Autobiographical

Although I would soon turn 16, I still found the journey to France daunting – travelling solo for the first time by plane and then getting lost on the train as, laden down with bags, I attempted to make my way by metro and train to the south Parisian suburb Athis-Mons where I would stay. 

I was very lucky to be housed at the weekends with a lovely divorcee teacher from the school which happened to be located close to her property. She had three kids, including Etienne, two years younger, who was to become a good friend. We bonded on music, films and football. One treat was the Sunday afternoon when her ex would come to visit, bringing tasty profiteroles and other pastries from some posh boulangerie. 

Meanwhile the actual school seemed massive to me, coming as I did from an upper school consisting of 200 pupils. There must have been almost 2,000 students, all boys, ranging in age from seven to nineteen. And everybody appeared to smoke. So I started as well, albeit only a few cigarettes a day. 

Naturally, I found it hard to adapt to French lessons, writing in French and penning philosophy papers when my vocabulary was pretty sparse, but I got there in the end. Translating from Ancient Greek and German into French also took a while to get used to. My maths and understanding of chemistry and biology also improved.

However, there was another challenge that I hadn’t expected. I ended up sharing a room with a French guy Michel (the name has been changed) who would constantly mock me. That was not the worst of it though. One evening every week a friend of his from Guadeloupe would pop in late at night and they would take it in turns to beat me. 

I kept quiet owing to the threats they made if I were to dare say anything. As you can imagine, the frequent unprovoked attacks overshadowed the whole experience. Totally demoralised after three months , I let Etienne know. After he told his mum, I was transferred to another room with a really friendly kid Xavier. It taught me a lifelong that speaking out about a transgression, however humiliating it might feel at the time, can have a positive outcome.

This is when I actually started to have fun and appreciating the same tracks that would be blasted out every morning to wake everyone up before breakfast: the greatest hits by 10CC: Rubber Bullets, Arts for Arts Sake, I’m Mandy Fly Me, I’m Not in Love and the band’s number one hit from September 1978 Dreadlock Holiday.

I also wrote the lyrics to a number of songs at the request of a young sports teacher for his band. He was most complimentary about one song I wrote called Geranium Blues about a drug addict.

I took the end-of-years exams and passed them and was offered the chance to move up to the next class and take the baccalaureate. I must admit that I was tempted, but had other plans. 

The year ended with a moment of true karma. Michel had a horrific motorbike accident. Luckily he recovered. He sought me out and apologised profusely for what he had done. The accident had led him to reevaluate the past. It was that rare instance of seeing how trauma can have a positive impact on an individual and has left an indelible impression on me to this day.

Another painting by the Kazakh artist Manas Kisamedinov.