It all started in Brixton south London...

I am the fruit produced by an Irish immigrant and the son of a Greek Cypriot immigrant - with a French accent - but that's another story. I recently found out, my grandmother to whom he married and whom I had thought was German, was only half German and that her mother was Irish, but again another story. Suffice to say I'm MORE Irish than I thought. I was born in and spent my formative years (up until the age of 8) in Brixton, before later moving to Peckham. These were alarming times for the place of Brixton. I have clear memories of the rioting in the early 80's. We drove through it to get to my grandparents. This lead to my parents being, understandably in the circumstances over protective and not slightly so, but I would say OVERLY over protective. i. e. I didn't get out much. I was an only child and so, not being allowed out between school hours, I was a bit of a social butterfly. Added to this verbal diarrhoea and you have a pretty clear picture of me as a kid. I don't know when that changed, but I still get verbal diarrhoea it is just the social aspect I'm wary of now. Brixton was filled with colour and culture. I had friends from India, Morocco, Africa and Jamacia. I remember wishing I had binky hair like my friend Rhonda, I'd plait mine, but it still wasn't as binky and beautiful as theirs. As a child, I aspired to be like my multicultural friends, because of the beautiful exotic quality of their culture. I didn't know any different. We went to my Irish grandparents after school, EVERY day (hence driving through the riots) and they lived in a little bungalow behind the barrier block in Brixton (30 odd years later and I still don't know what those flats are actually called - yet I remember the phone number there, 01 737 2586 ADHD memory is weird) I digress. In the summer the barrier block was like a huge speaker pumping out reggae and it was awesome! So I love lovers rock, naturally, but also those old reggae tunes, better known in Jamacia than over here, I just hear the beat and OMG. So, Brixton played as much a part in shaping me now as anything else I've been through. After we moved to Peckham, I met my closest oldest friend and we shared stories of how our lives could be if we had the bottle to be bolder, but that, together with my near death experience is a story for next time... Hope you'll join me for it!