parents - Nicola and Raffaella. It was as close to home as he was going to get.

When I say I was gutted I mean it. That ripped the guts out of me. He hadn't lived to see me keep my promise. I felt I'd failed. I knew he was watching though and I knew that there was no way I was going to let him down.

The promise

I'm convinced that grampa felt guilty for having renounced his roots because his message to me was that I should never forget that I was Italian - You are Italian and you should never forget it. I made him a promise - a hundred times - that I would keep the faith; that I would remember our roots; that I would undo what uncle Tony had done.

From the age of 13 I started to teach myself Italian. I bought Maria Valgimigli's book - Living Italian - and started teaching myself Italian. I bought myself 'Teach Yourself Italian' and continued the process. Until, when I was 18, I applied to the Polytechnic of Central London School of Languages to study Italian and I was accepted for the 'post-A-Level course'.

When I dropped out of my Italian and German course in 1981, I was fluent and what's more I sounded like an Italian - not like an Englishman speaking Italian. Between 1978 and 1981 I spoke more Italian than I did English.

The only thing on my mind was an old picture postcard of Amalfi - a gorgeous black and white picture - of a place that the family had called home.

By the time I'd reached the age of 16, I'd changed my name back to Criscuolo. When the next brother down was 18, I paid to have his name changed back and my dad did the same around about the same time.

And I'd started to plot the family tree. My search for my connection to Pontone di Scala had begun. Old family papers. Snippets from aunts and uncles. I was going to rebuild my roots. I was going to find out who I was ... where I belonged.

It was the return of the Criscuolos and this time it was the real thing.