Early evening on Tuesday 5th January 1971, a young man who had just finished school in his home country, arrived at Heathrow Airport to prepare for university the following year.  At school, he had studied English as a foreign language and just about knew his verbs from his nouns, with a few dozen words of vocabulary.  His mastery of the English language swung between poor and very poor.

The international organization that found him a place to do his pre-university studies sent a young woman to collect and take him to a nearby hotel for the night.  As she drove her Austin Mini Mark II out of Heathrow, the woman spoke fast giving him a million instructions and vital pieces of information.  None of her briefing made sense to him or stuck in his memory but, he nodded anyway, confirming that all was clear.

Having no idea where she was taking him, he allowed himself to fantasise that she was taking him to her place.  He was about to let his imagination run away with him when she reached a neighbourhood, turned a corner and parked outside a large house that had a sign declaring it was a ‘bed and breakfast’.  He knew both words and correctly deduced it was a small hotel of sorts.

They walked through the small lobby and were met by a stern looking man with a severe haircut, both of which put him in a permanently bad mood.  They exchanged words and the woman turned to her temporary charge, bid him farewell with a final piece of information, which he actually understood: “Tomorrow morning, Mr. Keys will come and see you at nine”.

The stern hotel manager/owner led the way to a bedroom on the first floor and explained the rules of the house to him, all of which went un-comprehended and disappeared into the universe for all eternity.

Before doing anything, there was not much to do anyway, he went over to the bedroom window, drew the heavy curtains aside and watched the outside world.  He was scared, confused and uncertain; a state he never felt before even in his worst moments back home, where he always felt there was a way of taking control of any situation he faced.  But not that night.  He truly felt he was completely at the mercy of strangers and there was nothing he could do about it, other than to comply and do what he was told.  As he closed the curtains, a tear ran down his cheek and found a place to rest in the corner of his mouth.  He wanted nothing more than to be magically transported back home.

He opened his suitcase, took out his pyjamas, tooth brush and paste and prepared for bed.  His watch indicated the time was just after nine and he decided to go to bed.  But going to bed was one thing, falling asleep was quite another.  His sleep was fitful and exhausting.  The rain outside which began as a drizzle had increased in intensity and the wind picked up significantly.  That background music was not a soothing sound and it helped frustrate his attempts at sleeping even further.

By seven the following morning he was astonished to discover that it was just as dark outside as it was at nine the previous night.  He wondered if they ever had daylight in England.  He got up, washed, got dressed and decided to take his life in his own hands by leaving his room to explore his immediate surroundings. He made sure he took the room keys with him in case he had to abandon his deadly mission and retreat to his room.

As he left the room, the smell of cooked food wafted up the stairs and straight up his nostrils.  He had no idea what was cooking but he found the smell very pleasant.  He carefully climbed down the stairs looking from side to side for signs of enemy personnel.  All went well until he reached the ground floor.  He looked to the left; the coast was clear.  Then he looked to the right and saw the stern, ill-tempered manager/owner who said: ‘Ah, you are here for breakfast, come this way’.  He went that way and the man perched him on a chair with a small table in the corner of the room.  The stern man disappeared and a few minutes later he came back with a tray laden with fried eggs, sausages and some thin sliced pink meat.  There were also two slices of toasted white bread, a small pot of tea, a tiny jug of milk and a tea cup.  The table already had salt, pepper, sugar cubes, ketchup and butter.

He would have liked to ask the stern man what everything was (not the eggs, he correctly guessed what they were), but decided against it in case the man took everything away.  Besides, even if he had the patience and inclination to explain, none of his explanations would have registered.  He was hungry and he decided to fix this situation by consuming some of the food on offer, thinking if he didn’t like something, he would just set it aside.  He ate everything!

He had brought with him some sterling cash, so asked the manager/owner how much the breakfast was.  The man said it was already included in the room rate and reminded him that this was a ‘bed and breakfast’.  That was his first understanding of a cultural concept offered to him by the most unlikely of characters.  He was so pleased that even before nine in the morning, he had decoded his first mystery of this foreign land.

He returned to his bedroom, packed the things he unpacked the previous night and tidied up the bed, ready for the next customer.  At 8:30, he descended the stairs with his suitcase and was instructed by the hotel manager/owner to wait in a room just to the right of the stairs.  It was a lounge resembling an ordinary family room with chairs, sofas and a coffee table.  He found a seat that faced the door and sat down waiting for Mr. Keys who duly arrived at 9:00 sharp.  He shook the young man’s hand and said a few things then took him to his large Rover P6 car.  Of the various instructions he was given by Mr. Keys, he understood he was taking him to a railway station.  That was exciting!  He had only once had a ride on a train while visiting his brother in Egypt but, he was sure trains in England would be far superior to what was on offer in Egypt.  Mr. Keys parked his luxurious car and instructed his charge to follow him with the suitcase.  He purchased a one-way ticket, gave it to him and said: ‘DON’T lose it because you will need it.’  They walked along a platform with a long and winding train waiting to depart.  Mr. Keys chose a door inn the middle of the train, climbed up the two steps and found a carriage with a middle-aged couple.  He spoke to them for a minute or so, stepped aside and let his charge through.  His final words were simple and short: ‘well, good luck and remember to leave the train at Redruth, the nice couple here will look after you’. He looked at them and both gave kind and re-assuring smiles.  He was not very re-assured but, he did what he was told and sat down in his seat.

