Meg Mathews

Short Biography

I was raised in Guernsey but my parents decided to emigrate to South Africa when I was eight because they thought we might have a better life there. Dad was a carpenter and South Africa wanted immigrants with a trade. We lived in a lovely rented three-bedroom cottage among acres of a vineyard where dad worked. It was great, but I never had colour television, up-to-date shoes or any of the things other children around us had.My parents scrimped and saved to send me to private school; the only mixed school in the area. There was apartheid everywhere else and children living nearby weren't allowed to come back and play at my house because we lived too close to the black workers. I could never understand that.Although my parents couldn't afford to give me material things we did have the most amazing holidays. We went camping a lot and travelling to amazing places in Africa like the Kalahari Desert, the Okavango Delta and Victoria Falls. Then I went to boarding school in Norfolk. When I went to art college in Norwich I couldn't get a full grant, so I worked in a fish shop at weekends.