Italian.

As far back, as I can remember, I’ve always wanted to be Italian! Not when I was little, at the infants or juniors, I didn’t know about Italians then, there wasn’t any in my school to my knowledge. I remember one of my school friends saying to me, “All Italians and Gypsy’s are dirty,” I didn’t understand what she meant, as the person she’d pointed to, was tanned with dark sexy looking hair! He looked a bit of alright to me!

Then when I was about 16 years old some Italians came to my Place of Worship. Eventually I got to know them as friends. They were stunning, loved their culture, some only drove Italian cars, they spoke beautiful English, their clothes were beautiful, had beautiful skin, hair, teeth, eyes everything! To me they were just perfect!

When I went to one of their home, WOW it was top class! The furniture was amazing, it was like I was in a wealthy person’s home, it was all perfect, the food was to die for! We were always made very welcome.

Years later I went on holiday to Butlins with one of the girls from the house mentioned above, we were going self-catering and I was to buy the food for us to take. We were SO opposites, I had full fat milk she had green top, she had brown bread I had white, I had chocolate digestives she had something I’d never heard of, Carr’s Water Biscuits! She only had diet Pepsi I had normal, it WAS fascinating that we were the same age and yet worlds apart with food. I was a massive junk eater and she a very healthy eater. I was a size 8 and she wasn’t….

If there was a queue that one could join before they were born, as to what nationally one could be, mine would be without doubt, “Italian please!”

I remember when I was in my twenty’s I went to Italian lessons! It was for beginners, and I loved it! The two Italian Sisters that were there, I told them jokingly, “They should be ashamed of themselves, for having an Italian Mum and not learning the beautiful language when they were little.” They agreed with me. They soon dropped out and sadly so did I as the verbs, etc. that I’d never heard of tripped me up! But by the time I left, a lot of the class had left before me. My lovely Italian Teacher said, “SO many of the Students drop out when they get to the verbs.”

After I got married and before our kids were born we went to Italy, Florence and Rome, it was fantastic! You haven’t tasted wonderful pizza and ice-cream until you’ve had it in Italy!

About fifteen years ago there was on the BBC site free language lessons on computers, I started to do Italian, but didn’t get very far. From time to time whenever I see ‘Italian Made Easy’ or ‘Italian For Kids’ I’d always buy it, hoping for a quick, answer to my wanting to learn the beautiful language.

I remember when ‘everyone’ had DS’s games myself included, they had some games in different languages, I remember asking someone in the know, “Will there be a DS game that will have beginners Italian?” And was told “They are working on it,” But the DS went out of fashion when the smartphone came along, for games gradually went onto there instead. I think the way it could have been done on the DS would have been perfect for me to grasp it all. However, I DO have one more shot at learning Italian. I have my tablet on contract for two years, one year will be up next month and the contract will up next year, I have down loaded ‘Italian for Kids,’ and as an older person it will be good for my memory, If I had a bucket list, learning Italian would be at the top.   So, really, I have an opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. Improve my memory and learn The Beautiful Language.  

“Ciao.”