Music

Acton, Acton. Welcome to We Have Ways of Making You Talk and to the final

instalment of my conversation with the amazing Matt McKinnon Patterson.

So we're going to pick up his story straight away from when Matt was making tea

for all the surrounding soldiers in a small provincial town in Northern Italy

to find in a beautiful Italian girl.

The officer come, Philip Fell, come to me and he said, you made the tea. I said, yes.

You can cook. I said, oh, I can't cook. He said, get yourself down to the old belgo.

He said, sure I would do the cooking. So I had to go down there. But he said,

when we go out on operations, you know, we're not to shoot up things. He said, when we get back,

you go down there. Don't bother cleaning the equipment and all that.

So I went down to the old belgo and I started telling her how to do

what you did with things. And she had a wonderful niece. I was at a grand daughter.

I've never seen anything like a chip like her, white skin, beautiful shape,

lovely skill you've ever known. I was in love, I was in love with her, but I wasn't in love with her.

But at all she was wonderful. And we hadn't seen her before because she was keeping the kitchen.

But now I've got access to the kitchen and I meet her. And every time I see her, I'm

used to sit with her. And we used to sit and talk because she wanted to learn English and I'm

trying to pick up Italian. As she said to me one day, she said, every time you boys, or you're dead

religious, she wanted to become a nun. Everything, I'm not boring with her. No, no, talk. Every time you

boys go out, she said, I pray you come back safely. So I, when I went back one night,

one of the lights said morning and groaning about stuck in this potty little village,

...