Between Two Worlds: The Account of a Jet-Setting Vagrant

By Leo Anthony

This is a personal, insightful and entertaining recollection of the author's adventures and nomadic life in the UK.

 

******This edition has been updated with information on the major characters featured in this book: Uncle Paul, Sam and Georgia, Francis, Ian, Niez etc. Find out what they're doing  - or not doing - in post-Brexit UK.******

 

You will be interested in this book if:

• You enjoy narrative non-fiction writing
• You are nostalgic for stories of life in the UK, pre-Brexit
• You want to know more about the UK immigrant experience during the early Cameron years
• You are interested in stories from Rhodesia-Zimbabwe and South Africa
• You enjoy reading about families bridging connections across time and continents and the process of confronting past traumas and conflicts

 
After living through the dramatic collapse of the Zimbabwean economy under the rule of Robert Mugabe, Leo decides to move back to the UK in late 2009.

With a keen eye for detail, he surveys contemporary Britain and takes note of her culture, landscape and idiosyncrasies. With a dash of humour throughout, he recounts a multitude of characters, snippets of conversation and pointed insight.

Circumstance draws him to his estranged uncle's abode in the coastal city of Plymouth where the past and present collide unexpectedly.

Two chapters recount his experience of returning to Southern Africa, firstly to the FIFA 2010 World Cup in South Africa, and later in the book, to Harare, Zimbabwe, where he grew up.

 

I came across your blog a few months back... when I saw that you had published a book too, I bought that and again really enjoyed your writing. So I really just wanted to say thanks for your hard work, I enjoyed both your blog and your book immensely!

- Greg Biegel, Perth, Australia (ex-Zimbabwean)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leo Anthony
• Release date: Jan 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9783910639270

Leo Anthony

Leo has spent the last six years in mainland Europe, initially living in an intentional community on the Dutch-German border, and more recently just outside the town of Kleve (Cleves) in North-Rhine Westphalia, Germany. When he isn’t writing he spends his time looking after children with Mirjam, fixing up their old house and gardening. He can be contacted at [e-mail]

Book preview

BETWEEN TWO WORLDS

––––––––

The Account of a

Jet-Setting Vagrant

By Leo Anthony

First Published in July 2012 as

A Fairly Honest Account of a White African's Life Abroad

Second Edition December 2012 as

Between Two Worlds: The Account of a Jet-setting Vagrant

Cover Revised March 2013

This edition, revised and updated, January 2023

Copyright © Leo Anthony 2023

––––––––

ISBN: 978-3-910639-27-0

The right of Leo Anthony Passaportis, writing as Leo Anthony, to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

For rights and permissions, please contact:

Leo Passaportis

[e-mail]

https://www.facebook.com/leo.anthony.author/

Cover Design by Kamil Pawlik

Contents

THE ACCOUNT OF A JET-SETTING VAGRANT

BY LEO ANTHONY

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE OPENING GAMBIT

POST-CHRISTMAS BLUES

TIME OUT IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

PLYMOUTH AND UNCLE PAUL

FROM WICKWAR TO BEDFORDSHIRE

BACK TO SWILLY

ONCE MORE TO LONDON

LIFE IN BEDFORDSHIRE

THE NEW APARTMENT

2012

A BRIEF RETURN HOME

IN CONCLUSION

AFTERWORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR

UPCOMING PUBLICATION

DISCLOSURE

THIS IS A MEMOIR. The opinions and views expressed herein, and the experiences recollected, are personal and belong solely to the author. They do not necessarily represent the people, organisations or institutions that the author may or may not be associated with in a professional or personal capacity.

INTRODUCTION

THE PROCESS OF writing this book has been a unique experience. With each revision from the first draft to the final one, I’ve been given the chance to revisit situations, conversations, people and places, and to focus and reflect on what is most memorable and meaningful to me, and of impact to you, the reader. 

I was born in the UK, but my parents left when I was still a baby, and I didn’t visit again until I’d finished university, and never made a go of living here until I was thirty. When I arrived that year, 2009, it was with nothing more than the promise of a bed to sleep in once I arrived.

In early 2012 my Aunt Tess and her husband visited London from the US. She brought with her a diary she’d transcribed, written by a young Northern Irish woman of her travels to Switzerland in the company of a friend who needed to take The Cure i.e., stay in the colder, drier climate of the Alps to recover from the ravages of tuberculosis. The author of the diary, Miss Matilda Buick, was my great-great-grandmother.

It was reassuring to discover that one of my ancestors had also chronicled her time abroad. I find it amazing to consider that this was a full century before I was born. After her foreign adventures, she returned to Northern Ireland, married and raised a family there. Matilda’s son William, my great-grandfather, wrote of his time serving as a medic in the awful trenches in France during World War I, and of his capture and internment by German forces. He remained a Prisoner of War until its conclusion. I have inherited his fob watch.

