Where It All Began
My upbringing was pretty unique. My dad had a job as a computer consultant travelling the
world. It might sound nice and glamorous, but in fact it’s a lot of being in very loud airports,
dingy hotels, being away from friends and family, and eating in restaurants by yourself. He was
working long hours, and I would go for weeks sometimes without seeing him at all. That went on
for a couple years until I was nearly 10. He was literally all over the world for weeks on end, and
then he finally got a placement in Zurich, Switzerland. When he came home, my mum would
say, “Where are you going next week?” He would reply: “I’ve got to go back to Switzerland.”
And this went on and on. He said to his bosses, “You seem to keep wanting me to go out to
Switzerland. Do you want me to stay for a bit longer? I’d like to arrange for my family to come
over if it’s for a serious amount of time.” And they confessed, “Okay, cards on the table, we
2
want you to be there for a year.” Me and my mum packed up our bags and moved there; we
didn’t speak one word of German. I got put in a foreigners’ school where they concentrated on
German for pretty much your whole day. Once you became fluent in German, they allowed you
to go to a normal Swiss school. On my 11 th birthday, I took a cake in with a knife so I could share
it with my classmates. Literally, as soon as the teacher walked out of the room, one of the kids
picked up the knife and I narrowly avoided getting stabbed straight through the stomach.
Unfortunately, I was in a class with people that were coming from war-torn countries, with
bombs going off all the time, and it seemed violence was the only way that they could express
their feelings. Strangely enough, I didn’t like being in that school with all the bullying.
As soon as I had that knife turned on me, I decided the only way to get out of that hellhole was to
learn German. So I learned German pretty rapidly. A little after my 12 th birthday, I had just
settled in my final Swiss school, and my dad said, “I’m going to send you back to England, with
your mum, so you can go to a big school. I’m just going to commute to Switzerland for four
months: I’m going to leave at four o’clock on a Monday morning, and I’ll come back on Friday
evening, so I’ll still get to spend the weekends with you.” I said, “Ok, you’ve got to do what
you’ve got to do.”
It became a bit of running joke, because it got to the 1st January and my dad was starting to pack
up his suitcase, ready to go back to Switzerland, and my mum said, “Hang on, I thought you’d
finished?” “Oh yeah, they’ve asked me to go back out again.” Then it got extended, but he said,
“Don’t worry, I’m going to come back at the end of this year.” And then the following year,
again he said, “I’m going to be back at the end of this year.” As it turned out, there was no job
option for my dad back in England. In the end, he didn’t move back from Switzerland for 21
years!
world. It might sound nice and glamorous, but in fact it’s a lot of being in very loud airports,
dingy hotels, being away from friends and family, and eating in restaurants by yourself. He was
working long hours, and I would go for weeks sometimes without seeing him at all. That went on
for a couple years until I was nearly 10. He was literally all over the world for weeks on end, and
then he finally got a placement in Zurich, Switzerland. When he came home, my mum would
say, “Where are you going next week?” He would reply: “I’ve got to go back to Switzerland.”
And this went on and on. He said to his bosses, “You seem to keep wanting me to go out to
Switzerland. Do you want me to stay for a bit longer? I’d like to arrange for my family to come
over if it’s for a serious amount of time.” And they confessed, “Okay, cards on the table, we
2
want you to be there for a year.” Me and my mum packed up our bags and moved there; we
didn’t speak one word of German. I got put in a foreigners’ school where they concentrated on
German for pretty much your whole day. Once you became fluent in German, they allowed you
to go to a normal Swiss school. On my 11 th birthday, I took a cake in with a knife so I could share
it with my classmates. Literally, as soon as the teacher walked out of the room, one of the kids
picked up the knife and I narrowly avoided getting stabbed straight through the stomach.
Unfortunately, I was in a class with people that were coming from war-torn countries, with
bombs going off all the time, and it seemed violence was the only way that they could express
their feelings. Strangely enough, I didn’t like being in that school with all the bullying.
As soon as I had that knife turned on me, I decided the only way to get out of that hellhole was to
learn German. So I learned German pretty rapidly. A little after my 12 th birthday, I had just
settled in my final Swiss school, and my dad said, “I’m going to send you back to England, with
your mum, so you can go to a big school. I’m just going to commute to Switzerland for four
months: I’m going to leave at four o’clock on a Monday morning, and I’ll come back on Friday
evening, so I’ll still get to spend the weekends with you.” I said, “Ok, you’ve got to do what
you’ve got to do.”
It became a bit of running joke, because it got to the 1st January and my dad was starting to pack
up his suitcase, ready to go back to Switzerland, and my mum said, “Hang on, I thought you’d
finished?” “Oh yeah, they’ve asked me to go back out again.” Then it got extended, but he said,
“Don’t worry, I’m going to come back at the end of this year.” And then the following year,
again he said, “I’m going to be back at the end of this year.” As it turned out, there was no job
option for my dad back in England. In the end, he didn’t move back from Switzerland for 21
years!