The Beginning
ABOVE: I think the Love of Dogs was embedded in my DNA from birth if this photo is anything to go by: on a (cold?) family trip to Brighton, with the Zebra owner’s black alsation sharing my ride!
MY FATHER, Andrew, emigrated to the UK in the Greek Cypriot diaspora of the 50s to set up a shirt manufacturing business with the help of an Irish woman, Kay, who became his wife and my mother.
Along with my older brother, also named Andrew, we all ended up in Hendon, North London via Balham (South London) where I was born and Tadworth, Surrey, where one vivid memory is of a family of mice running along the back of a flowerbed.
Schooling really began with a Kindergarten halfway between Hendon and Golders Green, called La Sagesse where I made my first childhood friend in a Jewish boy (at a Catholic Kindergarten!) called Charles. It was while I was walking with him along a corridor that I told him today would be the day we would get our paintings back (it was the last day of term). “How do you know,” he asked. “You’ll SEE-EE-EE-EE-EE!!!” I shouted back as loudly as possible, for what reason, I have no idea. This is another firmly imprinted memory: the sudden painful slap around my cheek from a nun’s hand, punishing me for being so mindlessly noisy. Seems a bit cruel now, in retrospect!
Charles and I, sometimes accompanied by our other friends, Bridget and Nora, would get into other scrapes, such as creeping up to the private chapel (seriously out of bounds) and ringing the altar communion bell.
My creativity at kindergarten was often employed at lunchtime by cutting slices of Spam into the shapes of houses and sculpting the mashed potatoes into mountains.