Between Two Worlds

THE ACCOUNT OF A JET-SETTING VAGRANT

BY LEO ANTHONY

First Published in July 2012 as

A Fairly Honest Account of a White African's Life Abroad

Second Edition December 2012

Between Two Worlds: The Account of a Jet-setting Vagrant

Cover Revised March 2013

Copyright © Leo Anthony 2013

The right of Leo Anthony Passaportis, writing as Leo Anthony, to be

identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in

accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright

law no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior

written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any

form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and

without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Dedicated to my Uncle Paul.

You’ve paid your dues.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

Introduction

1. The Opening Gambit

2. Post-Christmas Blues

3. Time Out In Southern Africa

4. Plymouth And Uncle Paul

5. From Wickwar To Bedfordshire

6. Back To Swilly

7. Once More To London

8. Life In Bedfordshire

9. The New Apartment

10. 2012

11. A Brief Return Home

12. In Conclusion

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This recollection of my experiences, people met, places

visited, and the various thoughts and reflections stemming

thereof would not have been possible without the input of a few

key individuals. First and foremost my thanks go to Judy Brown,

who, despite having never met in person, patiently and

professionally read through my draft manuscript and didn’t

dissuade me from my ambition to publish. More importantly she

encouraged me to write in plain English, a cause she has

evidently championed for some time through her work with the

Plain Language Commission. With her input much of the

narrative was liberated from unnecessary wordiness. Many

thanks Judy, even if you have yet to see the final product.

Other people I need to acknowledge are my friend Matt

Bertram, ever supportive and encouraging in my endeavours;

Mike Tasker, Samuel de Castillo and Rui Fernandez who gave

me refuge when most needed; my brother Ivan for being a good

sport on the several occasions I was in a tight fix, financially

speaking (and again to Matt in this regard); and all the other

kind-hearted people I have had the good fortune to either know

or meet along the way.

INTRODUCTION

Quite recently I went to a talk by the American-Canadian

author Adam Gopnik. He was talking about his new book,

Winter, opposite the editor and film critic, Anthony Lane. Both

men are highly intelligent and learned individuals and it was a

pleasure listening to the discussion. They didn’t constrain

themselves to simply discussing the book but the people and

events that inspired Gopnik to write it and the broader theme of

winter in the historical mind-set. Somewhere in the course of the

discussion Adam Gopnik elaborated on the literary aspirations of

the whole family, his wife and children included. “We all agreed

that there should be no bitter memoirs, but we landed up writing

them all the same.” He said this with a smile so I suspect he was

being somewhat tongue-in-cheek. However, anyone who has had

to write about difficult things or emotions will know the

challenge in trying to maintain a balance.

I’m not sure I’ve always managed to do this. I’ve had to

revise the manuscript a number of times: not necessarily to alter

anything, but simply to omit that which is unnecessary. As a

friend of mine recently pointed out when I was on a bit of a

downer, ‘It’s a beautiful world my friend, don’t miss out on it.’

And despite everything that isn’t beautiful in this world I think

there is still enough of beauty within it not to see it any other

way.

I was born in the UK but left when I was a baby, didn’t visit

again until I had finished university, and never made a go of

living here until I was thirty. When I arrived that year (2009) it

with nothing more than the promise of a bed to sleep in once I

arrived. I have tried to make this an honest recollection of my

two and a half years here in the UK, but it’s personal and

subjective and reflects the fact that I am, in many respects, a

foreigner here. Nevertheless, my general impression of the UK is

that it is an interesting place. Personal freedoms and civil

liberties are defended fiercely and its people are proud of her

place in the world. The ardent display of public affection for the

Queen on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in the summer of

2012 and the surge of patriotic fervour whilst the country hosted

the Olympics both illustrate this fully. I am grateful for the

opportunities afforded me here despite the difficulties that may

have arisen periodically.

