Further stories

So, I'm second generation Irish, so both of my parents are Irish Catholics, very religious – sadly no longer with us, but they had me very late in life, so they were forty-three when they had me. But I was brought up strict Roman Catholic. And I think when you're brought up in that atmosphere, I think it goes either of two ways, doesn't it? You either embrace it as an adult or you move away from it. And I certainly moved away from it. I didn't get married in a church, I got married in a registry office. I was estranged from my parents at that stage, so they didn't come to the wedding. I was married for nearly 20 years, and then I gave up that life completely when I was 40 in order to fulfil my dream of having a child, and I moved away from where I was living. So, I completely gave up everything to come to Stony Stratford. So, I had no sense of belonging, really. I came here knowing one person. I had a job in Milton Keynes, at Santander, so I worked for them for 20 years.

I then joined the Local Baptist Church in Stony Stratford, which is now called a community church. A very strong sense of belonging. And I immediately felt at home, immediately felt included, and particularly the emphasis on women, you know, getting involved in the various groups and helping to run some of them. So, a very strong sense of belonging, and that followed through into the school as well. So, when my son came along in 2008, and I was a single parent from when he was born, sadly, obviously a lot going on at the school, a lot to get involved in. So, there was another sense of belonging, but there were two distinct belongings. There was the school and everything that went on there, which was quite rigid, is..., well, was quite rigid. And then there was the church, which was so different. And even my son noticed it, as young as he was. The only slight tension was that my son, who was attending at St Mary and St Giles school, which is obviously a Christian school… there was some conflict at the school, and I won't go into any details, it's well known, it's out there. There were some irregularities, shall we say, and a lot of change happened at the school as a result of what was going on at the church. So, a number of parents took their children out. I didn't. I chose to stay. My son was very happy there. And so, he was attending school activities at the church. But we were going as mother and son to the local community church, which was entirely different, and, I have to say, absolutely fascinating. The things that we got involved in, all of the worship is all part of a-- you have a band, a very lively, very inclusive, lovely, lovely atmosphere, and lots of groups that you can take part in. So I was part of a group of ladies, and the whole idea of the group was that if a lady, any of us, if we were struggling or we needed help, then the others would support you, and pick you up. So very, very inclusive. And we'd meet weekly in each other's houses, lots of different activities with the children. And I then became part of the family fund group where each week we'd have a collection. There'd be two bags, one would be the general collection, and one would be any money that you wanted to give to the family fund, which was specifically for people in our church who may need some support. And it was very private, very respectful. But if you became aware that somebody might be in need, you could make it known to the relevant people and those people would receive some funds completely privately through their front door. They'd have a little envelope. They wouldn't know who it was from necessarily. They just knew it was the family fund, and they would be asked to sort of keep it to themselves type of thing, but it was lovely that you knew that there were people who were in need, who could be helped. So, yeah, absolutely fascinating time.

And then as a result of some experiences that I had, I'm now no longer a member of the church. I have much, much respect and love for the church community. But I'm now a spiritualist and I actually take part in providing reedings to people. It's a bit difficult to explain in a few minutes, but I had some quite prominent and extreme dreams about people, some of them which I knew... And I took the opportunity to contact one of them and say to her, I know this sounds really weird, I know you're going to think I'm mad. I've had this dream about you, I do these readings, would you like one is free of charge, absolutely not offended if you say no, blah, blah, blah. Long and the short was she said yes, she came to see me. It was all true, what I dreamed, and I've enabled her in some ways to fulfil a desire that she had, and it's gone from there. So, I do reedings for people, I often don't charge, and I don't advertise. I don't feel the need to, it is usually word of mouth, it's usually people that come back to me. But yeah, it's a fascinating part of my life and I'm very happy with it. So, yeah, quite a multifaceted religious experience, but yeah, that's me.

When did you come to Milton Keynes?

Milton Keynes, like in 1980, December. And originally from Kenya, Nairobi. Got married in October, 1970, October.

So, you came after getting married?

No, I came to England, and then got married.

Oh, I see. Coming to Milton Keynes in 1980, you know there have been a lot of changes, now it is almost over twenty years. So how did you find the place? Was it welcoming? How were the people?

