The people who quietly change the course of our lives

Carisbrooke Road, Leicester 1977. My brothers Ant and Jono.

In 1975, my parents made the traumatic decision to move house from Jean Drive to Carisbrooke Road in Leicester. I was 13 years old, and my parents were cruelly ruthless. Did they care about my pubescent opposition to this betrayal of trust? Was my selflessly infantile opinion either sought or heeded? No. Today they would probably be in prison or vilified on social media, by me at least.

The reason for this thoughtless relocation, to the OTHER SIDE of Leicester, all 5kms away, was Leicestershire Council’s decision to change the education system. I had been part of the last-but-one year stream of students to take the 11-plus exam, which, if passed, opened the path to grammar school education. I passed and went to Wyggeston Boys’ School. My two brothers were not going to have that opportunity, and my parents were none too happy with the local school they would have gone to. Ridiculously prioritizing Ant and Jono’s future education ahead of my Saturday football sessions with my mates on the local recce, the forced displacement was on.

This move would have lasting effects on my life. At first, I hated it, for quite a long time. That changed when I met my best friend, Andrew Neal, when we sat together at a showing of The Who’s ‘Tommy’. We started hanging out together, balancing totally opposite tastes in music and a love-hate relationship with football (I loved it and he hated it) with totally common interests in Everard’s beer and that most elusive of species, girls.

Bear in mind this was the 1970s, a decade of great rock music, a curate’s egg of a Leicester City team, a depressed economy and fundamentally, no mobile phones or internet. Staying in contact with friends was a mixture of jungle drums and smoke signals, or more literally knocking on doors and wangling a one-minute phone call from our parents. Then we depended on the other being home, and in the case of being brave enough to call a girl, running the gauntlet of the father or the brother. Terrifying.

The St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. De Montfort Hall, Leicester, February 14^th, 1977.

My life also changed when I got to know my German teacher better. I don’t know who was more horrified, me or him, when we discovered that we were literally living opposite each other. Thinking about it, probably him. Ewan Colling would become probably the biggest reason I ended up on a worldwide travel adventure and a life mostly based out of Buenos Aires.

Ewan was a South Yorkshireman through and through with a relentless sardonic sarcasm. I thought he was great, others hated him. Over time, he and his wife Ann became very good friends with my parents, and my relationship with and confidence in him grew. I ended up babysitting for his daughter Sue whenever they came over the road to my parents, and he always made sure that his fridge had the essentials a teenager needed for that endeavor, cans of beer.

He also got me into making my own homebrew, which would poison several of my friends. With me making beer in the kitchen closet and my father concocting homemade wine in the bathroom, we’d have made a killing in prohibition times.

The beer and wine makers on tour, Mendoza, 1994.

He would also question our argument that school uniforms should be banned because they were stifling our individuality, pointing out that if we were given our way we would all immediately wear our default uniform of jeans and trainers. Hmm – true.

Those anecdotes apart, Ewan taught me a lot of things I never forgot – the importance of proper preparation, and how to see exams as an opportunity to show what you do know, rather than be tempted to overreach and thereby reveal how much you do not know. Having seen me and my friends prepare for important examinations by playing fierce playground football matches right up until two minutes before the exams started, he wryly observed that he could never understand how arriving sweating and argumentative for a potentially life-changing exam could be positive. Goodbye football in exam season.

The second point about relying on what you do know is relevant in all walks of life. An examination or a crucial meeting at work or in one’s private life is an opportunity to be yourself and showcase your talents, it is not the place to become somebody else or try to over-impress.

I remember when I was going through my university finals in Bradford, all twenty-two of them, in French and German. One night before a German exam, I came across Helen and Caroline in the library, studiously studying new vocabulary. I was impressed, so I sat down to do the same thing. Then Ewan’s words came into my head, use what you know. After 10 years studying those languages in depth and having lived for extended periods in both France and Germany, why was I trying to learn new vocabulary only twelve hours prior to the exam? Wisely, I went for a beer.

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but it’s a good tip. Learn a few good tricks. All leading guitarists and sportsmen do it; for linguists, he recommended learning a few idioms you can apply at any time. My favorite was ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ – I would shoehorn it into everything I wrote or said, and people would nod wisely, even examiners.

Of course, the reason I was at Bradford University in the first place was on Ewan’s advice. He warned me off the redbrick universities, and waxed lyrically about the modern courses at Bradford, Salford, and Heriot Watt. I followed his advice and the course was as good as he said. Four years later, I was looking at a scruffy handwritten job advert on the University noticeboard and deciding whether to apply. My soon-to-be colleague and future lifetime friend, Kevin Anderson, had recommended recruiting students from either Bradford or Salford, where he himself had attended. This took me around the world. Thanks, Ewan.

So, Ewan was my first mentor. Despite being his neighbor, daughter’s babysitter, and fellow homebrewer, he cut me no favors. Probably my favorite memory was one class in 1978. The night before I had gone with Rew Nicholls to see Status Quo at the Granby Halls, and they were loud. Jet engine loud. The next morning all I could hear was feedback. German was first up, and for some reason our class had been moved to a science lab, which were big places. Worse still, it was the same science lab where I had become a school laughingstock by fainting during a sex education video – not cool at all at an all-boys school. How I ever had two children, I don’t know. (Note to self: DNA tests).