Earlier this year my Aunt Tess came across from the US with

her husband and I met them for lunch in the capital. She has

taken it upon herself to chronicle and collect as much as possible

pertaining to my mother’s side of the family. Amongst the

documents in her possession is a diary she has transcribed,

written by a young Northern Irish woman of her travels to

Switzerland in the company of a friend who needed to take The

Cure i.e. stay in the colder, drier climate of the Alps in an effort

to recover from the ravages of tuberculosis. The author of the

diary, Miss Matilda Buick, is my great-great-grandmother.

It seems purely coincidental that I should discover that one of

my ancestors also chronicled her time abroad. Sadly the account

is incomplete – the diary ends whilst they are still in Davos. It

seems very likely that she would have continued writing a new

diary after the last entry on March 1st, 1879. I find it amazing to

consider that this was a full century before I was born in

February of 1979. What I do know is that she returned to

Northern Ireland at some point, married and raised a family

there. Tess has told me of Matilda’s son William, my great-

grandfather, who wrote of his time serving as a medic in the

awful trenches of France during World War I, and of his capture

and internment by German forces as a POW until the war’s

conclusion. I have inherited his fob watch.

The thing to remember of course is that life may appear a

linear progression from birth to death in one sense, but that it is

in reality a far more complicated back-and-forth journey of

endeavour, aspiration, triumph and loss, and every other emotion

that make us who we are. We cross the forgotten paths of our

ancestors without realising it at the time, and at other times we

forge new ones. This is only a snapshot into my life and by no

means the finished product.

Leo Passaportis

UK, December 2012

THE OPENING GAMBIT

MY ARRIVAL IN the UK, or Unit K as it is referred to

jokingly by some Zimbabweans, in September of 2009, was

unremarkable except for the extraordinary amount of baggage I

brought along with me. I don’t know what I expected to find but

I brought far too many summer clothes for the time of year,

winter imminent, never mind lugging a toolbox along with my

other personal belongings to a country which sells tools cheaply

from numerous retailers in every town and city.

I tend to think of my UK experience in several instalments.

This was obviously the beginning of the first. There was no-one

to meet me on my arrival in 2009. The first time I had graced the

hallways of Heathrow Airport a few years earlier, my cousin

Sandy had been there to help. That trip had been short-lived: a

week, that’s all. I mean, one can escape a certain amount of

circumstantial crap by packing a suitcase and jumping on an

aeroplane but I reckon on that trip I’d been trying to turn my

back on too much. However, that was then and certain things had

come to be. My father had died, the dust had settled, and

everyone was going about their respective business. This time

round I arrived without fanfare and had to make a solo excursion

across London on the Underground to Wimbledon, where I was

to stay with my friend Matthew and his wife Cath for a couple of

weeks.

Wimbledon is one of the major centres of Antipodean society

in London, along with the neighbouring suburbs of Raynes Park,

Southfields and Earlsfield. My brother Ivan had, for the previous

twenty months or so, been living nearby with our cousin Andy

and his girlfriend in a house looking across to South Wimbledon

tube station on the corner of Merton High Street. By the time I

had negotiated my way across to the southwest it was mid-

afternoon and busy. The contrast between London and Harare,

where I had been just the previous morning, could not have been

greater. Harare was dry and dusty at that time of year. Whilst the

city was just coming to life at the early hour at which I was

dropped at the airport, it was a different sort of hustle and bustle

from London. You didn’t see any white people walking on the

streets for one thing; you barely saw any white people in

anything other than cars, except at northern suburban shopping

centres, people’s houses and private school playing fields. So to

me London was eye-poppingly unconventional: people of all

hues running, cycling, walking, riding on buses, and chatting on

street corners. With some relief I ascended the narrow staircase

to Matt’s flat and collapsed on the bed in their spare bedroom.

That next day I ventured out tentatively for another look at

my neighbourhood. Walking up Worple Road just up from

Matt’s apartment, I came face to face with none other than

Ashleigh, a girl I had dated a few years earlier and with whom I

intermittently corresponded, as she cycled to lunch with her

sister Julia near Wimbledon Station. Although she had heard

from Matt that I had booked a flight over, having bumped into

him in Sainsbury’s supermarket a few weeks before, she seemed

just as incredulous as I was. I suppose she hadn’t expected me to

follow on it, like on previous occasions when I had said I was

intending to come over but hadn’t. We chatted briefly and then

went our separate ways. It was really quite surreal.

