So when you’ve bagged a four man table to yourself it’s only fair you invite other lonesome wonderers to join you. Try it, conversational roulette if you will.

On one particular occasion an elderly gentleman sat opposite me and began off-loading his woes. He was struggling to accept his grandson’s decision to apply for Eton College given his personal anti-elitist viewpoint. At this point I scrapped the idea to share my morning’s frustration, after my son had thrown the entire bog roll down the loo – it would have been far too middle-class. I played it safe and we talk the architectural flaws of Waitrose and the gradual demise of Marks and Sparks.

After some time he looked at me and in a well-considered manner asked ‘Do you consider yourself British?’ The plain and simple answer would be, yes I do; but nothing is ever as cut and dry as that. For the rest of the day one question kept knocking about in my head. Who am I?

My Indian grandparents swannied off to live the British-African dream where they worked the ranks and adopted some of the Ugandan culture. Life was peachy until Idi Amin came into power and they, along with my parents, were turfed out to start at the bottom of the English food chain (if you’re interested, The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden explains all). I’ve lived in England all of my life and my husband lived in Hong Kong for a short stint. So, three and four generations later, a lot of sugar and spice has been added to the primordial soup.

Apart from being a bit of confused blather, this penny dreadful does offer some sort of point. And it’s this; do we move with the times or enforce traditions onto our offspring as their dutiful obligation?

After much deliberation I came to the conclusion that we’re the product of many cultures and perspectives, fused into one big celebratory affair (any excuse for a knees up). We’re tribal by instinct and so as a race we crave a sense of belonging; but, rather that worrying which camp I belong to I relish the fact that I can be a cultural chameleon.  We have so much herataige to be proud of and others to learn from.

Surely, whatever we decide to teach our children, it needs to be galvanised with a sense of appriciation and camaraderie, not just for their own beliefs, but others as well.

All I really know is that on a library form I’ll continue to tick British and occasionally flip hot chapati’s in my kitchen.

Love,
Nina x