I tre amici

In the summer of 1985 I went back to Piovene for what turned out to be the last time. I'm not really sure why it turned out that way and have always been sorry that it did but arguably not sorry enough to do anything about it. Idleness? Quite probably.

Anyway. In the summer of 1985 I returned to Piovene with two comrades-in-arms - Mark Townsend and Malcolm Drummond Ashleigh Cooke (I'm sure the Ashleigh was spelt that way but ...). Of the three of us, Mal was the only one who could drive and therefore the only one with a car. He had a lovely bright red XR3i and that was to be our chariot for the journey from Gatow in West Berlin to Piovene Rochette in Italy - 987 km. Actually, that's 987 km now that Germany has been reunited. At the time we had to go down the central corridor from West Berlin to Helmstedt and only then cut south to Italy and that took the journey up to 1,147 km.

It was a cracking holiday. We stayed in a bed & breakfast in Piovene and Paola and Fulvio took us around to all sorts of places ... and to Venice of course.

One day Mal decided that we were going to go to Lido di Iesolo. I wasn't that keen simply 'cos I don't like tourist traps but I went along under protest. We booked rooms in a hotel for two people because we didn't have enough cash on us for three and then went out. Mal and Mark ended up chatting up a couple of German housewives on a girls' holiday while I sat, uninterested, disinterested and bored, watching the pidgin interaction between them. Eventually, they decided that it was time to go back to the hotel. By this time it was lashing down with rain and ... guess what. Nobody could remember where the hotel was. We traipsed the streets of Lido for hours in the pouring rain and finally found it.

I slept on the floor of the room and tried to sneak out early in the morning. I was caught sneaking out but managed to persuade the receptionist that I'd only come in to the hotel to wake the lads up. I'm certain that the fella didn't believe me but after a while he stopped arguing with me.

Tired, wet and hungry, we headed back to Piovene. We came back to a very narked Paola. Narked that we'd disappeared without saying anything. I'd anticipated this and it was one of the reasons I hadn't wanted to simply disappear. Anyway, over dinner that evening all was forgiven as I recounted the daring adventures Mal, Mark and Marco in Lido to uncontrollable fits of laughter of a room full of Italians. The two lads were sat in the middle of it all, not understanding a word that was said and knowing that it was their adventures that had everyone in fits.

I enjoyed that couple of weeks but it had been frustrating. All I had wanted to do was chill with Paola and Fulvio. The lads wanted to get out on the pull and drink. We ended up heading back to Berlin early because they'd got bored. I could have stayed there for months. Nobody's fault of course. Des gouts et des couleurs. That's all.

I never heard from Paola and Fulvio again. I wrote a few times but they never wrote back. Another door shut behind me. Maybe they'd outgrown me. In the seven years since we'd first met, she'd matured; grown up. I very much suspect that I hadn't. Life in the armed forces was never particularly conducive to the maturation of young men. Maybe I still haven't.

... in fair Verona where we lay our scene ...

My first summer in West Berlin - 1983 - wasn't actually spent in West Berlin. That is to say, I spent a few weeks of it in Italy. In Piovene Rocchette again to be precise. In the province of Vicenza - as I think I've already said. By this time Paola had acquired a boyfriend. Fulvio was his name and he was a gentleman. I was delighted for her. They looked good together.

Anyway, enough of the mush. This time I was really shown around. If I ate well last time, I ate twice as well this time. Fulvio took me all over the place - up into the Dolomites, up into the Alps and up into what use to be Austria. He took me to the village where Erwin Rommel was born ... which is now in Italy.

I was taken to a castle outside Verona where one of the families of dignity had resided and from which they dominated the surrounding countryside.

He took me to the top of a mountain where the Italian army had faced the Austrian army during WWI. Both sides had mined the top of the mountain in order to destroy the soldiers on the other side. The result was that entire peak of the mountain was blown off.

He took me to a tiny Romanesque chapel that dated back to the middle-ages. It was small. Seated maybe a dozen people. It was falling apart but the ceiling was exquisite.

They took me eating out. They took me to the local night spots. I spent the whole time eating, drinking and chattering with them or their friends of both.

One of the highlights for me was when Paola took me out shopping (with my own money of course) and picked out a couple of Italian outfits for me. Now I looked the part too. This was living and I felt closer than I had ever felt to the fulfilment of the promise.

Of course, the promise really lay in Campania. In Scala. But this was all part of the journey; all part of the preparation. Even at the tender age of 23 (and I promise you I was very tender) I understood that the journey was more important than the arrival.

The end of a beautiful relationship

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?

Back to the beginning again

I failed the exams at the end of my first year - Italian, German, Linguistics and Specialized and Technical Translation. I can't remember which I passed and which I failed but that really isn't important. I'd failed and only had two options. Get a job or repeat the year. It was a no-brainer. I repeated the year - without a grant but with a loan from my dad to cover the fees. £300. I had to work for the rest.

In some ways this wasn't a very good year. Nicking milk and bread off people's doorsteps at 5 o'clock in the morning. Raiding the hotdog stands late at night for onions, rolls, odd tins of hotdogs and stuff like that.

In other ways it was a fantastic year. I met two people with whom I have remained firm friends - Pegro and Crow (Domenico or Mimmo and Mike). Pegro is Italian. Born in Naples and lived there 'til he was about five when his family moved to Luton. Crow is a star too. German mum and Cuban dad. The two lads went to school together in Luton and Crow learned Neapolitan from Pegro and the other lads from Naples. It was from them that I started to really learn what the language felt like from the inside.

I also met two Italian girls from a small town near Vicenza - Paola Panozzo and Margherita Spezzapria. I used to help them out when they had questions about how English works. Not simple questions. The subtle stuff. The numerous meanings of 'to put down' or 'to put up'. Stuff like that. They were brilliant girls though and I spent a lot of time with them.

I'd moved from the halls of residence on the corner of Marylebone Road and Baker Street to the grandly named International Students' House on York Terrace East ... on the Outer Circle of Regent's Park.

Downstairs in the cellar was a large common room with a kitchen in it. This was the beginning of the age of the Spaghettata. Loads of the kids (we were still kids) from the Poly would come round - Livia La Camera, Luigi Guarnieri (played the guitar), Nunzio di Dea, Angela Charalambous, Ann Smith (her mum was Italian), Loredana Formaini, Gianni Bruggi (brilliant banjo player), Paola and Margherita, Pegro 'n' Crow ... loads of them; and the girls, armed with ginormous cooking pots, would cook up the most stunning spaghetti and it'd all be washed down with wine.

I was in my element; in the middle of a crowd and loving every minute of it. All those people to talk to; all those people to have a drink and a laugh with. Sweet. The good memories unquestionably drown out the bad ones.