“You from Trinidad! But you not half-caste!”

“I’m sorry?”

Walking out of Brixton tube station and into the rain, my forlorn pink umbrella, long conquered by the wind, hanging uselessly by my side.

“Excuse me miss!”

The voice, polite and distinctly not English, cut through the insistent chorus of skunkweedtravelcardsgetyourhighgrade.

I paused. An older man, in his 60s, and dressed in the fashion of the dapper older man, smiled at me, umbrella extended in greeting. “No sense in getting the locs wet. Come, I walk you to the bus stop.”

“You are very kind,” I said, awkwardly, guiltily thrusting one hand into my pocket to check that my wallet was still there.

“You from Trinidad! But you not half-caste!”

“I’m sorry?” I said, deafened by the wind and the rain and Brixtonian confusion.

“You not half-caste – you know, dougla, mixed!”

“Oh! Oh, yes, haha!”

There was my bus, there was I stammering out the usual explanation, taken aback by the phrase, wondering at the implications.

“Thank you, that was very kind.”

I ran.

Continue reading Young and black in Babylondon: part three →

“I’m sorry, did you say you worked for the…?”

An arched eyebrow, a quizzical look, a quick reappraisal of the dreadlocks, the accent (could she be American? perhaps Welsh?), the attitude, the general foreign-ness.

“Oh! Well!”

And so on, and such like.

It’s not that I’m the only black person in the building, at these conferences I attend, or the events I often cover. It’s just that I’m often the only one not waiting tables, or collecting coats, or generally clearing up the detritus of the Establishment.

Surprise surprise, for I am unaccountably articulate, and bright and clean, and I work in the very heart of a City where “diversity” does not quite look like me.

“So are you going home to Jamaica for the holiday?”

“I’ve never been to Jamaica, but I am looking forward to going back to Trinidad.”

Smile brightly, look them right in the eye.

“So, what do you speak in the Caribbean? African?”

But sometimes you have to blink.