This is how I used to serve. There... and I served and when the ball went on the other side they didn 't have time to hit it they came back again to me I can't do it anymore. My mother was Greek and my father was English. British by birth. I was British by birth. When I was born it was the First World War, the Turks were killing all the Greeks and all the population. My father put me in a basket and the British war ships came and took all the British subjects away from there just in time before they killed us. My mother died when I was one year old. My father never got married again. I stayed 6 years there with some relatives of my father. They looked after me and then, we went back to Greece. My grandmother brought me up. My mother's mother until I was 19 or 20 years old when I left. I stayed with her from the time I was 6 years old. Athens is always an international city like Cairo, like London, only in a smaller scale. We had modern theaters. We had restaurants, good restaurants, bad restaurants, old Athens, the New Athens. You know, it was... Things that they don't have here. I used to sing in the big cathedral, Catholic Cathedral, in Athens next to our school and I had a very good strong voice on the choir. Musicals, American musicals, and Fred Astaire. Ginger Rogers... I used to like that but always we used to like dramas. French dramas. Beautiful. The French actors were very good. I used to enjoy opera. These songs and everything. All the Italian singers... The War spoiled everything. I didn't know that I have to leave Greece. The Germans were 1 or 2 days outside Athens. You could hear the firing and we left with the last two boats - all the British subjects, the refugees... A friend of mine he came in his car and said "come on as you are. We have to leave Athens because the Germans are coming. Otherwise, we'll be prisoners, civil prisoners of war." My father was on one boat and I was on another boat. And we went to Egypt. To Alexandria. We stayed in Alexandria for a few days and then they took us to Cairo, as refugees, and the British government put us in hotels. Good hotels. And they were paying us pocket money every week. When I decided to go to India from Egypt, India was under the British. Egypt was a neutral country. So, as soon as we go to India, instead of looking after us as refugees, we were enlisted in the army. They wrote down "volunteers" but we were not volunteers. They pushed us in. Dirty trick that. I joined the Scottish Regiment, the Second Battalion, the border regiment. We were going to Burma and we got on a boat... I'll never forget that. You know, the boats about 10 thousand ton boats - or 15, I don't remember... That many soldiers there, guns and all that and the boat was like that. We're going out of Calcutta and we were going to make a landing in Burma. One bomb, a cannon bomb, the boat would go down. You've got no idea. Anyway, when we went halfway, it came through that the Japanese occupied Burma before we got there, and the boat turned around came back. We were all praying to God. "Thank you!". That's what I say I was very lucky. I was meant to live. I wasn't meant to go. We were there till we were discharged. I was ready to go to America because I had an uncle there and they had the papers ready. Instead, I got a letter telegram from Australia - a good friend of mine. Instead of going to America, I went to Australia. That's how I came here. By boat. It took a long time. We had a couple of submarine... not attacks... enemy submarines. We were in a convoy of a lot of boats and we came to Fremantle. Stayed there for two nights and then we went to Melbourne and then from there to Sydney. And when I arrived here, the first different thing I saw... When I saw women conductors in the... I've never seen women doing jobs like men, you know. I was very surprised. When I went to Australia, the person who brought me to Australia, my friend we were like brothers, he had a coffee lounge with his father and I got in the coffee lounge with him and they taught me how to cook, how to to serve people, and my future wife used to come for her breakfast every morning. She was just discharged from the Air Force and I saw her every day, and because she was so cheeky, people waiting to be served and she used to run in front all the time and we come to know each other. That's all. My upbringing was different to the average English or other nationalities. I was taught that once you're married, you're married for life. And I went with my wife, with my future wife, for 3 years. We both decided to know each other well before we get married. If something I don't like in her and something she doesn't like in me and after 3 years, three and a half years, we found out we can live with other, although we had a couple of small fights, you know, but that was it... That's my wife. That's another favorite. I like it very much. When I first met her, she looked like that. And when she passed away, she looked like that. She still have the youthful face. Always smiling. I thought the world of my wife and she thought the same with me. When you're married for so long, only a few months off 70 years, my wife got sick and she passed away after a couple of years. I have to stop for a little while because I'm overcome. I'm very emotional. Anyway, she was a nice person. I couldn't find any faults on her. She devoted herself for me and her family and all that. And although I was a migrant - at first they didn't know me - but when they came to know me, I was one of them. That's it. I miss my wife I'm living with you now, with my son, and I enjoy watching the grandchildren but it's not the same like you bring up amongst your family. Something is missing. You don't know what is missing. To be in a new country without knowing the language properly, to be penniless... It's very hard to go to a country that you don't have any contacts. My contacts were one or two. Very few. Then you don't know where the next dollar comes from. It's very, very hard. The factories was better for me because I was one in a crowd and all English, no Greeks or anything like that and I had to pick up all the slang language and the swear words and everything. And also I learned the trade. I told them that I was tradesman when I wasn't a tradesman. I didn't have a clue. I was asking the others what to do in the machine I was working. And they tell me. I knew next time, somebody else I knew. I pretended my way through, that's all. I lied a lot, I said a lot of lies. Where's your papers and all that? "I had to swim when the Germans came in. I didn't even have clothes to wear." **** They they were feeling sorry for me... Oh David, it's not easy you know... Life was amazing. Oh God help... I don't think I'll be here but next war will be the destruction. They used to say the same for this war, if there's another war but the atomic bombs and all that. Can you imagine a bomb in New York with all these tall buildings. Be the end of the world I think. God help us. Everybody has the atomic bomb now. That's why people are silly. Instead of being nice to be free to travel to any country, and all that, they're fighting about borders and then... Anyway I would like to see more respect with each other, you know? And you should respect somebody's religion. You should respect dark people. You should respect Chinese. You should respect any nation at all. If I suffer in any way, I like to see you happy. And Emily. Go out, enjoy yourself while you're young, enjoy your children while they're young, even here that I am. Ben and Nina, they grew too quick. Before I know where I am, I feel like I came yesterday here. Look at them. I was looking at Ben and Nina. They're that high now, they're up there. Change. So enjoy, enjoy them now. I wish I knew what's after death. Are we still there? I was brought up to believe in God, in Jesus... People that they were very religious... something happens and they change. I don't know what to say. There's a lot of answers. A lot of questions I have but nobody can give the answers. I'm a drop in the ocean. Like everybody else, I go too.