Coincidentally, she too had been born in the UK but raised in

Harare.

She invited me over to her house-share for a meal. I had

talked to her many times in that house while I was thousands of

miles away in Africa. The house-share was comfortable and tidy.

There on the wall hung a painting of a horse by our mutual friend

Richard. What a fantastic eye for detail he had. I resolved to buy

myself one of his African landscapes when I had the means. He

commanded several hundred pounds for one of his bigger

paintings, but if you saw the time and effort he put into one of

those pictures you would not begrudge him the cost. In fact, if

anything, they probably warranted more. He was back in Harare

again, regimented and disciplined in his approach, rising early

and often uncontactable whilst he worked. He had asked Ash to

look after this painting during a trip to London to market some of

his art.

She showed me her tomato plants on her first-floor bedroom

balcony, which looked across to Crystal Palace. “I love this

view,” she said, which was typical Ashleigh – always one to

endear herself to her surroundings, urban or otherwise. Before

she had left Harare a few years earlier, she and a small group of

friends, myself included, had gone on a whirlwind tour of the

capital. We had gone to the top floor of the Sheraton Hotel for a

peek across the city and then to the city centre to admire the

Christmas lights, which the city council commendably still set up

every year, despite all the problems. She talked nostalgically of

all the places and memories she was leaving behind. “I used to

go for ballet lessons over there,” she had said of a nondescript

building somewhere in the city proper, amidst litter-strewn

streets and alleys. I knew she missed Zimbabwe but I admired

the fact that she could still see beauty in this urban landscape, far

removed as it was.

THE HONEYMOON PERIOD after my arrival was short-

lived as Matt and his wife Cath were expecting a visit from

Cath’s sister from Cape Town. I had to look around for a place to

rent after two weeks or so. I had arrived with maybe eight

hundred pounds and it was being whittled away rapidly. Despite

costing me a little over £200, my best investment the previous

year was a second-hand laptop I bought from the Oriental Plaza

in Johannesburg. I had seen it advertised in the local Junkmail

Newspaper and had arranged to meet the seller, an Asian man

called Ali, at the Plaza. The deal had the word ‘dodgy’ written

all over it. Ali was waiting for me in the car lot in a recent,

white, five-series BMW, and appeared to have a bit of muscle for

re-assurance in the passenger seat. Ali himself was a beady-eyed,

spectacle-wearing, average-sized man, somewhere between

thirty and thirty-five I’m guessing.

The machine which had taken my fancy was a Dell Latitude

D830 he had advertised, but he had several other machines on

the back seat as well. “What about the Dell Vostro?” he asked,

“or an IBM Thinkpad? Very good machine.” He proceeded to

rattle off a list of specs; RAM, processor speeds, hard-drive

volumes, operating systems etc. It was all a bit mind-boggling.

After some consideration I told him that, no, I wanted to stick

with my original decision and go with the Latitude. I handed

over the agreed amount, R3000 (about £230) in cash, and the

machine was mine. Although it has served me well (indeed I am

typing away on it right now), two other aspects suggest to me

that it may well have been a hot laptop. For one, the power

adaptor was not the original and led to power-compatibility

issues in due course. Additionally, he could not provide me with

the operating system installation CD, which suggested this was a

pirate copy. Nor too does the service tag seem to be recognised,

another questionable attribute. I had bitten the bullet and taken it

anyway, not being able to afford an equivalent machine brand

new. That is all that I can plead in my defence.

Despite these reservations, the laptop has been a good

investment. As I soon discovered upon arrival in the UK, just

about every aspect of form-filling and job application is done

online. I set about applying for many of the hundreds of science

and sales jobs I saw advertised on job sites like Reed, Total Jobs

and CV Library, expecting an offer or an interview in a few

weeks if not sooner. I’m fairly adept at intelligence gathering I

like to think, and I was soon able to make a fairly accurate

assessment of the prevailing job market situation: it was dire.