I think we used to meet very few people. Actually, we used to call this town, a ghostly town. In the evenings we won't see anyone around. And there were very few Indian people, so we were very lonely. I didn't like this place for a long time. First, I broke my bones. And the second thing, it was hard to accept the new city. Because Milton Keynes is like another Bombay. I mean, Leicester is like another place in India. But Milton Keynes was very deserted. We had to go and buy Indian vegetarian food from Leicester or London. No Indian shops. And it was hard for us. You know, when we hear the news on wireless or television, then we would say, ‘why are we treated like this?’ Then, you know, young girls or boys would say, ‘why are you in England then, huh?’ And I said, ‘it's you people have brought us, because you ruled our country for 200 years and we are entitled to be in this country’.

Interviewer: All right.

Maybe we are not we are not very fond of this country because it's cold. The cold hits us the hardest. But we have all the right to be in this country, if we have British citizenship. So, they couldn't say much... one thing I noticed that many English people don't know their own history. They didn't know that the English, I mean the British were in India for so many years. They don't know.

So that that was in the 1980s. Now, how do you find the atmosphere now, in 2000?

Actually, my son has married a white girl. He was seeing this girl behind my back. So, when I said, ‘you have to get married, whoever...’ I didn't know there was a girl behind my back. So, I said, ‘it's high time we look for a girl, genuine girl, and you get married’. And I found one of his photos is the girl. And I showed him the photo. Is this the girl? He said, ‘yes’. I said, ‘bring the girl here, if I like her...’ He liked her alright, but ‘if I like her, you'll have the Indian wedding, I'll accept the girl is my daughter-in-law and she'll be one of the family members’. He brought the girl home and we talked, and I think the girl is alright. Then we ask her and her to bring her parents. The first thing the parents asked, 'I would not like my daughter to be converted'. I said ‘we Hindus don't convert anyone. Is the Christian people or Muslims who convert.’ I said openly. I said if she respects our religion, that's all right. If she doesn't, there is no force. And the girl has taken me, my family, very well. She is getting very fond of vegetarian food, and in fact, we are starting an 'Indian snacks-away' delivered to homes. Right. Well, she has the idea of delivering food stuff at people's homes. I have different idea, I said we should have a restaurant. They've said not yet. But she's very interested in Indian culture, Indian way of life. And luckily, we have compromised with each other that we will never hate me being Indian or her being English. And we are the happiest family.

You’re getting on…

We are getting on very well. Three times a week they come home and eat with me. You know what happened, my son, we had an extra house given on rent, because my son was alone, he didn't have a father, he didn't have a brother. I said ‘we need something, as an asset’. So, we had a house, it was on rent, and she had a big house. She was living in it. Now she says the boy should go to her house. I say ‘that's not Indian way of life’. ‘Either you come and live with me or you buy another house’. Because the house we had was a smaller one.

My story starts with my father. He was born of Greek parents in Wales and went to Cyprus with a colonial servant's service to work. He met my mother, who was a Greek Cypriot, a native as the colonial service would call it the time, and fell in love, married and had a family, as it were. However, we were really not entirely accepted by the British contingent because my father had married a native. But equally, we weren't entirely fitting into the Greek Cypriot bit with my Greek Cypriot mother because of the language and the language problem was around whether we spoke English or Greek. My father absolutely insisted that we speak English at home because he wanted us to be bilingual. And even though my Greek mother was entirely Greek at that point, she had to learn English along with us, and we were simply not allowed to speak any Greek at all at home. And if we did, we would get a slap across the mouth with the back of his hand, which was actually quite painful. Also, so we learnt to speak English to him and at home all the time. And we were christened in the Greek Orthodox Church, and we did attend Christmas and Easter services at that point. And, you know, the culture was there, but we were still one step outside everybody else.

When I was 17 the troubles in Cyprus finished with Cyprus becoming independent, but that meant that my father lost his job. He was chief education officer at the time, and we packed our bags as a family and arrived in London, and it was really, I guess, in a way, a surprise and not a surprise that we were on the outside again, because now we were Greeks in London and we were, again, not quite belonging to anywhere. And there was racist abuse. It was after the fight for independence and all those troubles. And there was a fair amount of prejudice and racial tension there. And I went off to become a physio and I have found a lot of racism amongst my peers. I still remember the old boy, Mr Hawkins, his name was, who told me that he did not want to be treated by a dirty 'Cyp' like me, all of which, you know, was not entirely comfortable. And at that point, I fell in love with my husband, an Englishman. Of course, that was the wrong side of the dividewasn't it, it was the fight against the Brits and in Cyprus, and here I was falling in love with an Englishman.