The thing to remember, of course, is that life may appear a linear progression from birth to death, but it’s a far more complicated back-and-forth journey of endeavour, aspiration, triumph, loss, and every other emotion that makes us who we are. We cross the forgotten paths of our ancestors without realising it at the time, and at other times we forge new ones.

In this revised edition of my book, I’ve included a fair bit of conversational material which was absent in the previous editions. I realised that some of my characters had been denied a voice, and the fact that their words remained lodged in my brain many years later, was a strong suggestion that they needed inclusion! I’ve also removed some passages which blocked the flow of the narrative or were tangential to it.

LA

January 2023

THE OPENING GAMBIT

MY ARRIVAL IN the UK, in September of 2009, was unremarkable except for the extraordinary amount of baggage I brought along with me. I don’t know what I expected to find but I brought far too many summer clothes for the time of year, winter imminent, never mind lugging a toolbox along with my other personal belongings to a country which sells tools cheaply from numerous retailers in every town and city.

I tend to think of my UK experience in several instalments. This was obviously the beginning of the first. There was no-one to meet me on my arrival in 2009. The first time I had graced the hallways of Heathrow Airport a few years earlier, my cousin Sandy had been there to help. That trip had been short-lived: a week, that’s all. I mean, one can escape a certain amount of circumstantial crap by packing a suitcase and jumping on an aeroplane, but I reckon on that trip I’d been trying to turn my back on too much.

However, that was then, and certain things had come to be. My father had died, the dust had settled, and everyone was going about their respective business. This time round I arrived without fanfare and had to make a solo excursion across London on the Underground to Wimbledon, where I was to stay with my friend Matthew and his wife Cath for a couple of weeks.

Wimbledon was one of the major centres of Antipodean society in London, along with the neighbouring suburbs of Raynes Park, Southfields and Earlsfield. My brother Ivan had, for the previous twenty months or so, been living nearby with our cousin Andy and his girlfriend in a house looking across to South Wimbledon tube station on the corner of Merton High Street. By the time I had negotiated my way across to the southwest it was mid-afternoon and busy.

The contrast between London and Harare, where I’d been just the previous morning, could not have been greater. Harare was dry and dusty at that time of year. While the city was just coming to life at the early hour at which I was dropped at the airport, it was a different sort of hustle and bustle from London.

For one thing you weren’t likely to see many white people walking the streets in the early morning. You were more likely to see them in private cars, at northern suburban shopping centres, and at the entrances to private schools. So, to me London was eye-poppingly unconventional: people of all hues running, cycling, walking, riding on buses, and chatting on street corners.

With some relief I ascended the narrow staircase to Matt’s flat and collapsed on the bed in their spare bedroom.

That next day I ventured out tentatively for another look at my neighbourhood. Walking up Worple Road, just up from Matt’s apartment, I came face to face with none other than Ashleigh, who I’d dated a few years earlier and with whom I intermittently corresponded. I’d told her via email that I was making the trip over.

Welcome to Unit K, she said with a laugh, riffing on the UK acronym.

That sort of humour resonated with us because, back in Harare, many of the high-density suburbs had number designations: Kuwadzana 1, Glenview 3, Budiriro 5 etc.

She seemed just as incredulous as I was. I suppose she’d been sceptical, considering the previous occasions I’d said I was intending to come over, but hadn’t. We chatted briefly and I received an invitation to her house-share for a meal the next day. We then went our separate ways. She was on her way to lunch with her sister near Wimbledon Station.

The house-share was comfortable and tidy. On one wall hung a well-executed portrait of a horse by our mutual friend Richard. He commanded several hundred pounds for one of his bigger paintings, but if you saw the time and effort, he put into one of those pictures you would understand why. In fact, if anything, they probably warranted more. He was back in Harare again, regimented and disciplined in his approach, rising early and often uncontactable while he worked. He had asked Ash to look after this painting during a trip to London to market his art.

She showed me her tomato plants on her first-floor bedroom balcony, which looked across to Crystal Palace.

I love this view, she said, which was typical Ashleigh – always one to endear herself to her surroundings, urban or otherwise.

Before she’d left Harare a few years earlier, she and a small group of friends, me included, had gone on a whirlwind tour of the capital. This included an escapade to the top floor of the Sheraton Hotel for a peek across the city, and then to the city centre to admire the Christmas lights, which the city council commendably still set up every year, despite all the problems. She’d talked nostalgically of all the places and memories she would be leaving behind.

I used to go for ballet lessons over there, she’d said back then of a nondescript building somewhere in the city proper, amidst litter-strewn streets and alleys.

I knew she missed Zimbabwe, but I admired the fact that she could still see beauty in this urban landscape, far removed as it was.

The honeymoon period after my arrival was short-lived as Matt and his wife Cath were expecting a visit from Cath’s sister from Cape Town. I had to look around for a place to rent after two weeks or so.