With a somewhat spotty and unorthodox post-university career

record and no English university or vocational qualifications, I

realised my opportunities were limited. I had taken a broad

‘scatter-gun’ approach by applying for positions in a number of

fields, all of which I had some experience in: sales and

marketing, with a focus on scientific instruments; environmental

roles (a friend Kevin had qualified as a lawyer but worked for an

environmental waste-disposal company); technical scientific

roles in fields like microscopy and mineralogy; and teaching.

I was never offered an interview for any position in any of

these fields. I concede that some of the roles are very specialised,

but to not even succeed in getting a role as a laboratory or

teaching assistant was a bit demoralising. However, maybe it has

been a blessing in disguise; here I am, with time to expound on

my thoughts and experiences, something which wouldn’t be

possible if I were in a full-time occupation. I recall meeting a

guy of about my age whilst working at a function in the City (of

London) towards the end of that first year (’09), who talked of

the monotony of doing routine analytical work as a technician in

a large pharmaceutical firm. He had jumped ship without

references after two years and had migrated to the hospitality

industry, like me. I can’t remember how exactly it happened in

my case, but I just eased into an event-staff role in the run-up to

the busy Christmas period that year.

FROM MATT’S PLACE I moved into the neighbouring

south-west suburb of Tooting, despite warnings from some

quarters. Ashleigh’s sister Julia referred to it as ‘Gangland’ and

thought I was mad, apparently. I soon discovered that sort of

snobbery was prevalent amongst Antipodeans who inhabited the

likes of Wimbledon and Earslfield. “Oh my God Tooting, what a

dump,” was a fairly common response. I was delighted to hear

the young stand-up comedian, Chris Martin (not the one of

Coldplay fame), pick up on this when he performed at the Tara

Arts Centre in Earlsfield the next year. “Having to live in such

close proximity to that bunch of criminals,” he had said

sarcastically of the inhabitants of Tooting, “it must be a real

source of worry for you lot...”

TIME OUT IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

PRIOR TO DEPARTING for South Africa and the much-

heralded World Cup, I had made plans to stay with my old

school pal JP, in Johannesburg, and had informed my brother

Dan and cousin Justin of my plans. Justin had been enthusiastic,

telling me to just get down to Durban, confident that a ticket

could be organised, whilst Dan had remained silent, even

indifferent. Once within South Africa I had contacted him and

asked him why he hadn’t given me feedback; he said he had

plain forgotten I was coming. “If you’re in Johannesburg, sure,

give us a ring,” he had said. I knew for a fact he had tickets to

some good matches, even quarter or semi-final matches he had

booked well in advance. I couldn’t expect to just jump in on the

bargain but a bit more enthusiasm on his part would have been

nice.

You have to understand that football meant more to my

brothers, my cousins and myself as a collective whole than most

white Zimbabweans, dare I say many black contemporaries,

because it had been our game whilst growing up; the game we

played most often and most competitively in our back yards and,

later, on my Aunt Nick and Uncle Tony’s grass tennis court,

which served as an enclosed pitch hemmed in on all sides by

diamond-mesh fence. Simply put, we all had a passion for the

game and, although Dan was arguably the best and most

successful of us in the wider arena, we were all far better than

most of our friends. This was obvious on the occasions the non-

players joined us.

Whilst JP is a very good friend of mine, by his own

confession he had little interest in ‘The Beautiful Game’. That’s

not to say he doesn’t enjoy sport or is no good at it, because he

was once a respected hockey player, taking it as far as club level

in Harare, also an enthusiastic basketball player at school and, if

he is to be believed, still a decent golfer. Nevertheless, he rose to

the occasion and on the afternoon of the day my flight touched

down we were off to Ellis Park stadium to watch Slovenia take

on the US. Not big guns in the world of football, but a game

nevertheless. We bumped into an old school chum, Cyrus

Rogers, outside the stands. He was a veritable mountain of a

black man who had played the saxophone in the school orchestra

and jazz band with me. He had a deep laugh and a good sense of

humour, except when being called ‘Cyrus the Virus’ after the

release of Con Air, in which the character was played by John

Malkovich (no resemblance to the aforementioned). He

threatened to kill the next person to call him by the nickname the

one time I used it. I desisted thereafter.

