During my childhood the electricity on my island in the Caribbean was only in the homes of the rich folk and on the street. Poor people like my mother just had a kerosene lamp. Which you had to buy and it was very expensive.

My mother was a farm labourer. My father died when I was nine or ten. There were seven children and my mother in the house.

The kerosene was expensive. So to save fuel we didn’t light the lamp til the last minute. On moonlit nights we sat outside in the front garden. At the side there was this big flat rock. It was our stage. And when we started at Primary school, to check on our progress my mother made us stand on the rock and recite something to show what we had learnt, sing a song or one plus one is two, simple things. And we all got a clap but we’d see who got the longest clap.

At the end of the evening we’d tell ghost stories. And when we were all scared someone had to go behind the house and get the chamber pot as there was no indoor toilet.

I started off as a Primary school teacher then transferred to Secondary school, teaching modern languages. I had a house and car and I was getting settled.

But in 1989 there was a hurricane, which took half my house. With the insurance I managed to rebuild it. Then in 1995 there was a volcanic eruption. My house was right in the line of fire. This was in Montserrat, which is a British Colony.

Two thirds of the island became unsafe and uninhabitable, due to the vast amounts of volcanic ash and lava and the constant spurts of violent eruptions. So people were scared and wanted to leave.

We wondered where to go. Perhaps to England, the Mother Country. They were supposed to help us but didn’t seem to want us to come. They just gave us food vouchers. You had to queue to get your groceries in brightly coloured plastic bags. You couldn’t use the vouchers to buy alcohol. But my alcohol was non-alcoholic cider. That was the first thing I got with my voucher.

After a year England said "Ok you can come" and I came in 1996 when I was 44. They said you had to have someone to stay with initially and then you can apply for a Council house.

At first British Airways reduced the fares. And then after the second Volcanic eruption when 19 were killed the UK they paid for people to come.

My journey to Leeds lasted almost 24 hours. First to Antigua, then London and on to Leeds on a National Express Coach.

When I arrived in Leeds I forgot my second suitcase in the coach. I reported it in the coach station and retrieved my case the following morning. The coach driver told me he did not understand how anyone could forget such a large case.

At first I could not understand what English people in Leeds were saying. The combination of their accents and the actual words they used seemed like a foreign language. The official language in Montserrat is English but this sounded nothing like what I was used to.

The Housing Manager told me there was no flat available for me. When I pointed out that I had seen lots of empty houses in the neighbourhood, he said: “Oh, that is not a very clever area. I cannot put you there.” A friend had to explain to me what the word “clever” meant in that context.

Most of the local people I met were pleasant and welcoming. But I quickly learned that they did not like to be greeted first. If I greeted them first they would act as if I had not spoken.