I’d arrived with maybe eight hundred pounds in my pocket. It was being whittled away rapidly. Despite costing me a little over £200, my best investment the previous year was a second-hand laptop I bought from the Oriental Plaza in Johannesburg. I’d seen it advertised in the local Junkmail paper and had arranged to meet the seller, an Asian man called Ali, at the Plaza.

Ali was waiting for me in the car lot in a new, white, five-series BMW, and appeared to have a bit of muscle for re-assurance in the passenger seat. Ali himself was an affable but beady-eyed, spectacle-wearing individual, somewhere between thirty and thirty-five years if I had to hazard a guess.

I wanted the Dell Latitude D830 which he’d advertised, but he had several other machines on the back seat as well.

What about the Dell Vostro? he asked, or an IBM ThinkPad? A very good machine, he added.

He proceeded to rattle off a list of specs: RAM, processor speeds, hard-drive volumes, operating systems etc. It was all a bit mind-boggling. After some consideration I told him that, no, I wanted to stick with my original decision and go with the Latitude. I handed over the agreed amount, R3000 (about £230) in cash, and the machine was mine.

Although it has served me well (indeed I am typing away on it right now), I can’t be sure of its provenance or whether it was stolen. I had bitten the bullet and taken it, anyway, not being able to afford an equivalent machine brand new. That is all that I can plead in my defence.

Despite these reservations, the laptop has been a good investment. As I soon discovered upon arrival in the UK, just about every aspect of form-filling and job application is done online.

I set about applying for many of the hundreds of science and sales jobs I saw advertised on job sites like Reed, Total Jobs and CV Library, expecting an offer or an interview in a few weeks if not sooner. Unfortunately, with a somewhat spotty and unorthodox post-university career record and no English university or vocational qualifications, my opportunities were limited.

I’d taken a broad ‘scatter-gun’ approach by applying for positions in several fields, all of which I had some experience in: sales and marketing, with a focus on scientific instruments; environmental roles (a friend Kevin had qualified as a lawyer but worked for an environmental waste-disposal company); technical scientific roles in fields like microscopy and mineralogy; and teaching.

I was never offered an interview for any position in any of these fields. It was a bit demoralising. Then again, perhaps the initial rejection is just what I needed. Looking around it didn’t take long to figure out that was where the immediate jobs were to be found. I applied in for an event-staff role with a company based nearby in the run-up to the busy Christmas period. I was accepted immediately.

From Matt’s place I moved into the neighbouring south-west suburb of Tooting, despite warnings from some quarters. Ashleigh’s sister referred to it as ‘Gangland’ and thought I was mad, apparently. I soon discovered that sort of snobbery was prevalent amongst the inhabitants of the SW19 postcode.

‘Oh my God Tooting, not a chance,’ was a common reaction. I was delighted to hear a young stand-up comedian capitalise on this attitude when he performed at the Tara Arts Centre in Earlsfield the next year.

Having to live in such close proximity to that bunch of criminals must give you lot sleepless nights, he’d chortled.

The flat share I rented was on Coverton Road, SW17. All the other tenants were young Spaniards, so it was remarkable that I was offered a place there at all. Adolfo, the live-in leaseholder, told me that he’d made an exception for me. Being the only native English speaker gave me a special sort of status, I’d soon discover.

It was evident that the house had just been flushed of its previous occupants for whatever reason and we were the new intake. ‘The fresh meat’ we would later joke.

A large proportion of the other tenants were from Tenerife and, like me, new arrivals to the city. I knew very little about Tenerife, so was surprised to discover that they were essentially ethnic Spaniards who just happened to be living over a thousand miles from mainland Spain and far closer to the west coast of Africa. As a white African, I was just as much of an idiosyncrasy to them.

I received that reaction a lot in the time I was there, from the younger generations of Europeans, whether from England or the continent, many of whom had little idea of the history and ethnic composition of countries like Zimbabwe.

Take the example of a young Russian chap who’d come to the front door of the house I was staying in the following year. He was selling double-glazing. After a brief exchange he asked me where I was from.

But you are not so tanned as I expected, he remarked of my complexion.

Amidst the job market struggles and the challenges of adjusting to a new way of life was an unexpected meeting which raised my spirits. I’d gone along to apply for a National Insurance number at the Department of Work and Pensions in Tooting. 

After sitting in an open-plan area with other applicants of a variety of nationalities I was ushered through to an office. I was interviewed by a cheerful, middle-aged woman of Afro-Caribbean extract, who introduced herself as Sonia. After going through the formalities, she asked me about my background and schooling: what I had studied and where, my parents’ background, and whether I had I studied the classics at school.

Never neglect the classics, she said.

"My father sent me to a girls’ grammar school. I did Latin and Classical Literature. We read many different authors. One that sticks in my memory is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann. We read him for A-Level."