The game was not particularly memorable. JP, myself and

the two Diamondis brothers from Harare (also from Saints)

imbibed too much before the game and it was all a bit of a blur.

It was, however, my first exposure to the deafening honk of the

vuvuzela, the flared, plastic, musical contraption that became so

controversial at that particular tournament. I can, however,

recommend blowing one repeatedly to help remedy multiple

images brought about through excessive consumption of lager.

Two days later, on a bright Saturday afternoon, we found

ourselves in scenic Rustenburg for a game between Australia and

Ghana. This time the Diamondis brothers were not with us but

JPs ex-, Cassidy, was. Cass and he had broken up after the

tickets had been purchased (but not for that reason) and they had

agreed to put their differences aside for the sake of the game,

which was good of them. It was a bit awkward and JP didn’t help

matters by incessantly commenting on Cass’s driving en route.

All the same, when we got there the atmosphere was great, due

in large part to the Aussie supporters who easily outnumbered

their Ghanaian counterparts. I take my hat off to the Aussies;

they were fantastic in their gold and green attire, sporting wonky

hats, yellow and green dreadlocks and blow-up kangaroos. The

Ghanaians were without a doubt the better side in terms of

prowess but the Aussies had a fantastic support base behind

them, which probably helped them as much as anything to scrape

a 1-1 draw.

Regrettably, I never got to watch a game with either my

brother Dan or my cousins. I did get down to Durban and my

Aunt Liz’s place the week following these first two games.

Family matters aside, the more I talked to people and read about

what had been required to bring the World Cup to the country,

the more I began to wonder about the much-vaunted claims

made by the politicians as to the abundant prosperity that would

result from the tourist influx, heightened investment,

construction and retail spin-offs etc. I’m not saying it hasn’t

amounted to anything, because a fair few people no doubt

experienced the beauty of the country and welcoming hospitality,

but what I saw was huge capital expenditure and big question

marks over future liabilities to the state and municipalities like

Durban. The major urban centres of Johannesburg, Pretoria,

Durban, Port Elizabeth and Cape Town all had pretty decent

stadiums already, partly as a result of apartheid-era construction

as well as the upgrades made for the 1995 World Cup Rugby.

I’ve read recently that some of them, like Mbombela Stadium

in Nelsruit, are being well utilised and maintained, whilst the

surroundings of the flagship FNB Stadium in Soweto are in an

apparent state of neglect. The picture is not clear and the legacy

of the World Cup will be debated for a long time to come, I’m

sure. I admit that seeing the sweeping arch of the Moses

Mabidha Stadium, now prominent against the Durban skyline, is

impressive. It makes the neighbouring Shark Tank (the rugby

venue) look puny by comparison. I have yet to see the interior of

the mammoth structure, but from the Durban Ridge area you get

a better sense of perspective and can actually see the far-side

tiers. My issue with the iconic stadium comes from anecdotal

conversation.

The size of the budget overrun was huge, approximately

R900 million, taking the total cost to a staggering R3.1 billion. It

was evident that there had been a lack of consultation with

representatives of the rugby union, whose players used the

neighbouring Absa Stadium. The Shark Tank was to be

demolished at some stage after the World Cup and the rugby

played at the new stadium, but no allowance had been made for

corporate boxes in the latter, though I was told that these

generated much of the revenue for the professional rugby game.

There was also talk of substantial debt repayments for years to

come. Has this just been a large vanity project, much like the ill-

conceived aquatics complex that was built in the township of

Chitungwiza outside my hometown of Harare for the All Africa

Games, but which today lies neglected and empty?

I have fond memories of Inter-Schools Athletics contests

held in our Chinese-built National Sports Stadium, and confess

that some grand infrastructure projects do have their place.

