A Bike With Gears

My earliest memories are of Malawi. I lived there with my mum, my dad (who worked as a lab tech at the Polytechnic in Blantyre) and my little sister. Those memories are rosy. The red, crumbling earth. Flying in a little Cessna plane piloted by my Dad up to Monkey Bay Beach for holidays. I loved my tiny wooden framed school called Hillview, loved the ballet lessons I went to at the fancy hotel in Blantyre called Mt. Soche. My ballet dresses, like all my clothes that weren’t made by my mum, were sewn by a man who sat at the side of the road and made clothes to order. He worked so fast, and we could ask for what we wanted. He would measure us up on the street and the dresses would be ready the next day.

I remember the heat, the flowers, running mainly barefoot, skin against ground. It was physically and mentally completely unfettered, so free. Swimming or sitting on the back of my Dad’s motorbike wearing a thin, plastic police helmet as we zoomed around the garden. No TV, and in a big event twice a year, the Luchenza Flying Club would show a movie. I remember wildfires behind our Limbe house. Crackly local radio playing local music. In the classroom, we called the teachers at school by their first name: “Thanks, Christine. I enjoyed drawing the sun like that. How do you think I should tackle the house?” I learned quickly, reading Tolstoy by age nine.

One day, my parents came to me and said we were going back to Britain. I cried and cried. They told me it wouldn’t be forever; we were going to just spend a short time there and then we would move to Swaziland. But I didn’t want to leave Peter the dog or Thomasina the cat. I didn’t want to leave my friends. My parents told me if I agreed to go back I could have a bike with gears.

Well. That was different. A bike with gears? Worth it. No more complaints from me.

We moved to a working class community in the northeast of England. Near the factories where most people had employment. Grey. Rain. Cold. Concrete. And what was worse was that everyone seemed to know each other. And they all hated me. When I tried to call my teachers by their first names they were horrified. Everything about me was wrong—the way I wrote, the way I sang (loudly and with abandon), and that I had already learned most of the subjects my class was studying.

I hated wearing shoes.

The Swaziland gig for my dad fell through. But Dad still went away, back to Africa, to earn. We saw him rarely.

I was trapped in an opposite-world world to the one I’d grown up in. That other one was vibrant and fun with a happy family, this one was a converse reality. Years stretched. My best friend and I found solace in The Smiths:

“Every day is like Sunday, Every day is silent and grey.”’

Eventually, time conquered the stasis and I went to University in Birmingham. Now things moved quickly. I started a touring theatre company and also worked at some culturally important theatres in the UK—Royal Shakespeare Company, Royal National Theatre, Royal Court. International travel was part of that gig. I was sent to Queensland, Australia to work with a collection of young playwrights.

Immediately I recognised the climate. The heat. The flowers. It’s strange how sometimes one is driven by things beyond conscious logic or understanding. It birthed an obsession to find somewhere like that to live, to work, to raise a family.

Although I was happy working in theatre, I began to stretch my interests.

I moved into film and TV, and as part of that move I came to visit LA for a week. As soon as I stepped off the plane I felt at home. The warm breeze, the palm trees. We walked on the beach barefoot. The beauty quite literally took my breath away.

Looking back, I don’t think I came to Hollywood by chance. I was simply following a path that began in Malawi, long before I knew that places could imprint themselves on you. My parents promised me a bike with gears if I left the only home I’d known. I got the bike. But it took me years to find a home again.

I’ve raised two kids here. They grew up running barefoot in the sun, swimming, singing with abandon, with a backdrop of bougainvillea and wildfires.