Autobiographical

After the three-month break from university in the USSR and the subsequent Christmas and New Year holidays, it proved hard to settle back to the daily study routine, in part due to family issues that may warrant attention at some point. 

Admittedly, I felt far more confident about my Russian language skills and found it far easier to read novels in the Russian original, such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1866) and Nikolai Gogol’s Dead Souls (1842). The endemic corruption in the latter novel appeared to presage the future in Russia, as did the harrowing History of a Town (from 1870) by civil servant Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin.

By contrast, my French was stagnating, which was not surprising in the circumstances. However, fate smiled kindly on me. It just so happened that a representative of the French education committee paid a visit to Queen Mary College (QMC) that year and interviewed everyone on the course who planned to spend time in France either as students at a local university or as teachers. I admitted that I would prefer the latter due to the opportunity to work, be more immersed in the culture and mix primarily with locals, and naturally be paid. Asked what I would consider the ideal placement, I mentioned that I had enjoyed working for two summers at a camp site in the Bordeaux region and loved the south of the country. Preoccupied with other concerns, this was put on the back burner. It goes without saying that I thought my chances were pretty low. 

Meanwhile, the most of January 1985 involved packing and marking boxes, as I helped my parents prepare for the move from Ealing to Richmond. They had wanted to downsize for a while and also live near a train station and cut back on car use. In fact they achieved two goals: keeping the mortgage, they used the proceeds from the sale to buy in addition a property in the  rural French town Saint Quentin de la Poterie (with 2,000 residents) located five kilometres from the bigger town of Uzes. While small, it boasted a bakery, café, wine bar, church and a supermarket, plus a pottery. They would in future spend every summer, Christmas and New Year there, that is, until my dad’s health unfortunately deteriorated. 

Richmond was a pleasant change, with more greenery, few tourists and less shops back then. Furthermore, I no longer had to walk 20 minutes to the train station. And like Ealing Broadway, travel to QMC to Mile End road was direct on the District line, so I could continue making the most of the journey to catch up on reading or essays. Similarly, when out late at weekends, if I didn’t stay over with a friend, I would walk home from Hammersmith or if lucky Turnham Green, gradually sobering up on the way.

And then, out of the blue, I received an official invitation from the French authorities to teach English from September 2025 to June 2026 at a French school situated right in the heart of Sophia Antipolis, which was bidding, as I was soon to discover, to become the Silicon Valley of the Cote d’Azur. 

However, first of all, I was to encounter someone who would play a role in my life for some time and radically change future plans. The day after the end of term I had found a two-day dreary agency job involving the opening of share applications for newly privatised state companies and the separation of the cheques inside. However, there was no ban on chatting to people there and I arranged to meet some of them that evening and went home to change. I was about to head out when the doorbell rang. It was a young American lady. She had forgotten the number of the house where she was staying (she was from Minnesota and had just arrived in the UK for six months to work and travel). It transpired she had missed the right property by one door. Anyway, we had a great chat and arranged to meet the next day. Her name was Robin.

Subsequently, I found a job for July and August at a British retailer on Oxford Street, Selfridges. They needed a staff member for the shoe department on the second floor. While it was a stressful and hectic environment, at least the time passed quickly. The key was not only to sell shoes, but also “fancies”, which were expected to represent 10% of sales – ranging from the cheaper items, such as shoe polish and insoles to the big-ticket wooden shoe trees. All the employees were really friendly and helpful.  Whoever sold the most in a week would get a bonus. One Indian guy always came top. He was a consummate salesman. He went on holiday for a week in mid-August, coinciding with my last week in the job. I ended up selling the most! I had made the most of the opportunity to chat to customers and put them at their ease and clearly that had done the trick. The money was useful for a great holiday in Crete. And with that trip over, it was time to prepare to take the bus from Victoria, make a switch in Paris to another bus to Nice and then hitchhike to the final destination.