The artist's quest. 5 . Le Marche

 

The day after we graduated high school, and had our ball, I was on a plane to Italy.

There where a few people, upset about this.

Ben- because if the Italian's threat, and my not being around to relax after all the school exams. But than knowing my family –I would not ever have been allowed to have free time anyway.

Mother,- because of who would help look after my 3 younger bothers instead of me? Help clean the house? How come I did that? Where was I going ? 

I believed she tried to stop me,

-but I had planned the event, meticulously. 

Having worked at multiple part time jobs after school and weekends to save up that school year, and found an agency, that had arranged a warm correspondence with a delightful family who waited a whole month to have me as the au-pair to their 3 children.

Stepfather was annoyed too- because I stopped taking orders from him no matter how aggressively they where conveyed. It ended his pleasure of having the power of saying "No", to everything I wanted to do.

And sadly darling grandmother was upset too- because if I was to travel anywhere other than Brittan- 

Why would I go anywhere else in the world other than Croatia, where she is?

The thing is , I had funded the trip myself, and was an adult, and they could all not stop me.

I flew to Ancona,- and became an au-pair in a seas side town of Recanati where all the Milanese swarm and flock down for the summer, buying a spot,  a beach chair on the beach, and spend summer roasting on it, taking it easy. 

 The summer lulled along , walking the kids to and from the beach all day, 

learning to cook Italian, 

feeding the kids,

loving all the new flavours,

and swapping languages. The kids taught me Italian- and I taught them English.

 Bonus was that the smallest leant how to wipe his bum without my having to help, the little girl to swim, and the oldest son to let his hair down and dance,  and we loved each other from day 1.

Of course there was an Italian boy there. 

To whom I was terribly attracted and fought this attraction, while he fought my resistance, for a whole month and a half of the stay. 

Night after night, post the child caring hours, we visited and walked through many of the little beautiful castle hill top towns, the festivals, clubs, of the Marche province .

He got me to try  for the first time , good vine,

 and love it .

 It was also because of these exploratory adventures, and staying up late that had got me addicted to delicious Italian coffee in the morning, helping the having to be up at 8 with the children. 

Can't imagine life, without coffee or vine, since . 

Daniele was a musician too. But unlike Ben, whose band was well known on the rock scene around the Midlands, and who himself vibrated that cool grungy English spunk, evident in the fact that he played the guitar on stage, down by his knees.

-Daniele played Jazz, a genre I than considered, the stuff an unfashionable uncle would listen to,  and contrary to the standards of coolness I knew all about having  having spent teenage years crowd surfing concerts - and his Rasta dread locks- his guitar was secured -cringingly, high upon his chest. 

But watching , and listening to Daniele and his friends plug their instruments on long electric lines in a garage,

 the bass guitar, the drums, the guitar, the saxophone, 

and play music live, outside to an audience of open fields, 

and the green golden Marche countryside over which the music spilled out,

 one can say, it changed Jazz for ever. 

It was visually beautiful . I came to love it. 

The music. 

And the Italian dream  instead of subsiding and deflating, just imprinted deeper as something  to explore further , sometime.

As for Daniele, he just made a little crack in the idea, of this huge, indestructible, for ever and ever, love I had felt for Ben. I’m not sure that I felt less-, but stated to want to explore life, a little wider, and further, to see new places, meet more people - Argh yet another cliché.!- Or just nature.

 But I moved to London with this little crack, in what was before that point absolute idea of togetherness, and with a hunger for the new, in place.