This is where I used to play football in Adidas shorts, with sexy legs and a six-pack. I was fourteen and showed off to the girls. I wasn’t great but that didn’t matter because they thought I was the best footballer in the world. When it was dark, we came here to smoke cigarettes and drink beer because this was our secret place. 

A few years later I ended up in London and played for an amateur team which thought that I had a brilliant attitude and a bit of skill. And the girls still thought that I was a catch. But my attention had wandered. When I met an Italian boy called Nico, he persuaded me to move to Perugia with him. 

I played for a small local team with black curly-haired boys who wore Kappa shorts, and they were the ones who had tanned legs and six-packs. I was a carthorse, and they were young stallions who flirted mischievously and called me ‘ragazzo gay’ –  ‘gay boy’. 

Now I have come back to see where the adventure began. 

There are no younger versions of me anymore, no adoring girls, only long grass and trees. I sit alone on a bench, and a young guy walks by before heading into the undergrowth. He looks back and I know he wants me to follow so I decide that I will.