Television
programmes in the UK were a wondrous revelation to me as in SA I had been fed
on a steady diet of Maya the Bee and American series imports. I revelled in British humour which made more
sense to me than much of what I had seen back in SA. Now I was introduced to the joys of Monty Python, Lenny Henry, Rising Damp, and many many more.
While
watching the gogglebox I wasn’t aware I was undergoing a subtle blossoming of
character. This was never more evident than when I went off to university in Salford.
This was by no means a straight forward journey. I had to go back to school at
the age of 20 as all the documents charting my educational achievements at
private school were lost at sea. No, that’s not a metaphor. They were stuck in a
trunk on a freight ship heading for Canada.
I went
back to school to do GCSEs then A’Levels. All it involved was reading,
something I already loved doing. And
then writing a bit about what I was reading. It was here I first got the opportunity to
share my creative writing with people other than my parents. I wrote a short
story about two boys living on a remote farm in South Africa. They loved each other but there were several
drawbacks, the first of those being one was black and the other white.
The
private school I attended in SA was highly academic. I aced the English part of
the entrance exam but barely scraped through the Maths. That and Science would
always be my nemeses. I just about
passed my final exams and that only after a resit. But now I was in the UK and suddenly
had the opportunity to try subjects I’d been urged to consider hobbies back in
SA. I saw a glimmer in the deep and I dived.
I
discovered I had an adventurous spirit I wasn’t even aware of. It had been lying
dormant just waiting for the tiniest of nudges to assert itself. Suddenly I was
going off on painting holidays in Perthshire, putting together poetry
collections and writing, writing, writing.
GCSEs
& A’ Levels in the UK gave me the opportunity to realise I was not the
dunce I thought I was. Suddenly other students
were asking for my help. But what was more important – I knew how to help them.
This I believe, was the start of my move towards teaching even though I didn’t
realise it right there and then.
Teaching
would in turn lead me to pursue my writing on a more full time basis. And while
at university I was indoctrinated into the true ways of being a student, namely
watching a minimum of 2 soaps a day, spending time in pubs, lying in bed till
very late in the day (something I was never able to accomplish sadly) and
learning about appropriate things to watch and read by fellow mature students. They knew their stuff. Age definitely equals
wisdom. They introduced me to the delights of Dr Who, Red Dwarf, Tad Williams,
Douglas Adams, snooker, cheese boards, Belgian fruit beers…
I
think you get the idea.
The
pearls I found at school and university may have been tiny but the pile was
steadily growing.
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