All round nice guy George Alagiah plays chief detective into discovering the history of mixed race relationships and families in the UK. The programme's focus struck a personal chord with him, as he himself is a man of Sri Lankan descent married with children to a white British woman. The programme itself was littered with interesting facts of our country's past and how mixed relations are nothing new. Though revealing, I thought it could have been edited shorter but that may just be down to my short attention span and the fact that I had to watch it streamed on a small netbook screen.
This programme struck a smaller chord with me and inspired me to write an off topic post. The results of the Second World War dramatically changed British society, with its disastarous aftermath leaving the country in need of being built again. It was at this time when both sides of my family arrived by boat from the Caribbean islands to take up one of the thousands of public sector jobs available in England. My grandma Pearl McGown was one of them. She is of half Chinese-half Jamaican descent and came to England, like many, leaving family, including her children behind.
I have a lot of admiration for this generation. They left everything to have a future in a distant country and went through a lot of difficulties to overcome it all and stay there. Yet, I have never met a group of people who could laugh so much, be so kind and also be able to neck a glass of white rum in their eighties. They appreciate good spirit in all forms. Sadly, this generation are old now and I'll miss them when they go. My grandparents think I'm crazy to have moved to Spain forgetting how they sailed to England by boat, (Pearl's cousin died on a boat trip to China, I just fail to see how me staying in Spain surprises her so much).
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| My dad, rocking dungarees. |
I'll miss the way that generation are so smartly dressed and how they refer to each other as Mr. and Ms. For example on my mother's side they would always be called Mr. Riley and Ms Riley and on my father's Mr.Mc and Ms.Mc by everyone, even to each other, which is confusing as I didn't know my dad's, dad's real name for years (his name is Howard). They are truly great people whose lasting present to me, was to give me a great start in life. Thank you. I really wish to tell their story in the future one day.
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| Connie and Leslie Hoe from the programme. Of mixed race Chinese descent. She looks like my grandma! She only lives down the road, maybe I can adopt her as one? |
