Race

The only race is the rat race. People ask me from where I came and truthfully I answer Surrey. Where did you come from originally they say
and truthfully I answer that I am originally from Surrey. I grew up in a rare bubble of this country which dealt no racial predjudice or even
acknowledgement in my direction. br />

If I now look back on my primary school class, I was the only child in it who was not pure caucasian, yet I never thought about it and never
felt different in that sense. So like the hand-reared parrot who thinks he's a man, I grew up thinking I was white.

To this day I maintain affiliation with my father's English and Canadian roots. They are the only ones I acknowledge, the Cape-Coloured
in me is dead. The South African Cape-Coloured's are a mix of the indigenous Khoikhoi, Dutch and Malay/ Javanese. From this wide genepool, came my mother, on a long-haul passenger boat to England in
the early 1960's aged thirteen.

My Parents' young romance was violently condemed by my Grandfather (My Father's father). What would be now considered quite horrific racism
now was quite normal back then and my mother being the only black girl in a middle class Surrey Town was no stranger to it.

I could tell the stories here but it would only evoke sympathy and that is not the point. We all forge our own paths in life, mine is the only
one that counts today, the summer heat of 1976 - my growth and success as an alumnus of suburban life.

You may think the story tragic, their etermination to survive heroic (and survive they did) but this story is now mine. It evokes no feelings in me, and my once so racist Grandfather - my only surviving Grandparent is still the Dunkirk hero
in my eyes.

So if you really wanted to know where I'm from take a look through the memory-pages of my life;, the dances and clubs, the infinite laughs,
the restaurants and bars, the dinner parties, the university balls, the livery halls, the music, the poetry, the conferences, the suits. I am
from a place of young, intelligent and beautiful English children.