Leaving Melbourne and why I hate football

The memory of a formative experience just popped into my head.

When I was a child I lived in Melbourne, Australia for almost 3 years. When I was 7 1/2 my dad's contract was coming to an end, and my parents decided we'd move back to the UK. I remember I finished at my primary school, which was just over the road opposite my house, a few days before we flew back. I guess I finished on the Friday and we flew the following Weds or Thurs of the following week.

It was December, summer time. Our house (pictured above) was a bungalow in the middle of a plot of land. It had a lawn at the front that Dad eventually covered over with pebbles, a lawn at the side with a veranda looking out over it, a concrete bit at the back that we had a sandpit on, and a drive on the remaining side. I remember early that final week, two days before we flew, I was playing in the front garden while my parents presumably did *moving to the other side of the world* things. I looked over the brick wall at the front of the house and saw that all my friends were lined up along the school's fence on the other side of the road, waving at me and smiling. I waved back. That memory lives in eternal sunshine in my mind - the warmth of the summer day, the happiness of seeing my friends smiling one last time, the excitement of going back to a place I barely remembered (I was 4 when we left the UK).

Funnily enough, it looks like the same fence on Google street view. And with the sun glaring through the trees, it does reflect some of the dreamy character my 25 year old memory has. I have to admit I don't remember there being nearly as much plantlife on that green slope going up to the school. Those trees are much more domineering than I recall. I wonder how much they've grown in the intervening 25 years?

I only remember two of the friends that stood at the fence now. Sam, who was quite a small kid and clever, and Vas, who had Greek parents with strong accents. I don't remember his actual name but he was headstrong and funny, and we both vied for control of our group of friends and spurred each other on to mischief.

Leaving Australia and my friends behind was something I drew upon when I wrote a few songs about the migrant crisis - it's the closest thing in my own experience I could get to the idea of leaving your life behind, however much it pales and however far removed it is in comparison to the experiences of actual refugees. This song in particular was inspired when I thought about where my Australian friends might be today.
I don't remember anything about the flight home whatsoever. I do remember my Grandad picking us up from one of the London Airports to drive us back to Rugby. It was freezing, night time, light snow was falling and the streetlights were wane and yellow. Not a great showing for the UK, truth be told.

A couple of weeks later I was in the depths of winter in the UK, surrounded by strangers in my new school and trying to fit in. In Australia, a nation of immigrants, everyone had the accents of the countries their parents were from. In Rugby I was the weird newcomer who came from the other side of the world but had a Scottish accent. And everything was different - the culture, the way people interacted, the teaching methods. I didn't do very well academically the following year.

I think I took a few things away from that time, however. Things which still stick with me now. Firstly, the way I deal with endings and goodbyes. They're often sad, but there's a poetry to them as well. If things didn't end, they couldn't be special. Pick any person, any activity, any event that you care about. One day will be the last time you see that person, do that thing, witness that event. Sometimes you know it at the time, more often you don't. And afterwards, you might wonder if in knowing you'd have appreciated it more. You might get lost in nostalgia, yearning for the good old days, even annoyance that you let it slip through your fingers. Of course, if we actually acted like everything was ending, we couldn't live in the moment and times of magic would lose their purity.

Second, I've got a slight jealousy for people who feel like they belong in a place. I don't think I have roots. There's a Captain Horizon song called "My Town" which deals with that. Whitty, the singer in my band, is *of* Birmingham. He has the accent, he has the outlook, he has the memories of the place going right back to the beginning of his life, and his parents are of it too. I am not *of* Rugby. The town has only ever mattered as much as my relationship with the people that live in it. My parents moved there when they were in their 30s.

Thirdly, and probably amusingly for people who know me, I think it's where I learned to dislike football. In my school in Melbourne, at break times everyone played all kinds of different sporting activities and also did other things - just ran around, explored the school grounds, chatted and laughed and argued. The school grounds were on a hill. At the back was an embankment covered in trees and bushes that led up to the back fence, we had fun getting lost in there. At the side of the school, running down the hill, was a ditch that turned into a stream when it rained. We played at damming it up with leaves, branches and the clay mud that covered the area, turning into a bunch of 6-year old civil engineers over a week of break and lunchtimes.

In Rugby, everyone played football all break time. Everyone played football all lunchtime. The playground was a flat, empty field. At the corner there were some picnic benches. I didn't care about football, I'd never played it. Nobody was prepared to *not* play football. I didn't like that.

Of course, eventually I settled in and made friends. It helped that 9 months later, we all moved up to year 4 and from primary to middle school. In the new environment everyone was plunged into, there was enough novelty and social turbulence to forge myself a place in friendship groups. But that time, from January to August '93, I think was an important one because it might be one of the last incidences that forged my psyche - the way I deal with the world. You know that saying, "Show me the child at 7 and I'll show you the man?"

I think it's interesting, the way a minor event such as a child moving abroad can cast such long shadows. To this day, I have a slight disconnect with my surroundings and the situations I find myself in. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Not really. I am who I am, and I'm comfortable with that. However, it's only natural to be curious. sometimes I played the what if? game. Who would I have become if my family had stayed in Australia? Who would I have become if I had never gone there at all?