Prior to coming to England, I had been living in a different world in Africa, miles away from the Swinging Sixties and early 70s of London, so I knew very little about how life worked for young professionals, who had money to spend and were determined to live life to the hilt. Thus, it came as a huge shock to me to find that my three flatmates, all well-educated young ladies in their mid-20s with good jobs, had a large circle of friends with whom they frequently socialized, whilst smoking cigarettes and drinking wine both in the flat and at other venues, too. They all knew how to cook, which I didn’t. They could throw a dinner party with ease, stay up half the night chatting and drinking, and yet still get up for work the following day. Somehow, they seemed to meet men with whom they fell in and out of love, sleeping with them when the relationship was going well, and then breaking it all off when it wasn’t. It shocked me beyond belief to discover an occasional man at the breakfast table, at different times. None of these single ladies was promiscuous as such, I now realize. They were simply on the pill and prepared to take on whatever life threw their way. When one of the girls in our flat said that she liked her gay men friends, because they didn’t make passes at her, I probably stared at her blankly. I had never heard of the word “gay”, other than in the sense of being happy. I didn’t know the words homosexual or lesbian, either.
I was lost, though also mesmerized by what was going on around me in the flat and beyond. I didn’t feel as if I could possibly become like my peers, since it would have been going against everything I had even been taught by my parents, but half of me wished that I could be more like them, partying, drinking, having fun. I was out of my depth, though, with no money and no job, either, since I couldn’t be an air stewardess as I had intended, because my back surgery for a shattered disc would not have allowed me to undertake the heavy pushing and pulling of carts up and down the aisles of a Jumbo airplane. I had to find another job to tide me over till March-April, when the next school term would begin, and I could apply for a vacant teaching position somewhere outside London. What was I going to do?
So, I started looking up all the private school agencies, wondering if I could do something there, maybe even teaching in one of their schools later. I was half terrified of working in the regular school system because I thought that students would be bicycle chain-carrying louts, especially in London. I walked miles going from place to place to save money, and ate very little, so much so that the weight was falling off me, though I didn’t realize this. I was simply frantic to get a job so I could pay my share of the next month’s rent.
