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. Although the tiny run-down village of Wellsville, Ohio where he lived wasn’t exactly Disney World 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.