By day, this mild-mannered office manager is pushing paper, but by night he's rocking to Black Sabbath, AC/DC, or whatever comes into town - like Deep Purple.
l lot that Royal Air Force Flight Sergeant Chris Swain of the British Embassy can look forward to in his job. Day in, day out, he works behind a desk in a shirt and tie, running “all the administrative functions of the [embassy’s] Defense Section: budgets, travel of Defense Section staff on deployments, travel of Ukrainian military officers to the UK for courses and other things,” he says. “It’s the usual crap that military men get.”
Swain stopped by for lunch at Da Vinci Fish Club at the top of the Andriyivsky Uzviz on a recent sunny afternoon. By day he manages the local affairs for the RAF in Kyiv, where he’s been since January 2002, but on Friday after work he loses the shirt and tie and parties as the chair of the British Embassy’s Cave Inn pub community. This is his life. Swain loves rock ‘n’ roll. His favorite tee-shirt reads “Black Sabbath ruined my life,” and he’ll be at the upcoming Deep Purple concert at the Sports Palace, along with 33 other friends and co-workers.
“One of my friends asked where we’ll be sitting at the concert,” Swain says. “I told him ‘You don’t sit at a rock concert!’ We’ve got standing-room only tickets. We’ll be down in the mosh pit with all the other nutters!”
Swain remembers basking in a fountain in Rome after the European Cup final in 1977, when his beloved Liverpool Reds beat Borussia Moenchengladbach of Germany 3-1. He fondly recalls dressing up for the tongue-in-cheek “Monuments Tour” in the summer of 2002 and getting his photo taken at various city monuments with Ruth Wiseman and dozens of other expats. He’ll be in the stands for the next Dynamo Kyiv Champions League home match. And these days he uses the Cave Inn to promote worthy local and British charities.
As for the Oct. 30 concert, he says with a grin: “All I want to hear is ‘Child in Time.’”
Life as a Liverpudlian
Swain, 43, was born in 1961 in Liverpool, “the city of the Beatles,” as he calls it, but he grew up in nearby St. Helen’s. For the first six years of his life he followed his dad, a merchant marine, to various ports of call around the world, but though his family name calls to mind naval terms (“boatswain,” “coxswain”), Swain says he doesn’t really have a naval pedigree. It turns out his father, who died in a plane crash when he was just 12, was adopted.
But Swain’s mother Janice is alive and kicking. She works in Liverpool as the accountant and payroll manager for Lyndon, the older of Swain’s two younger brothers, a successful businessman in Liverpool. His other younger brother, Carlton, works as a scientist in California, at a high-tech laser technology firm.
“But I’m still their big brother,” he says of the two younger men, a glass of Slavutich (Hr 13 for a half-liter) in his hand. “Everyone respects their big brother.”
“I joined the military straight out of school and I used to come home on weekends and give my brothers a little bit of money from my pocket for spending money,” Swain says. “I don’t think they ever forgot that.”
Moving Up and Out
It didn’t take long for Swain to get promoted within the RAF, and he was soon stationed at RFB Northolt in west London. It was a prestigious position, but Swain says life in the British metropolis was “incredibly expensive, especially as a young recruit.” He and his first wife, with whom he has two daughters, Samantha, 20, and Amanda, 16, struggled to make ends meet in the big city, and the cost of living in England in general soon made him long for a more adventurous and cheaper life overseas.
“I’ve always loved to travel,” Swain says, “and I joined the military because it was a great way to see new places. It’s also a bit ironic that by living overseas I get more and better quality time with my daughters. The reality is if I were at home in the UK, I’d see them for maybe an hour once a week.”
Swain’s eyesight prevented him from flying for the RAF, and so he got involved in the social scene. During various overseas postings – in Labrador, Canada, eastern Turkey in the early 90s, and northern Iraq in 1996 – he’s either attended all manner of social events or organized them for other enlisted men and women. At his last posting before Ukraine, at RFB Northolt in 1998, Swain ran the Junior Ranks Club, a social club for low-ranking soldiers. Every function there, he says, ended up collecting money to be donated to local charities. Almost as soon as he arrived here, Swain started doing the same thing at the Cave Inn.
After cutting a slice from his Diavola pizza (Hr 42), Swain recalls his first night at the basement pub.
“The first night I had one customer and nobody came in. It was awful,” he says. The place over-charged for beer and for all kinds of drinks, so nobody used the place. But it had potential in his eyes, and to kick-start the pub he immediately halved the prices and did away with the club membership fee. Swain quickly got acquainted with the local pubs and expats in Kyiv and sought the advice of local pub manager Robin Attryde to make the Cave Inn even better. Soon he had a program of events going at the pub – quiz nights, concerts by ex-pat cover band Speeding Lisa, and more recently cinema nights – and he always encourages people to come out, especially since most of the events are free.
“If people know there’s a constant [hangout], they’ll come,” he adds.
Ever Forward
As a quiz master, Swain has written the quizzes for the past two Pechersk International School Quiz Nights, and when the British Embassy got a new DVD player and surround-sound theater system installed in the pub, the movie nights grew in popularity. Their best-attended event yet was a screening of Steven Spielberg’s “Jaws” back in the summer. He says the place was “mobbed.”
Over time Swain has gotten more and more involved in expat events and life in general in Kyiv, and his previous charity work has helped him establish a climate of giving here. Often, in fact, he hears of a charity event that took place in the city and he tries to start a collection at his next event for the same cause.
The first charity event Swain organized at the Cave Inn, in the spring of 2002, was for the British Heart Foundation. Subsequent events have benefited cancer research in Ukraine, the United Nations’ “Race for Life,” for which they raised $600 this year, and most recently Habitat for Humanity – a non-profit organization that works to house the homeless. His next goal is to surpass the total they raised last year (about Hr 2,300) for the war veterans of the Royal British Legion. The Cave Inn’s next big event is a Halloween costume party set for Oct. 29.
Swain’s contract in Ukraine expires this October and it will be time for him to leave, but he’s hoping to stay overseas and he doesn’t care where he ends up. He’s written a series of exams for the British Foreign Office in hopes of leaving the military behind and joining the Foreign Office.
“It’s hard to believe I’ve been in Kyiv for almost three years,” Swain says finishing his pizza. “Life just flies by here. It’s definitely a Kyiv thing.”
Da Vinci Fish Club
12 Volodymyrska, 490-3434.
Open daily from 11 a.m. till
midnight.
English menu: Yes.
English-speaking staff: Yes.
Cave Inn Fancy Dress Party
Friday, Oct. 29, 7 p.m.
British Embassy, 9 Desyatynna.
Free admission.
For more information, please e-mail: [email protected].
