– 1993 –

I quit my apartment and my job in London before we flew to Jamaica to get married. When we came home, we went to live in Malta and moved in with Mrs Clown’s family until we could find a place of our own.

One day, Elena took us out to see a friend and on the drive back, she said…

“We just need to stop at the thing to get the thing.”

…but as we drove, Mrs Clown got agitated.

“There’s a party isn’t there! Grrr.
I told you we didn’t want a party…”

We went into the party hall and about half of Malta was there for our secret wedding party. My Maltese wasn’t that great at that time so when Mrs Clown introduced me to every single guest, about all I could say was:

Grazzi ħafna talli ġejtu!
(thank you for coming)

Eventually, my lovely new wife abandoned me with her brother and three bottles of red wine, and told me I needed to get ready for my speech. My Maltese wasn’t very good, so Mario said he’d help me. I managed most of it on my own, but I asked Mario how to say “I am as pissed as a fart!” in Maltese and I opened with that.

“Imbewwel daqs bassa…”

They didn’t find it nearly as funny as Mario and I did, but I continued bravely and when I got to the end, I told them they were “all very naughty” for giving us a surprise party.

Intom kulħadd pastaz!

But, it turned out, pastaz doesn’t quite mean naughty. It’s much closer to vulgar or wicked. They didn’t like that either.

For weeks after, people would stop me in the street and say “So you think I am wicked, Kevin?”

Life went on in Malta and we began to settle down but… did you ever see My Big Fat Greek Wedding?

My new relatives smothered me with love. If I fancied a beer, half a dozen cans of Hopleaf would appear in the cupboard. If I went for an interview, a friend of a friend of the man across the street had already called to tell them I was coming.

We were looking for a flat in Sliema but Uncle Leli’s sister had a place up the road where we could stay, and everything was sorted before I even got to see it. It had “between a well and a reservoir” underneath (I still don’t know what that means).

Mrs Clown and I were out shopping in Hamrun one day when we decided it was all getting a bit too much and we decided to move on.

We didn’t know where we wanted to go, though, so we made a list. Australia, Singapore, France, Italy, England, Madagascar — all places we had talked about living, and we made a little matrix with countries across the top and features down the left to help us decide. There were maybe ten features — weather, jobs, salary, language, distance to relatives, etc — and we gave them all marks out of ten and added up the scores.

We were as shocked as you are now when England came out on top, and we made our plans to leave. We didn’t really have many possessions — just a couple of suitcases and a saucepan that Mrs Clown’s mum gave us.

When we arrived at Gatwick, they took us off to the little interview room for illegal immigrants. It hadn’t occurred to me that I couldn’t take my wife home with me.

Why do you have a saucepan?

Er… to cook with…?…

How long are you planning to stay?

Er… forever…?…

They left us in that interview room for ages, and we checked our list of possible countries again while we waited. But, eventually, they came back and just said…

Go on. You can go.

So we went. We rented a car, and off we drove.

We didn’t really have a destination in mind but I thought it would be nice out West somewhere and we drove. As we passed Bath, I told Mrs Clown that it was supposed to be lovely there (I had never been), but it was such a glorious day, we kept driving.

Bristol? Nah, keep driving.
Taunton?
Exeter?

As we drove past all those lovely little cities, I said,

Plymouth is nice. My friend Kev lives there and he has a lovely Portuguese wife, Tusha. You’ll like her. Let’s go to Plymouth.

We stayed in the Kynance Hotel on Plymouth Hoe and after a bit of a misunderstanding where we thought we were sleeping in the closet under the stairs, we went down to the Barbican for dinner. The Barbican is a little haven on the edge of the harbour that is centuries old and all cobbled streets and listed buildings.

Over a pizza, we asked the waitress if she knew of anywhere to live.

Oh! Mr Daniels just up the road has a little flat for rent! It’s over the grocery store.

We moved in the next day.

Living in the Barbican was brilliant!

We were in a first-floor flat (2nd floor, for Americans) overlooking Southside Street which — if you like a rowdy, raucous, riotous atmosphere — is the best street in the world. It’s lined with pubs and restaurants and it’s right by the harbour. New Street — about 700 years old — ran behind our flat, and The Mayflower sailed for America from the quay at the end of our street.

There was always something going on, and all the residents sat on the outside of their window sills, with a can of beer and legs dangling down, to watch the excitement below.

The two lovely young ladies in the flat across the street from us always put their makeup on in the window opposite us, and they were always stark naked. It was a great place to live.

A favourite event was The Bruce Forsyth Appreciation Society where 25 half-drunk blokes staggered down the street dressed as Bruce saying “Nice to see you. To see you nice!” every few yards. There was something new every night. It always involved lashings of beer.

There were parties, pub crawls, fights. We once saw two blokes being beaten up by seven blokes and every time they were left for dead in the street, they would get up and fight some more.

Mrs Clown’s favourite was the artist, Mr Lenkiewicz, who lived around the corner from us. He painted beautiful young women naked, and always painted himself leering in the background. Mrs Clown wanted to model for him.

His best picture was an enormous mural on a wall in our street. It was like Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and featured all the members of Plymouth Council doing obscene things to each other and pooping on each other’s heads. I think they had upset him about something.

After a few months of living above Mr Daniels, we were able to buy a flat of our very own on Plymouth Hoe, but I’ll save that story for next time.