Summer 1981 – I was eighteen years in and it was 10 years since my first and only trip to Italy. Ever since, my parents had clearly taken notice of the piles of books, magazines and pictures about Italy that I’d accumulated since that first crazy road trip in ’71. They’d picked up on the amount of time I was spending hovering around in my Nonna’s kitchen, soaking up everything she was creating. They knew that every Sunday afternoon I could be found sat in front of the TV with my Nonno watching Ferrari race McLaren and Lotus to an elusive chequered flag, and then suffering our post-race analysis over a bowl of macaroni and ragu. With a jug of his home-made wine, of course.

So, as a surprise 18th birthday present, my parents arranged for me to spend the summer in Italy with various members of our family. They wanted me to go alone and discover for myself everything that I had been craving for the last 10 years. I was in the middle of an engineering apprenticeship at the time, but fortunately my boss was sympathetic and allowed me the time to go. I couldn’t believe how much trouble everyone had gone to in order to put It all together, there was no internet or email, just an occasional party-line call to Italy whenever they could afford it. It must have taken months and months to arrange, all without me having the slightest clue of what they were up to.

I don’t actually remember the moment they told me, I must have been so overwhelmed with emotion that it was too much for my mind to absorb. But three or four days after my 18th birthday I found myself standing in front of the departures gate at London Gatwick airport. Dad shook my hand and gave me a man-hug. Mum held me tight. She wrapped her hand around the back of my head and pulled me close in only that way your mother can, and whispered “Go and have the time of your life, enjoy everyone and everything. They’re waiting for you.”

As such a young man I wasn’t yet equipped to deal with the emotions that were racing through me at that moment. She eventually let me go and I set about my maiden solo journey through airport security. On the other side I turned around to see them and wave goodbye one last time, quite how I kept my shit together in front of a thousand strangers I’ll never know. Dad smiled and threw me a wink. Mum cried, kissed her hands and blew her love my way. I bit my lip, turned and went to Italy.

The ‘Fasten Your Seatbelt’ light came on and the pilot announced over the PA that we were beginning our approach into Marco Polo. I had a window seat and as the plane banked I was gifted my first gin-clear panoramic view of the entire Venetian lagoon basking in the afternoon sun. It glistened and sparkled and I sparkled and glistened.

The Italians on the plane were already grabbing their bags from the overhead lockers while the cabin crew pulled their hair out in frustration. Italians! I could hear them scream in their minds. Designer hand-luggage was everywhere as the plane prepared to land and the cabin crew just gave up. They sat down, strapped themselves into their jump-seats, and smiled politely with that exquisitely crafted smile they have that makes you want to marry them. I didn’t know it at the time but I’d just experienced my first lesson about these completely lawless and crazy people. It was madness. Albeit a spectacularly classy and beautiful madness.

Literally nothing compares to walking through those sliding doors into the arrivals hall of Marco Polo airport. You step from the air-conditioned, sanitary and soul-less calm of the Duty Free area into an overdose of marble clad sensual overload. The doors swoosh open and you’re greeted with a tsunami waft of espresso, pizza and salty lagoon air swirling around in an immediate hit of sweltering, mid-July Venetian humidity.

The sights and sounds wash over you in a chaotic swirl of perfectly choreographed Italian everythingness. They all look so beautiful. And tanned. They’re casually smoking and drinking coffee or sipping wine at a bar, looking so,,,, so very Italian. Or they’re just casually strolling around chatting arm-in-arm while waving their spare arm around in the air with a poetic and uniquely Italian synchronicity. What’s not to love?

I hear my name being called and turn to see three of the most beautiful people I’ve ever seen in my life. They’d spotted me and were comparing me to a photograph my mother had sent them, after all I was no longer the seven year old boy they’d met ten years earlier. They were waving and beckoning me toward them. I immediately knew who they were, but I didn’t know who they were. They hugged and kissed and welcomed me, I had no idea what they were saying but I knew what they were saying. It felt good and we went home.

I’m sat in the back of my cousin’s Lancia Flavia holding hands with their daughter who last saw me when she was barely five years old, yet it was as if she’d only seen me yesterday. This is all completely virgin territory for me, way beyond anything I could have imagined. I had no idea people like this could possibly exist. And they’re my family. We settle in at their home, get cleaned up and they tell me we’re going out for pizza and to meet up with more family. When my mum told me earlier that day that ‘They’re waiting for you’, I didn’t think that ‘They’ meant literally everyone. Neither did I think that it meant everyone on the first night.

We head out to La Positano in Mestre, their favourite local Pizzeria. It was ram-jam packed. Uncles, aunts, great-aunts, cousins, second cousins, friends of second cousins, even strangers pretending to be friends of second cousins. Twenty four hours earlier I was sat in my empty local village pub struggling to find someone to share a beer and shoot pool with, now I’m swimming in a sea of Venetian pizza madness trying to remember names I’ve never heard of in a language I can’t speak. Definitely my kind of madness.

This was going to be my first real Italian pizza since 1971 and back then my mother chose it for me. Now though, I’m staring at a menu with words like Margherita, Funghi, Vesuvio and Finocchio and Mum’s not there to help. I could see all these incredible pizze being delivered to the tables around me but I had no idea what any of it was, all I wanted was a little bite out of each one for a little guidance.

My beautiful cousin, who was still holding my hand at this point, asked what pizza I’d like. She asked in a way that assumed I’d know, as if I do this kind of thing every Thursday night in the ridiculously grey and damp pre-Thatcherite English shires. Then, in the corner of my eye I spot a thing of absolute pizza beauty being operatically despatched by a Rudolph Valentino look-a-like to the next table. This thing vaguely resembled a giant Cornish pasty done Italian style, I’ll have one of those I told my cousin with a weirdly naive confidence.

Turns out I had a bit of an epiphinous moment. Ten minutes later I’m presented with a Calzone Farcita and a beer. My life at that point changed forever. Filled only with cheese, tomato, mushrooms, prosciutto cotto and carcioffi, topped with a little sauce and a drizzle of olio piccante.

That Calzone touched my soul and the operatic cacophony surrounding me faded into silence. I had a new friend. All of the people around me, my cousins and uncles and aunts and strangers, all just took it like the regular occasion that it was for them, just another night out at La Positano. They had no idea what effect they were all having on me, they’d just turned the life of a very young 18 year old completely upside down. And all they did was go out for pizza and be my family.

I’ve been back to that pizzeria countless times since, every single time I go to Venice actually. I can still remember the very table I sat at, even the place at that table. I can still see the people laughing and enjoying each other and I can still see the very first Calzone I ever ate. At the end of my Italian summer I sat on the plane to go home and I was still holding hands with my beautiful cousin. Our parents had arranged for her to come back to the UK with me and stay with us while she studied at an English school. I didn’t know about that either until it happened. What a crazy life-changing, exciting, eye-opening, spiritual and loving experience that was for me. I flitted between Venice and Milan visiting new people, discovering Italy and realising that there really is no education like that of travel.

And Calzone of course.