I was taken aback. I’d struggled with the book a few years earlier but had been mightily impressed by the imagery and detail of the voluminous work.

My mum had studied various German authors as an undergraduate student. She’d had an impressive collection of Herman Hess titles. What were the chances, though, of finding a person, a ‘mixed-race’ woman at that, in a mundane civil service position, who was evidently so well read?

She was pleased that I professed to know something of the Latin declensions and Mr Mann and wished me all the best. I departed her office feeling a renewed optimism.

Those early days in London were bitterly difficult so far as money went and I fell into the vicious cycle of being a week behind on the rent, never quite managing to cover arrears before the next week was due. I’d put down a two-week deposit, which was as much as I could afford and which probably helped secure my tenancy for a bit longer, but the live-in leaseholder, Adolfo, was persistently chasing those late on payments. It appeared that the wily Adolfo hadn’t worked for years. He held the leasehold contract and obviously secured a margin on the sub-letting.

He had the authority to sign documents vouching for us as tenants, which we could use for our NI applications and to open bank accounts and that sort of thing, but as to the identity of the owner of the house, I never knew. Later, after moving out, I was to learn that he’d also been claiming housing benefit from the council, which irked me as much as the other tenants I was still in contact with. As it was, I was paying £80 per week and sharing a small bedroom with Jacob, a young primary school teacher from Seville.

Leo, it is tho nice to meet you, he welcomed me with a charming lisp.

Jacob proved himself to be the ideal roommate: quiet, considerate and tidy. We made the best of our situation in the shoebox. Our laptops stood side by side on our shared desk, flanked by a wooden chair on one side and a folding plastic chair along another.

Before too long, Jacob had signed onto some manner of shift work in the city. He would arrive and depart at odd hours and more than once I found him fully dressed, stretched out on his bed, and snoring away. When I performed a light-hearted imitation, he was mortified to learn that he snored.

At one point I counted twelve permanent residents in the five-bedroom, three-floor house, never mind the stream of family and friends coming to visit. Chez-Coverton was serviced by no less than seven bar-fridges and two mini-freezer units.

I loved the excitability of the younger crowd; the courtesy and welcoming nature of my Spanish flatmates; being able to walk into the kitchen after getting back from a late evening shift and find several people chatting and drinking wine in the kitchen, happy for me to pull up a chair and join in.

There was a memorable party thrown in our honour, the latest intake to Adolfo’s Lair. I gleaned a couple of cheap, party wigs from a day-event I worked on, and they proved to be very popular. We took turns posing for the camera in two and threes, grinning and toasting each other with cries of ‘Salud’!

Adolfo was almost certainly gay. His walls were plastered with magazine cut-outs of escort girls and there were various semi-pornographic drawings and graffiti artworks adorning the walls of the house. One weekend he had a visit from a friend from Barcelona.

Hello, I am Manuel, he said by way of introduction.

The significance was not lost on one of the young Spaniards who gabbled something excitedly in Spanish, including the words ‘Fawlty Towers’. Manuel, evidently aware of his status in the annals of British comedy, bowed low, and smiled his appreciation. He shared Adolfo’s room for several days and was not to be seen on waiting duty, at any sensible hour anyway.

As for Adolfo himself, he was a curious creature: beady black eyes which didn’t miss a trick, an impetuous smile, skin the colour and complexion of rubbery white cheese. His laugh was impish, high pitched and slightly unnerving. He fought constantly with two of the girls, Lorena (one of two) and Raquel, in rapid Spanish.

To be fair to him, he was generally approachable, even if his whereabouts and routine were not very predictable. He was quick to point out where the various appliances could be found, how to negotiate the underground, and the importance of keeping the kitchen clean.

We must be careful for the mouses, he explained.

When he saw the look on my face he laughed, ‘hee-hee-hee’ in his slightly unnerving manner. Yes, it would take a while to become accustomed to his ways and manners, I remember thinking to myself.  

However, as Ashleigh pointed out on the one occasion she visited (‘Adolfo scared me’ she told me later), he ensured that the place was kept respectable, which was important, considering the number of people living there.

Adolfo was a creature of the night, sleeping well into the short winter days before coming out and skulking around until the wee hours of the morning. It would be remiss of me to paint Adolfo as some sort of villain. I think he was something of a societal misfit. He came across as a bit odd, but there was certainly some kindness and goodness in him. His eyes would sparkle with mirth when we came together in the late evenings to eat, drink and laugh after the rigours of the day.

During that time, I made good friends with Samuel, or Samu, a native of Tenerife. Samu was solidly built, a Tae Kwando devotee, but of a gentle and friendly demeanour. While in-between leases early the following year, it was Samu who opened his doors to me without hesitation. At Halloween a group of us from the house decided to venture into the city. Joining Samu and me