Although structurally unsound in parts for some years it catered

for a large variety of sporting and celebratory events. But there

was only one of them, not two. I don’t think that one should

automatically subscribe to the point of view that South Africa is

destined to follow the same route that Zimbabwe has charted, but

expenditure on such a scale should be weighed carefully against

what could be done elsewhere and what the inhabitants would

expect in so far as the legacy of these stadiums is concerned.

The other thing that dismayed me and many others I talked to

was how FIFA had ring-fenced the event to such a degree as to

protect their own merchandising interests within the zone most

attractive to tourism. In the case of Durban this is the Golden

Mile waterfront, along which there are hotels, restaurants,

swimming beaches, casinos, and at the far end, uShaka Marine

World, boasting an aquarium and amusement park. My cousin

Fiona works there as a marine ecologist/biologist. Although all

the established businesses, the casinos and hotels, had no doubt

benefited directly, I assert from my own observations that

businesses outside of that relatively narrow zone saw little, if

any, increase in activity. It may have been vaunted as an African

showcase; the closing ceremony at the newly commissioned

Soccer City in Soweto was certainly impressive, but in Durban it

had been less eventful outside of the matches themselves, which

were broadcast on two large screens along the Mile. So far as I

could tell, most of the tourists flew between the far-flung venues,

or in some cases rode in coaches, booked into nearby hotels and

usually flew out not long after their teams were eliminated, with

the odd exception. Much was made of the expected influx of big

spenders, who would help offset many of the expenses incurred

beforehand, but many of the supporters I met were young and

not particularly wealthy, whose budgets didn’t extend far beyond

getting tickets, travel costs and a bit of cheap entertainment in

between.

After all that’s what the World Cup is essentially: an

entertainment mega-event, not a trade or tourism event to

showcase economic prowess or natural or cultural attractions.

Paying an exorbitant price for tickets for the games in

Johannesburg and Rustenburg (£80 to- £100 for average-

category seats), knowing that I was in my small way complicit in

the whole exercise, left me with a feeling of moral ambiguity.

It’s true that sectors of South African society suffer from

grinding poverty and inequality, but I think as a whole it also

suffers the blight of rampant consumerism. Big capitalism has

arguably forged the world as we know it to a greater or lesser

degree but what one has in present day South Africa, like much

of the West, are fast food outlets in every neighbourhood; gossip

mags touting dubious TV personalities alongside glossy ‘flesh’

covers on the shelves of the newsagents; and lots and lots of cars

– but more than that, the bland homogeneity of the urban

working-class landscape, often alongside factories and industry

but out of sight of the more salubrious suburbs of the middle

classes.

At the far end of the scale, in high-density townships like

Chatsworth, Avoca, Newlands and Umlazi, which surround the

city of Durban, I feel sad for the children growing up within; not

because of what they know, although many of them will grow up

before their time, but for what they won’t know: space and

freedom and a real connection with the natural environment.

Perhaps I’ll be accused of being a bleeding heart by some

quarters, but the generation that these settlements produce will

either be a vindication or indictment of their creation…

PLYMOUTH AND UNCLE PAUL

I ARRIVED AT Gatwick Airport with a good deal less

heavy baggage than a year before and perhaps a little less of the

metaphorical kind too. An overnight stay with Ivan in

Wimbledon was followed by a coach trip to Swindon and a brief

stay with Ziv and Zara. This was a convenient waypoint and

place to leave my extra luggage. A few days later, after a quick

scour of travel options on the internet, it was evident that my best

option to get to Plymouth and my Uncle Paul was by hopping

across to Bristol on a train, only thirty minutes or so, followed by

a National Express coach southward. Only a few days after

touching back down in England, therefore, I was back at the

Harbourside docks of Bristol as I killed time before my coach

was due to leave. I wasn’t far from the Watershed and the

Wildscreen Festival, where Don would be doing his best to

impress the television and media moguls with his series tasters.

I poked my nose into the foyer of the bustling building and

took a printed programme, which detailed the various

documentaries and short films that were being screened. It all

looked unmissable, but money was the limiting factor and I had

to settle for mooching by the harbour, throwing pieces of cheese

roll to the pair of swans who cruised serenely up and down

between the barges and tethered house-boats. Nevertheless, it

was a far cry from the depression that had beset me four months

or so earlier; it was all very tranquil.

