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The middle one, the youngest one and I are at a car hire desk in an Italian airport. It has taken us a while to get this far, because we had to take a bus to a different terminal. But we’re here now, some way into the process.

“You are not skiing?” asks the woman behind the desk.

“Um, yes,” I say. “Actually we are skiing.”

“Ah,” she says. “You need the chains.”

It takes me a moment to work out what she means: that I will be driving in an area where it is required to have snow chains for the tyres in the boot of the car.

“How do I get chains?” I say.

“You ask when you get the car,” she says, pointing up and away. We set off, following her finger.

“I don’t like the way she made me the messenger for the thing about the chains,” I say as we enter the car park. “What if this guy doesn’t speak English?”

“There,” says the middle one, pointing to a booth in the distance.

The booth is full of people, all of them speaking Italian. The man behind the counter looks my way.

“Buongiorno,” he says. We have a brief conversation in Italian, and he brings me some chains.

“That was actually impressive,” says the youngest one as we drive off. “What did you say to him?”

“I said, ‘I need something, but I do not know the Italian for this thing.’”

“Then what?” he says.

“That’s all I have,” I say. “Luckily he just went and got the chains.”

“I guess the danger is he’d have started talking to you,” he says.

“In which case I’d say, ‘Posso parlare un po’ d’Italiano, ma non capisco niente’ – I can speak a little Italian, but I understand nothing.”

“That’s quite handy,” he says.

“I just hope it never comes to that,” I say.

I have not been skiing, or to Italy, in six years – since before the pandemic. During that time I’ve been learning Italian on Duolingo, an extended period of study which has yielded just two phrases designed to express my helplessness as efficiently as possible. My goal was never to initiate conversations with Italians; I just wanted to be able to eavesdrop on them to see if they were saying bad things about me. In this, I have failed: I can speak a little, but understand nothing.

The next morning we walk to the hire shop where we have reserved skis. The man who works there speaks very little English, but he is briskly efficient, and we are soon kitted out with three pairs of skis and three sets of poles. But there are only two helmets. I turn to the man.

“I need something, but I do not know the Italian word for this thing,” I say, in Italian.

“Helmet?” he says, in English.

“Yes,” I say. I think: why learn two phrases, when one suffices?

Exhausted after the first day of skiing, we lie in our cramped hotel room, watching an Italian TV show called La Porta Magica (The Magic Door), a baffling mix of chat, music, cookery and making dreams come true. I translate when I can, which is not often.

“Serenella, from Campania, wants to find a new look,” I say.

“I get that,” says the youngest, assessing Serenella’s present look.

“Are we gonna eat or what?” says the middle one.

“She will receive expert advice after the break,” I say.

The next night, at my sons’ insistence, we are tramping through town in search of a place that might show a particular Champions League match. Eventually we come across a small bar with a big screen. I make the youngest one do the talking.

“Yes, they will show it,” he says, returning from the bar. “Apparently by special request.”

Just before kick-off, the place fills with Scandinavian men who have turned up to watch a different match, featuring a Norwegian team. The two games are shown side by side, with the commentary for both at full volume. I watch the two women behind the bar, watching us, speaking Italian and laughing.

A ball sails over a crossbar, and my sons leap to their feet to roar their disapproval. Everyone in the room turns our way.

“Look, they think you’re hooligans,” I whisper. “If only they …”

“Fucking useless!” says the middle one.

In the end it’s very much a game of four halves. As the bar empties, someone is trying to explain to the barmaid collecting glasses that despite the result nothing is settled: there is a return fixture next week. She doesn’t get it.

“Un altra partita,” I say. “La settimana prossima.”

Her eyes suddenly widen, as if she is recalling countless indiscretions over the course of the evening. Don’t worry, I want to say: non capisco niente.