As I read I Roula’s article, I could not stop myself comparing her experiences of being ‘a citizen of nowhere’ with my own. There are some differences between us of course but also very many similarities, some of which are referred to in the commentary below. 

As was Roula, I was a child of the early 1950s but unlike her I was not born in the UK but in Cairo, into an extensive Greek family which had lived and worked in Egypt as pilots on the Suez Canal since its opening in 1869.  We came to England in 1955 and lived in North London, but rather separately from the Greek community already well established in the area.  We were close both geographically and socially to the Lentakis family and I remember being aware as a child that both Keti and my Aunt were heavily involved on some kind of Greek organisation(!), although that meant nothing to me at the time. 

I was thrust at the age of seven into very traditional though rather minor private boarding schools from which I emerged a decade or so later with little knowledge of Greek culture or language. I had experienced the former only occasionally when we visited family in Greece, and at home my parents invariably had spoken English to me because I had become accustomed to speaking English to everyone, including them.  

I left school with a deep embarrassment of my surname, an emotion which in certain circumstances can suddenly re-emerge even to this day.  As Roula suggests, in the 1950s and 1960s children with foreign names tended to have a difficult time at school. Whether I experienced racism there or just childhood bullying I still do not know.  My surname (only surnames were used) was deemed hopelessly unpronounceable by my fellow-pupils and some teachers too.  At prep school my name was reduced to Connie. This seams reasonable now and appeared logical at the time but it was generally used behind a barely hidden smirk and it was only in my final year there that I learnt that it was a girl’s name.  At public school the boys gave up altogether and I was derided as a “greasy-Greek” and given a nickname which was nasty both at the time and nowadays too, and is now non-PC to boot. 

(As an aside, I was reminded of this some 20 years ago when I asked a local for directions to St John’s Stavropegic Monastery in Essex.  “Why do you want to got there”, he asked, “are you a Brussel?”  “Brussel?” I asked, “Yes”, he replied.  “Brussels sprout.  Bubble and squeak.  Greasy Greek”.) 

Contrary to Roula’s early years’ experience of moving seamlessly between cultures, during my childhood and right up to my young adulthood I barely thought of Greece or Greeks other than in association with family holidays. At school there had been nothing Greek except incomprehensible lessons in a language which sounded nothing like the one my parents spoke, and at home I was an only child on a short leash. After school came a marine engineering apprenticeship in County Durham and then University in the Midlands. Thereafter in my parent’s initially disappointed eyes, I committed two fundamental errors by marrying an English girl from a practicing Anglican family (ie she was Not Greek, and she was Not Orthodox!).  Nevertheless this was fine by me; after all, ten years at boarding school with daily morning and evening prayers leading to an adolescence and early adulthood far from any thing and any person Greek made me very comfortable with ‘not Greek’; and a deepening interest in theology and the Perennial Philosophy made ‘not Orthodox’ perfectly inconsequential. 

By this time my parents had moved into a flat scarcely 100 yds from Aghia Sophia in Bayswater, in which we were married in a ceremony preceded by an Anglican wedding not two hours earlier, thus calming all waters.  Time passed and each of our children were born in different European countries.  By the time they had reached their early teens it seemed sensible that they and my wife would each adopt Greek nationality, as I would British nationality (which the children had already acquired through their British mother). Thus as a family we would all have the same nationalities in common.  We each jumped through the required hoops and ultimately we had no difficulty either personally or legally in being granted the missing nationality.   I had become naturalised some 40 years after having arrived in the UK. 

Roula touches on racism, which I have also experienced but more openly abroad than in the UK. For several years over different periods spread throughout my professional life as an engineer and then as a management consultant I have lived and worked in a total of five European countries, including those in which our children were born.  Each of the continental countries considered Greeks to be suitable only for temporary menial work (known as Gastarbeiters in Germanic societies) and it was only when the locals learnt of my doctorate eg through the countless application forms that had to be completed for work and residence permits etc that their attitude towards us changed, from derision to utmost respect.  Doors were opened, barriers were lifted, facilities were granted, privileges were bestowed and all without hesitation.  Of course, the racism that we witnessed abroad was nothing compared to that shown to those of other ethnicities either there or here in the UK, but it was certainly hurtful and enough to give us an understanding of what the real thing must be like. 

Together with Roula I also took the Brexit fiasco both personally and seriously. How could I as someone with a non-UK heritage and a deep and wide experience of Europe and speaking 3 1/2 of its languages, have any thoughts and feelings other to Remain? 

As is the case for Roula, I have been reclaiming more of my Greekness as I have grown older. My nostalgia for the language, culture and socio-political history of Greece increased throughout my later middle-age and continues now well into my retirement. This has been strengthened by my long-since and active return to Orthodox Christianity.  This includes ten years Serving the priest of our Orthodox Community in the Midlands and also by my concurrent 20-yr Chairmanship of its Trustees. It is accompanied by my regret that I still speak the language barely adequately and that I cannot yet relate fully to the cultural and social heritage on which Greek community life is based. 

In summary I would describe the nature of the push/pull relationship between the Greek and British worlds that I have experienced by observing that in Greece I feel as though I am a tourist ‘looking in a (Greek) window’ with Roula, but in the UK I feel as though I am Stoppard’s ‘not quite accepted’.  Yet it is an immense privilege to be on this very rickety bridge between the two wonderful worlds.  It shows me that whilst I have been nurtured by all the joys and advantages of the British way of life, the depths of my nature have remained Greek.  Immovable and incorruptible within me I find all the weight of the culture and civilisation which have founded this Western world in which I live.