Gianna Nannini or, as I thought for ages, Gian Annanini (although why some woman would have a blokes name, God only knows), was truly fantastic. Her name is pronounced Janananini as there is no gap when you say it.

This is helped, no doubt, by the fact that the last concert (and first here, in Italy) that I went to was…wait for it…Robbie Williams!

Of course, unless you are Italian or live in Italy, you will have no idea who I am talking about. She has a deep, gravelly voice – which, if you know me, will come as no real surprise. She sings rock/folk type songs. Mostly, so I am told, love songs.

Once again, the seat numbers on the ticket have no meaning. And, due to A being A AND Italian, we are late leaving and then he decides to avoid the Autostrada (which will be excessively busy on a Friday night) by taking a direction that he thinks, may, possibly, get us somewhere near where we are going. And driving like a maniac (oh, sorry, I meant like an Italian).

So, the plan was that F and us would meet him from where he is working (a couple of miles from the place we’re going) because he has had to take the car to the garage and he drives everywhere in this physically small city with excellent public transport. We could have got the metro and then a coach to where we are going. Yes there would be crowds but there would be no traffic snarl-ups nor problem with parking.

But then, as I am driving home from work, he calls me to say that there has been a change of plan and he is going home to get changed as he has been wearing a suit and feels it may not be the right attire for a rock concert. No shit! F will meet us near our house and he will pick us up. He’ll call me when he’s home.

We were to have met before 7 at his place of work or, in his words, 6.40 if you can get there in time.

He calls me after 7.15 to say where we should meet F who is 2 minutes walk from our house. He is leaving home now and, therefore, should be there ‘in a few minutes’.

He picks us up about 7.40.

The traffic, being Friday (but I mentioned that already) is horrendous. And we are driving on the inner ring road which has two lanes but, as this is Milan, one lane has cars parked in it.

For a while, I know where he is going. After a while, I don’t, except that it is in the general direction, sort of.

We narrowly miss hitting and getting hit by other cars. We do the last minute manoeuvres with no signals. We arrive near the place. Traffic is finding places to park. The car parks all have queues. We search for one that doesn’t have queues. We go to about 4 car parks. Then we return to the first car park we passed and queue. We pay €2.50 for the privilege.

A tries to park Italian style but F is unhappy about it so we drive around the car park several times until we eventually go to the furthest point from the way out.

We walk to the Datchforum, as it is called. We arrive about 10 minutes before it starts. People need food and drink. We go to the till, pay and order our drinks. Luckily, this is Italy. The show is already late. (This, of course, is completely unfair as I have never been to a concert where it starts on time).

Being as the seat numbers are meaningless, we join the others who cannot find a seat, standing at one of the entrances. Hmm. Reminds me of the Robbie Williams concert.

A and F go to sit on the steps. We join them shortly.

I am sat next to a couple who could be my grandparents.

However, when Gianna comes on, this 50-odd year-old does a show with so much energy it is electric. I checked and she is, in fact, nearly 2 years older than me! She’s been going for years and we don’t know quite a few of the songs. But she plays all her latest hits, which we do know.

She is wonderful. She’s not Joan Armatrading but Joan didn’t play Italy on her last tour, so this will do fine, thank you. She is, apparently, a millionairess but I think that, if she sang in English, she would have more than tripled that. Still, with my slightly improving Italian, I can get some of it and, even, sing along to a few. This is the first time, however, that I have so clearly heard the crowd singing along – to nearly all the songs. We are in Italy, after all, and all Italians enjoy a sing-along.

After the concert was a little stressful. A suggested a drink in a bar on the way back and F wanted a sweet. So we go into town and try to find somewhere that will give us both a beer (for A and me) and a sweet (for F and V).

I think we must have visited (raced round would be a better description) about 20 bars/restaurants/whatever. We (V&I) got bored after the first two but A and F were on a mission. In the end, we couldn’t get a sweet and V&I were tired and V is working today, which meant getting up at 6.15.

When A saw that V was getting a little irritated, he wisely decided that we should just go home. Shame really as it wasn’t the perfect end to a bloody great night. Ah well, next time.

And, for you to enjoy, one of V’s favourite songs by her is here.