Finally, the train doors were closed with heavy clunks and whistles rang out from both ends of the platform.  The train made a judder and it started to roll slowly at first and then gradually picked up speed.  He had no idea how long his journey was going to take but was hoping it would be short and painless.  He was eager to reach his destination and meet up with his old school friend who had gone ahead of him a couple of weeks earlier to do the same thing: prepare for university.  His estimate was 30 minutes or maybe a little more.  What data he based his estimates on were unknown, even to him.

A few minutes later, the train stopped for a few minutes at another station and continued on its merry way.  Then it stopped again.  With experience of two train stations under his belt, he learnt his second lesson about life in England.  Stations had their name displayed all along the platform every few meters so passengers were in no doubt where they were.  He thought it was unnecessary for a voice on the platform announcing the name of the station, as though everyone was an idiot!

He found himself a little game to play: reading the name of the station while the train was still moving as it approached the platform, then confirming the name when the train came to a standstill.  The game was short lived!

The next station declared itself to be ‘Reading’.  He jumped out of his skin; that’s where he was supposed to alight to meet his friend.  After getting back into his skin, he jumped with all his organs in unison and started to grab for his suitcase stowed on a rack above his head.  The nice middle-aged couple asked him why he was about to leave and he explained Mr. Keys told him so.  With a straight face, the woman explained that his destination was Redruth and not Reading; Redruth was a long way away still.  Reluctantly, he put his suitcase back on the rack and sat down again.  The woman re-assured him they would tell him when to leave the train.  The husband however, had decided the young foreigner was an idiot and he didn’t need to add his niceness to his wife’s; one set of niceness was quite enough for one idiot.

Station after station were passed, hour after hour disappeared.  He slept, woke up, slept some more, woke up again, bought a cheese sandwich from a woman with a trolly, went to the toilet, slept even more and thought his journey would never end.

It did end at the railway station in Redruth, part of the county of Cornwall, the most southern tip of the British Isles was finally and mercifully reached.  It was cold, wet and dark.  He felt wretched and foolish for choosing to come to England where he assumed, he would be living and studying in London, not a place so far away from civilization, they may turn out to be cannibals!

Just when you think things are so bad that they couldn’t possibly get any worse, they do!

He disembarked with his heavy suitcase, the platform was in complete darkness, he had no idea which direction to take and to where?  Nature programmed living creatures faced with mortal danger, to do one of two things: either fight or flight.  But there was no one to fight with and he had no idea which direction to take for his flight to safety.  So, he chose a third option mostly used by helpless small animals who realise that ‘fight or flight’ do not fit the situation so, they freeze on the spot.  That’s what he did that evening.  He froze on the spot and waited for something out of his control to happen.  It didn’t; not for a long time anyway.

Finally, after what seemed like eternity, he could hear a faint voice calling out his name, the voice was familiar!  The audio signal was getting stronger and through the misty drizzle a torch light came into view, the torch carrier was his friend who was very pleased to see him but not nearly as pleased or relieved as he was!  There was another journey to go through, the car ride north from Redruth railway station to a coastal village on the Atlantic Ocean called Perranporth, where lodgings were open-ended, booked as a convenient base to travel by bus to and from college.  The car ride was provided by a Cornish gentleman who owned the lodgings and collecting a paying customer from the railway station inn his rickety old car was part of the service and an excuse to get out of the house for some excitement.

Back at the lodgings, the owner brought out a map of the British Isles and explained where London was, and where the County of Cornwall was; they were more than 400 kilometres apart. He felt his world had fallen apart.  That’s not what he fantasised about or signed up for.  He was stuck at the end of the world and there was nothing sensible he could do about it.  He could think of many ways of getting out of that situation but none of them appealed to him.  They all carried the price of laughter, humiliation and lots of ‘I told you so’.

There was only one course of action: put up and shut up.

Fifty years on, Tuesday 5th January 2021 marks the anniversary of that earlier Tuesday when it all started.  So much had happened since then.  I am still here, living somewhere much less remote than Cornwall.  Like everyone else over a fifty-year period, I’ve had my ups and downs, I failed, failed again, then succeeded, made friends, lost some and kept some.  I married a wonderful woman and we had three children who gifted us three grandchildren.

In summary, I have long mastered the mysterious code of how to live in this country, including speaking the language with more ease than my original mother tongue. Now everything is familiar and manageable.  Sights and sounds are familiar, people are clearly understood, I care about what happens to the country and will it to be successful, whenever I leave either for work or holiday and return, the moment I leave the plane, I am overcome with a feeling of being home.  For me, this is HOME.