A milestone event (in words)

It's not every day that one turns 50. In fact, there's only one such day in every (honest) man's life. And since it's a pretty significant ring on the trunk, it should be celebrated. We did. In fine style.

Of course, being in Italy only adds to the flavour of it all. The day of my birthday itself (Thursday 4th September) was a quiet, relatively uneventful day - a swim in the lake (after the clouds had come and the chilly wind had arrived), and a somewhat disappointing dinner at one of the touted local restaurants serving quintessential marchigiani fare.

But it was two days later - on Saturday 6th - that the milestone was consummated. It started out as a surprise party, but given all the preparation necessary, along with my periodic jabber about "what we're going to do on my birthday", I was soon helping (in a peripheral sort of way). Maria, along with the sterling efforts of friends Janette and Chiara, threw together a shindig that will go down in the annals of serious parties (and I've been to - and thrown - a few).

With a mixed crowd of our ex-pat and Italian neighbours and friends - split about 50:50 - we fired up the brick wood-burning oven for the first time and cooked around 30 delicious home-made pizzas. Giuliano - one of our neighbours - played the saviour and stepped in to direct (and ultimately took over from) our flailing efforts to get it going. And with the willing helping hands of his wife Ivana, another neighbour Giuliano and his sister-in-law Sabina, the production line clicked into full swing. Platters of steaming pizzas came flowing thick and fast - mozarella with tomato, onion, prosciutto, eggplant, mushroom, zucchini, many with a zing that required a swift response in the form of (the second) Giulano's family farm wine - a rich and edgy chateau di Regnano of the highest order.

When the birthday cake came out, I gave a (very) short speech in Italian, to the appreciation of all the locals.

As midnight approached and some of the neighbours were about to leave - some ex-pats had already scarpered - Janette and Chiara brought out "the present": a multi-layered wrapping with an anecdote from my life in each layer. These were translated into Italian for the locals. There weren't too many embarassing revelations, just stuff that added meat to the skeleton character that they'd all known up to now. Once that was done, the locals went off home, leaving just 9 of us.

And that's when it started. Pushing the volume capabilities of my laptop stereo to the brink, we blasted out a mix of old and contemporary music across the hills of rural Le Marche - Manfred Mann, 4 Non Blondes, Queen, Rihanna, Mattafix, Massive Attack, Madonna, Boston, Angelique Kidjo, Animal Logic, and still others. And we danced, none more freely - read "wildly out-of-control" - than my dear wife, who let go like I've never seen before, throwing herself around like the black-leather-jacket, rockin' German she is. It was wonderful to watch. The others left at around 4, we tidied up a little (or rather Maria tidied up a lot, me a little), and relaxed on the mattress outside to the strains of my favourite, more sedate music - Bruce Cockburn, Django Haskins, Lisa Gerrard, Aimee Mann, Bandits, Oystein Sevag, amongst others. Bedtime 5:30am.

I don't know when last I went to bed that late, or when I let rip quite as freely as that. But 50 be damned - I'll still be doing that (God-willing) when I'm 80.

Perhaps more significant than the milestone birthday that it was, was the feeling of being at home. Every single Italian neighbour turned up ... and stayted until the (pre-rave) death, outlasting quite a few of the younger ex-pats. I won't pretend that it's me that has fostered such goodwill in them, it's Maria, who's out there interacting far more frequently and freely than I do. But they look on us as a family, and they'll be there for us just as they'll be there for another neighbour.

I may not ever completely integrate into this country and its people, but one thing I'm pretty sure of - when it comes to the community we've chosen to live our lives, we've done pretty well.

And another thing - I'm happy here.

(Photo version to follow)