As I mentioned, before our recent re-acquaintance in Durban

I hadn’t seen my Uncle Paul (whom I now affectionately call

Oom Paul, an allusion to the famous Afrikaans politician of

yesteryear) since 2002 at the time that Ivan and I were visiting.

Before that, I hadn’t seen the man since 1988, when he had left

Zimbabwe for good. My memories of him from back then were

mostly good. I knew he had had problems with alcoholism,

because he had been accommodated in a Christian rehabilitation

centre called Resthaven on the edge of the city, not far from

Hatcliff township. Of a family of five children he was number

four, my mother being the middle child and youngest of the three

sisters. My Aunt Liz in Durban is the eldest. We had visited him

there in Resthaven fairly frequently and I had good memories of

the friendly overseers, Mr and Mrs Jones, and their three

children.

There were also good memories of several communal events,

which included a barn dance, and of a zip-wire contraption

known locally as a ‘foofy slide’ near my uncle’s little house. It

ran for a good twenty meters or so over a grassy depression and

we never tired of using it. His tidy little bungalow was called

Bethany and he owned a black Labrador called Sally. The house

was surrounded by attractive, indigenous miombo woodland. I’m

not sure whether he had managed to get a handle on his

alcoholism whilst there, but I have snippets of memory from

further back whilst he was staying with us at 44 Warwick Rd.

One of them is of my mother having an argument with him and

confiscating a bottle of liquor he was trying to smuggle home in

a bag or coat. Somehow he had managed to cut himself on a

broken bottle, no doubt whilst drunk, and there had been blood

and much drama. That was probably when he was admitted to

Resthaven.

At Resthaven he had been given responsibility as a

maintenance officer and had some authority over other

employees working there. He had caught one of the staff

stealing, and had him relieved of his position. He subsequently

told me that the labourer in question kicked up a fuss with the

local government labour relations office, but only after he had

been paid severance. It all got a bit dirty and, amongst other

things, my uncle was accused of being a racist because he had

called his Labrador Sally, the first lady’s forename. There was a

rather intimidating meeting, where he had to appear before a

junta of local war veterans and other influential local politicals.

The charges against my uncle were eventually dismissed because

the chap had taken severance, effectively admitting his guilt. All

the same, my father suggested to my uncle that he leave

discreetly, buying for him a one-way ticket to the UK.

Before he left he gave us boys a selection of unbuilt model

aircraft and all his expensive Humbrol model paints, brushes and

other tools with which to work the intricate plastic components.

He also entrusted me with his entire series of Time Life History

of Flight books, which were an invaluable source of information

over the years on all things mechanical and winged. I didn’t

really know the context in which he became an alcoholic, but

through talking with him I now feel I can understand how he was

drawn to it. I will elaborate more on that point in the succeeding

chapters.

To my uncle’s credit he was there to meet me when the coach

rolled in that evening, and helped negotiate a bus ticket for the

journey back to his council flat in the suburb of North Prospect,

formerly Swilly. “Plymouth is a bit of a shit hole” he said, “but

it’s been my home now for the past seven or eight years.” My

first impressions were not that bad. I was glad to see the

landscape had some character as the bus changed down a gear or

two and climbed up Wolseley Road on the approach to his

neighbourhood. The flat itself was tiny, although adequate for a

single person: a bedroom big enough to accommodate a double

bed; bath and toilet together; a narrow kitchen with an electric

oven on the one side and a counter on the other; and a

moderately sized sitting room in which there were two leather

sofas and two armchairs. I was offered a mattress but preferred

the sofa. The furnishings were unassuming and everything spoke

of being a hand-me-down or a bargain buy, not expensive but fit

for purpose. On the far, two-tone beige wall of the sitting room

hung a dart-board and beneath it was a fish tank with a multitude

of small, colourful swordtails. I remember thinking that it could

do with a clean, but the sheer number of little fish testified that

they were doing just fine…