I arrived in England with 4 still wet t-shirts because I didn’t have time to wash and I left all the past behind. I knew…I had enough of it.

I have to say who has ever lived in the U.S.S.R. whatever you do after is great. I can’t say I had a great life during the U.S.S.R. I don’t know why but it was so censored, everything on every level. I love Soviet attributes and style, and Rodchenko’s style of all the posters, because it created such a unique culture in the vacuum society, which, it has become art. But life in it, I don’t think it was great. It was great for an average thinking person but whenever you wanted to go different way, you were blocked.

I graduated from University and next day I jumped on a coach to Britain. So I got a coach from a big city in Ukraine called Lviv and it took 36 hours. I remember when I got clearance at immigration and we got on the ferry from Calais to Dover and I didn’t talk to anyone the whole journey. And then it was sunrise and it was 5 o’clock in the morning, it was such a warm day, and there was this guy travelling as well and he looked different and he didn’t talk to anyone. I got so curious about him because I felt he had something ‘Westerned’, something Western about the way he looked, the way he thought. We started chatting and he said to me “Study, it is the only thing that will push you forward”. And those words have always rung in my head like a wake up bell.

There were people on the coach with Ukrainian jams and honey and stuff, I hated it because they were bringing luggage, I felt they didn’t want to change. I arrived in England with 4 still wet t-shirts because I didn’t have time to wash and I left all the past behind. I knew…I had enough of it.

I remember the day I arrived in England and I remember it felt it was home. I didn’t know where, what, it was. It was the smell, it was the air temperature, it was even the way people behaved, it was the perfumes they were wearing. It was such a shock for me to where I came from and where I ended up — and it was such a great beginning of the journey, it was such an unknown beginning of the journey but I knew it was going to be a great journey.

The reason why Britain is so important to me is Britain allowed me to be myself and that’s why Britain became this haven for me which has…which is important to me in so many different ways. I always said that Britain is the Step-Mother you always wished to have. It is the best Step-Mother you can have.