I have to be very careful here but let me take you back to 1992. I was in Year 5 at Lansdowne County Middle School. Please note the system in Buckinghamshire was different then; we went to secondary school from Year 8, not Year 7. Therefore, I still had two years left. Since this occurred over 30 years ago, the school is now combined with my first school, Shelburne, to become Chepping View, and is not at all related to this story. It was a music lesson. The white teacher pointed out that black people have ‘riddim’. She then selected the two (of a handful of) black boys in my class. She gave them some instruments to play. I am sorry I cannot remember the exact instrument(s). Even my amazing memory is starting to fail at the tender age of 43. In any case, regardless of whether they did not show any natural talent. She ended by saying something along the lines that the “talent” may have missed their genes. Even as a young 10-year-old Asian boy in leafy Buckinghamshire, I knew this was an awkward situation. I couldn’t identify it as racism. Maybe people will now begin to understand the struggle for BAME in this country in the early 90s. If this is happening in a school. Imagine what it must have been like out in the workplace. How did I feel? I felt extremely uncomfortable from the entire experience. However, I consider it a bullet dodged because the teacher had not picked on me. I have less music talent than my peers, whom were picked on, but I also felt, she would never have tried to do the same with an Asian girl or boy, because our numbers were relatively high for a middle school in the South East England at that time in history (probably greater in number now). As an adult, looking back with the hindsight of some thirty-three years, I feel a little sorry for her. What was she trying to achieve? What was her objective in this moment of sheer madness? Did she want to make a point that Black people do truly have ‘natural talent’ for music or instead, as it played out belittle two young boys at the most impressionable age they could, in a classroom of their peers. Why choose to embarrass them? Why choose to begin your lesson in that way? Was that on the lesson plan the previous evening?

My Dad when accepting jobs, would always end the call – BTW I’m Indian. (Name a slight give away!) But one time, I confronted him on this and said there is no need to disclose this. (Like there are discrimination laws) But I failed to see it from his point of view, the Britain and more specifically England in the Home Counties he had been brought up in was very different to the world then. To bring this full circle as we have so many flags flying around council-owned/maintained lampposts in the Wokingham and Bracknell area. I actually saw a group putting them up one Sunday morning a few weeks ago in Winnersh. They are harping back for a country that I am afraid no longer exists, and I am for one, am glad that is the case. However, if we are truly honest with ourselves that country never existing in the first place, apart from inside their very narrow minds.