What shall we do?
We were all growing up rapidly. It is an inevitable
process, I suppose! In the autumn of 1995 I applied for a place at London
University to take a BA in Japanese, and despite having no formal
qualifications, managed to get a place in the second year, passing all my first
year exams in an afternoon at SOAS.
This was a huge change for me, moving to London, and
by far the most adventurous thing that any of us had done so far, apart from my
trip to Japan. I do not know now why I so wanted to study Japanese, except that
it was my favorite hobby, and I was generally considered to be good at it. A
degree in Japanese would certainly not be a soft option!
Metia came down with me to stay during my first week
in London. I had accommodation in International Hall in Brunswick street, on the
3rd floor. I was really wet about leaving home and cried a lot, as I felt I
would be lonely. Metia was extremely sensible, made lots of Earl Grey tea, and
introduced me to Ash, who became my best friend while I was at Uni.
Ash was a Mauritian boy studying Law at the LSE. He
had a great sense of humor, lots of wild friends and a girlfriend in Mauritius
of three years standing, who was coming over to study in France. Ash came to
wake me up every morning, we’d have breakfast together before class, and
dinner at 6 when we got back to the hall after a long day’s work. All the
other students on my floor thought we were going out together, but we were just
very good mates. I wasn’t ready for anyone, and I knew I would be serious
about a boyfriend and choose just the perfect man in my own good time. Ash was
devoted to Reena, his Mauritian girl.
Study was very hard, and I managed to come out with
high marks in my weekly tests, but I played hard as well. I had lots of friends
and we’d go out round London on a Saturday night to all the discos in
Leicester Square and Charing Cross Road. Equinox, Hippodrome, and the Limelight,
a converted church, and quite an eerie place all lit up in green. The Student
Union on Gower Street was a hive of activity too, and I also sometimes enjoyed
visits to the cinema and theatre, usually paid for by my friends, as I was
extremely poor!
The teachers were with one exception great people,
easy to get on with, and excellent communicators. The one I couldn’t stand was
a German lady, teaching us Japanese Literature. It didn’t help that I was not
keen on Japanese literature, but she was a most incredibly strange woman. Rumour
had it in class that she was a lesbian, of which I am not sure, but she
certainly dressed in a very manly way, in grey green suits with slip-on shoes
and woolly jumpers. She had no family, I learnt, and could not bear to talk of
anything but Japanese literature.
On a class outing which I did not attend, this lady
made a scene in a pub, calling one of the men in the class a misogynist, and
losing her temper with him. With me she was oddly behaved to the extent that I
came to dread her lessons. She took me into her study for a long chat one day,
and took me to task over every aspect of my education, seeming to tell me in so
many words that I thought I was a Smart Alec, getting in without A-levels, and
that I would probably not do very well there.
During my finals, when I was waiting to go in for my
oral exam, she caught hold of by the wrist in the passage and pulled me into her
study, shouting at the top of her voice at me for missing some of her lessons.
As it was I got 68% in all my modules, except Japanese Literature and Oral
Japanese, in which I got 62%. What a coincidence!
Metia often spent the weekends with me; she loved the
London nightlife and drove me mad with worry. I even called the police one night
after she stayed out after 12am. She had been salsa dancing with an Ecuadorian
guy…
Meanwhile at home, Felix was working for local farmers
and studying at Stoke on Trent College to be an engineer. Ever since he was tiny
he had loved anything with wheels, and at 15 our parents had given him the Land
Rover for his own. He pulled it apart, re-built it with a galvanized chassis and
a stainless steel bulkhead, which he made himself, and is still driving round in
it to this day.
Max and Fergus began to follow Felix in his interest
in machines, though Max suddenly flowered on the electric guitar, becoming quite
a maestro. Metia helped out with the family business, genealogy, and visited
Manchester Library every week to do research with our parents.
The only paid work Metia and I had done on our own so
far was in 1993, when we had minded a couple of London market stalls for a
friend who had gone back to South America to get fresh stock, and who’s wife
was unable to cope with running the business at the same time as minding her two
small children. The work was not well-paid, but we loved it. We stayed at a
small terraced house in Kennington, on the south side of the Thames, and traveled
every morning to the centre to set out our stalls of South American
wares in markets at Camden Town and Covent Garden.
Life on the markets was fast-moving and sometimes a
little vicious. People always expected to drive a bargain. Sometimes a gang of
thieves would attack the Camden store, and we had to beat them off with sticks,
as the police were nowhere to be found. I met an Iranian guy, Shahin, who I
thought was Italian, and went out with him for a bit. When he asked Metia to go
for a drink one night she told me and I dumped him. Metia and I laughed about
it. He was rather silly, we thought.
The stall next to us sold leather jackets and was run
by a huge Yugoslav. He had a terrible habit of running out into the street and
hounding would-be shoppers in a loud voice, asking them all sorts of personal
questions such as their nationality and age. Metia and I thought he was bad for
business, and even worse was a Spanish shoe shop owner who stood right on the
street and kept up a loud monologue about her day to day affairs. She used all
the time all those words in the English language not considered fit for general
use and certainly not fit for a lady…Being an interfering type, I told her
this was turning shoppers away.
“Who do you think you are?” she screeched,
advancing with long nails at the ready. “I don’t care if you’re from the
Moon, telling me what I can and can’t do in my own shop…!”
“Your shop, Mrs Shoe Seller,” I rejoined with
spirit, “but MY country. I’m sure I’d think twice if you were telling me
my Spanish was unthinkable in Spain!”
The Yugoslav stepped in and dragged her away.
But I digress. It was now 1995 and I was firmly
ensconced at University, doing my best to get a Japanese degree. Shahin turned
up one night with a bottle of wine, asking me to go out with him again, but I
refused, as I didn’t think I could respect him, and that, for me, spelled the
end of things. I made more friends, and moved in some interesting circles.
Some of the kids at Uni were into all sorts of stuff.
I saw my friends taking drugs, which I refused at the risk of being ostracized from the group. I had other friends though. Mona, an Austrian girl, with a fine
sarcastic sense of humor, and Carolina, an Italian law student, who played the
violin like an angel. I was quite jealous of that. My violin was with me, and I
once lent it to a Canadian girl who told me she was terribly homesick for her
instrument, but after playing it she told me it was “cheap, isn’t it! And
what an awful sound.” I was never a virtuoso on the violin.
There were wild parties at the SOP (School of
Pharmacy) across the square. I didn’t enjoy them much as all the lecturers
seemed to be in drag and trying to get off with the students! I mentally dubbed
them the “lecherers” and vowed not to go there too often.
International Hall parties were fun. Fancy dress
always starred, with masks. The beer was £1 a pint, and I had lots and lots of
White Lightning. I was sold at a slave auction for £13 once, and bought by Ash.
But he didn’t give me any horrid tasks like the other slaves had to do,
tidying messy bedrooms and so on. We went out to Camden Town and looked at the
markets and talked about what we wanted to do in the future.
And what did I want to do? When the end of year exams
came round and the last party had finally come to an end at International Hall,
Metia and I packed all my bags and set off for the train home from Euston
Station. It was to be my first and my last year at London University. I never
went back.
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