We came together, Lucia and I, in the classroom of a school teaching English as a Foreign Language. What was I doing there? Teaching to earn some money while doing a very part-time doctorate. What was she doing there? Learning English as a Foreign Language.

This was in Brighton or rather Hove – the posh end of town known locally as ‘Hove Actually’.

How did I get to be in this great city of Brighton and Hove? It seems like a long story but really wasn’t as part of the bigger picture. It has much to do with the Weinbaum Furniture Company in Commercial Road in the East End of London. The store took up a full block and Sidney Street ran along one side. This is where the famous siege took place also called the Battle of Stepney, the first time the government called in the army to help the police after a civil stand-off. Two Latvian revolutionaries holed up in a house there after managing to kill three policemen during a failed robbery. The battle lasted some six hours. It really was a firefight as the building caught light and the fire brigade had to be called.

My grandfather on my mother’s side was a salesman and he founded the business. He sold German gas masks to the British army before World War 1, arguing that only the Germans had masks designed for German gas. One of his sayings was: “It’s easy to sell something you have to someone who wants it. Only a salesman can sell something he doesn’t yet have to someone who doesn’t yet know he wants it”. One piece of advice I recall was that, if buying, you must actively not want the item, must always be willing, even eager, to walk away. Advice I have not always been able to follow.

He was a great one for outer show. My mother had a fur coat she didn’t want to wear and there was always the Austin Sheerline sitting outside with the chauffeur at the wheel. He never taught my father how to run the business and it went bust. My feeling is that he hated going into “the shop” as much as I did although it did well for a good while. There was the furniture store and rounds business and eventually 7 shops is Wales. They were his / our downfall as the Hire Purchase debt was paid for but not bought and resulted in considerable lost income. After this failure of training it was decided that my brother would become a solicitor and I an accountant so no such weakness could manifest itself again. So off I went to do my articles at which I was notably bad. I trudged into the centre of London every day to struggle through incomprehensible ledgers of double-entry book keeping until the middle of the afternoon when I would make my way the library of University College where my brother was studying law to do the day release courses and prepare for the exams. I passed the exams but, as soon as the four years were up – at the end of August –  I was off to university – at the beginning of September. I got in by the seat of my pants on the questionable merits of a couple of essays and a poem or two. The truth is they were looking for mature students as the politics of the time suggested.

I sometimes think of my father’s as a lost generation. He played the ‘cello – the instrument that is still doing sterling service in the hands of my sister and was – along with his brothers – there were eight of them – were the Maccaby Choir which even made some dozen 78s one of which I still have. He led the synagogue choir for 40 years. My memory was of watching the services below from the choir gallery. When he retired, he leaned to read score music and joined the Royal Philharmonia Chorus and later, also the John Aldiss Choir, a chamber group. We went to many a memorable rehearsal.  My father was also, if quite untrained, somewhat of an artist, a skill I have singularly failed to inherit but which my sister has in spadefuls and my daughter also.

He was said to have married ‘up’ as he had left school in his mid-teens and she had a degree and a wealthy father. All they really wanted was to start a small goods shop where they would know what they were doing and build up from there but that, of course, was ruled out by my grandfather.

Well, I did my degree in literature and a masters in philosophy (on Edmund Husserl and time). You can’t really read literary texts without asking yourself about creativity and language and so you are gently nudged into philosophy. The strangest thing is that, as soon as you begin to read the great texts in the subject, you discover what brilliant writers they were. The text is all. Well, I had to live while I was doing my very part-time doctorate on Keats and so taught English to foreign students for whom Brighton was a popular destination. And I was doing exactly that when she walked into the classroom. A coup de foudre certainly on my part although it did take a bit more persuading on hers.

I eventually got my doctorate which was also published. My first!