My father interviewed my husband, he also interviewed his parents to establish quite what they thought of their son marrying a foreigner. And it was my lucky day when they actually said, I don't know, I think something like we hadn't even noticed, which probably wasn't true, but it was enough for my dad to accept that it was OK. And we got married and we have been married for quite a long time, quite happily, actually. So it did work out, even though my parents did not think it was going to be anything but a disaster. We have two children, and right from the start, I felt that I'd married an Englishman, I's settled in England, my children were going to be growing up in England, and whatever happened, I did not want them to have the same kind of issues and problems that I had had, and my siblings as well, about where we belonged, what we were and how we were going to fit in. So in a way, we kind of tried to adjust everything that we did so that we fitted in with the Britishness of the situation.

So my daughter is called Anna, which is an English of the Greek name, and also my mother-in- law's name. So that was following a Greek tradition. The Greek tradition also is that my son would be called after my father, my father was Christoph, so my son was Chris, and so that also worked out quite nicely. But it really was always just a little bit of a balancing act between the Greek and the English, with the English coming up uppermost. We've been married in an English church and now the children are christened the English way in an Anglican church. So, you know, that was the all the time the kind of balancing act, making sure that they were OK and that they were fitting in.

At the same time I think it would be fair to say that we have managed to instill in our children a love of Greek things, Greek culture. We've taken them and the grandchildren to visit monuments and things and kept the myths and talked about things. So they love it. I mean, they are perfectly comfortable. The grandchildren are in a kind of way even more comfortable with where they are. They are a quarter Greek, and they are very happy to be entirely English as far as they're concerned. But they love the food, and they love the family and they love the culture. And when they come to visit, they are always asking for their special dishes to be prepared, and their special things to be done, and the Greek Easter eggs to be dyed, all the traditions that that I've tried to keep going with my children, and we've managed to keep going with the grandchildren. And they are even more comfortable, I would say, with that all than my children are. My children didn't feel quite as comfortable with with all of this. If if we had their friends to tea or birthday parties, they would always request that I didn't do any of my funny things, any of my funny foods or whatever. They did want baked potatoes, baked beans and sausages. 'Please, mother, don't make it any of your fancy silly things because they just won't understand what you're about'. And it a bit sad that things do become diluted down the road of the generations because actually all the time it's my my half of of my children which is being washed out and a quarter of my grandchildren now. And by the time they have grandchildren as well, there won't be any of me left at all.

When the census came, it simply seemed to be just a question of ticking the boxes. And my husband Ewan was doing it for me, and he was asking me the questions and I was giving straight answers. And he comes to the bit about religion. And my reply immediately was, I'm Greek Orthodox. And, you know, no hesitation, no problem at all. I asked myself the question, am I really Greek Orthodox? Because I'm not religious, I'm not... I have values and I have beliefs, but they're not necessarily even Christian, they're my beliefs and the ways that I want to behave and the ways that I think one should behave. And it becomes became really quite a question in my head about why, when there is no rationality to all of this, I still feel that I am a Greek Orthodox. And yet when it came to it, I helped to set up a Greek Orthodox church in Milton Keynes and, you know, I got involved in all of that because I guess it's, I guess it's the culture. A friend of mine was very, very keen to start a church in Milton Keynes. And I thought it would be good for the community rather than the religious side of things. And we worked together, and other people, lots of people were involved. And it was a small community to begin with, mostly Greek Cypriots, which grew gradually, and of course, young Greeks come along later, and they have children, and the children have to be baptised and all the children get married and they also need to go to school. So, there is a Saturday and an evening Greek school for the children. And we have Greek dancing, and we have Greek food nights, and we have huge celebrations at Easter, with all the traditional lambs on spits in, would you believe, Stony Stratford, with everything happening and people walking by and invited to come in. And it's actually an absolutely buzzing, lively, helpful community, which gives people a huge amount of support and I think comfort in being living abroad amongst other people. And where we are at the end of the day, foreigners. But that's the community that belongs together. And the church is very much at the centre of all of that. The really significant thing for me was that my mother, who came to England two or three years at the end of her life, was given a Greek funeral. And it's absolutely wonderful for all of us that she was able to have that because somehow these big events in one's life, you need to go back to your traditions and to your, I think, roots. And the language is also so important in all of that. And it was really super to do that. I'm really, really pleased about that.