In my teens, I often imagined what it must be like to be a millionaire travelling the world carefree. My brother, Danny, after working in cash-and-carry’s for a few years, decided to further his education at college and study Travel and Tourism.
Often, he’d bring home travel
brochures and airline flight schedule manuals, which was probably a source of my
wanderlust. I’d obsess about long-haul
flights to America, Asia, and Australia, stepping onto planes turning left into
first class. I’d study maps of cities of
the world and imagine standing in places like Fisherman’s Wharf or in front of
the Syndey Opera House.
Like most Brits back in the 80s, a
luxury many families would afford was the annual summer holiday to some resort on
the Mediterranean Sea. But instead of
first class we would be sitting at the back in clouds of smoke. My mother and grandmother were smokers back
then.
They lived in Toronto in the 60s so
a few times we spent summer there something akin to a pilgrimage. My mom’s Uncle Alec lived in Ohio, so on
occasion we stopped there too. I was
starting to feel like a jetsetter. Although
the tiny run-down village of Wellsville, Ohio where he lived wasn’t exactly Disney
World. But it smelled like promise and
the beginning of my American dream began.
At the back of his house was a little
wooded park. Once I took myself a walk through
the it and the adjoining baseball field and passed a group of teenage girls who
were intrigued by this stranger. I liked
this place. However, because of a family
feud between Alecs wife and my grandmother we stopped visiting Ohio and I never
returned.
After leaving school at fifteen I
attended college for two years, following in my elder brothers’ (and my sisters’)
footsteps. I fit in at college. The teaching style was my learning
style. I had two days off during the
week to ‘study’. And I was sixteen
hanging out with mature men and women who would introduce me to the Chambers
Bar and Nice N Sleazy for pints of lager or to watch 18+ action movies in the
cinema.
Two years later and I had enough
qualifications to get myself into the same University that my brother and
sister were still attending.