Nicolás and Tamara, Bariloche 2006. Note to self? Nah…

On the basis I was totally deaf, I had the brilliant idea of hiding on the benches at the back of the class. First question of the morning – well of course, to yours truly. All I could do was look at him. Cue forty-five minutes of suffering followed by his knowing sanctimonious smile on my way out of the class.

So, Ewan’s university advice having somehow connected me with Kevin…I met a new mentor. Kevin saw something in me which I didn’t see in myself and guided me through those first few months. Whilst I had technically lived in Yorkshire whilst I was at university, I had lived in a bubble of people pretty much from anywhere but Yorkshire, and the transition from an academic island to a Leeds factory environment was far more daunting than having a machine gun pressed against my ribcage three years later on a bridge in the Ivory Coast. That seemed amusing by comparison, but with hindsight maybe only because the soldier didn’t pull the trigger.

Kevin was a Mackem, so he was used to northern types. It also helped that Patricia, his amazing wife, was living and working away, so we spent a lot of nights together. Running out of petrol at 9pm on the M62 in the middle of a snowstorm (a problem expeditiously solved by abandoning the car, climbing down the bank and finding sanctuary in the nearest pub); walking slowly out of an IRA pub in Chapeltown, Leeds; my first trip to Liberia; jumping out of a running truck in Madagascar; Congo limit situations.

Singapore Slings in Raffles, missing connections in Frankfurt on purpose, jumping into bullrings in Seville. The rat on Fisherman’s wharf (over to you Patricia), missing the wedding photos at Paul’s wedding because we were talking at the bar for an hour (thanks to the extras who filled in). Carrying baby Kieran in my arms for three hours on the slow train from Cusco to a totally fogbound Machu Picchu whilst his parents got some much-needed sleep.

Enjoying a Machu Picchu peasouper, 1991.

On a more serious note, Kevin not only guided me through my early days in Leeds, but he also gave me the ultimate compliment by asking me to be his partner in a new lottery management company in Argentina, that recognized redoubt of the French and German languages. He dismissed my lack of Spanish and told me I would love Buenos Aires. After the miseries of 1980s Addis Ababa, Kinshasa and Monrovia, he wasn’t wrong about that.

So, to Buenos Aires…. a wild adventure which has never finished. Equally fortunately, a friendship with Kevin and his family that has never ended.

We’ve all had mentors. Andrew did too. As our friendship grew, he became part of our family. Sunday lunches were tremendously important in my parents’ house.  A ritual. A roast, Dad’s homemade wine, and then at around two in the afternoon, the doorbell would ring. Andrew would be there, and my father had his Sambuca prepared, and it was the best thing. If he was not there at two, my father would simply say ‘Andrew’s a bit late today’.

Andrew would talk a lot to my mother; she became his mentor or at least introduction to his career. She took him into her school, and she always told me he was so good. The great thing was the mutual respect they had. She saw something in Andrew which he fulfilled and went beyond. He had a lasting respect for her, visiting her when she was in her dying years. I’m proud to be a son of my mother, and a friend to Andrew.

With Nico, Andrew and Sam, Majorca, 2002.

Now let’s return to the bullring, or more precisely, two bullrings. In 1985, Kevin and I were at the European Lotteries Association conference in Marbella. Amongst the social events was a trip to a bullring, and a fortunately bloodless exhibition of the finer points of bullfighting. At some stage, the Master of Ceremonies invited people from the audience to take part. Kevin and I looked at each other and decided not to go. One of our competitors did go. Our mistake.

Fast-forward five years and it’s the World Lotteries Conference in Seville, and of course, the same opportunity arose. This time we were straight into the ring, although pre-empted by an unfortunate soul who broke his leg when jumping the fence. And then there were two.

Kevin went first, and armed with his red cape, he calmly stared down the fierce (docile) bull (cow) and gave a composed display of avoiding the beast and self-preservation. Deservingly, he received an appreciative round of applause from a thousand people. No pressure then. My turn. To be fair, the cow was pretty big from close up, and, as someone who cut his knee and arm and broke his watch when running away from an unexpected mouse at the age of 18, I wasn’t overwhelmed with confidence.

The show must go on and all that, so I held out my cape to the side, and stared at the cow. Who stared back, and then slowly started to move towards me, and then faster…. So instead of trying to divert the beast by waving the stupid cape, I held it in front of me in some kind of weird defense, and the cow duly proceeded to run all over me. Cue hilarious laughter and ridicule from what felt like ten thousand people. And then jokes about my future manhood (Note to self: DNA tests!), and how many were left and other variants on a theme.

Kevin was a bit miffed about how his perfect display had been forgotten due to my Keystone Cops version, but it was all worthwhile when a customer of ours told us afterwards that our major competitor, who was sat directly behind him, said: ‘And that’s their contracts renewed for the next two years’, as I lay flat in the dust having been trampled by next Sunday’s roast dinner.

But back to Ewan, the main reason I was cow fodder in the first place. My three regrets regarding Ewan were that I did not follow his optional ‘O’-Level Spanish course at school; and even more that over time the friendship between my parents and the Collings disintegrated. Life, I guess.

The biggest regret of the three, though, is that I allowed myself to lose contact with him over the years. I went less to Leicester, and the relationship just withered away…. Again, life, I guess.

Our mentors deserve better than that.