CA: Hello, everyone. I’ve just been listening to Sam Cooke, and it’s kind of like a song I’ll listen to quite a lot when I’m doing these things. It’s the change never going to come. So if you haven’t heard it, it’s powerful, it’s emotive, and everything like that. But it just kind of gets me set and in the mood.

This story’s called Oceans, and it might, you might get an understanding of that as we go through.

So I’m standing there holding my Nokia 3210. This is one of the newest phones out at the moment, but there’s no reception. I’m like, what is going on here?

London is a place of so many contrasts with 8 million people squeezed in around the circular motorway called the M25. It has four distinct seasons. The cold wintery months, the cold autumn months, the cold spring months. But we have those two weeks of glorious summer. Now, I spent my whole life experiencing this. But I was at the pinnacle of a decision that would dramatically change my life. You see, my family and myself are in the process of having our visa granted to migrate to Australia.

Everything I’d known was about to change, but it was also the announcement of the year in the UK. It was the 5th of July 2005. Great Britain had been awarded the 2012 Summer Games. Not only that, but it was going to be in London. The city of my birth. The biggest thing to happen in my lifetime in my city. And it was unlikely that I was going to be there.

I’d always had this really fractious relationship with London. I tried so hard to gain her love, but she never saw me or appreciated me. I was shy and reserved, which is surprising to some. And I am standing here right? But yes, I said it was fractious and I didn’t really know my place.

You see, society really wasn’t ready for diverse communities like mine. It’s a blend of the old and the new, and not just the buildings in their structure, but the people and their attitudes.

London prides itself on being at the forefront of so many things: music, tradition, the arts. But beneath those well-trodden streets and the violence, the reverberation of the sound and the energy, it’s a very difficult place to live.

My father came to England in 1962. He was part of what was called the Windrush generation. I often reflect on what it must have been like for him standing in Kingston, Jamaica, on the ports, ready to board that ship on a journey that would take him to what we now know now as the motherland.

Very patriotic Jamaicans when it comes to the UK at that point. And then I then I reflect on that journey. As the ship drifted out onto the Atlantic Ocean and the feelings that you may have had as the the warm sun fell away as he sailed into the middle of that vast ocean.

What were his faults? What was his ambitions? Did he think about the family that he had left and think about the family that we’re going to be, that he was going to have?

And more importantly, what I’ve really discovered over the last like 20 years is, did he ever look out at that vast ocean? and think about almost 400 years before that, our direct descendants would have been transported from Africa in the hull of a ship, linked together, squeezed in like sardines in a tin, on a journey that would probably take 3 to 4 months.

What were their thoughts? That’s a hard thing to take, especially when you understand that I am a direct descendant of nearly 500 years of indentured slavery. It is said that over 11 million people were transported from Africa during that time and spread across North and South America and the Caribbean.

What were his first days like in the UK? I have no idea. He never told me. I look up to him like I was. I’m almost there; I’m a shadow of him standing right next to him on those streets. All that energy.

I turn to him and say, ‘Why didn’t you protect me? Why didn’t you make me aware of the trauma that this town would bring to me? Why didn’t you make me feel powerful? That my skin was worthy of you? My father. Where was the empowerment piece?’ But I’m fortunate because I get to stand here before you and tell that story. Because somehow shit comes together in life, right?

And if I had the answer, I’d be telling you that now. But what I can tell you is that I survived, not just as in life and death, but having most of my wits about me. I grew up during like the late eighties and nineties, and it was the time of the new romantic era in music. And it was bands like Duran Duran and Spandau Ballet that lit a fire beneath my soul.

Reggae, soul and hip hop are also music that I really related to, mainly because of the the lyrics about the struggle and the contents around the ongoing hope for equality and the strive for inclusivity.

Now, you might be might be wondering about that phone. So it’s now the 7th of July. I’m at work and all the discussions are centered around the award of Olympics and what it will do for that area of London; so much in need of regeneration. You started filtering through with explosions in central London within the matter of like 15 or 20 minutes, and it transpired that there was five terrorist attacks in the city which would take the life of 56 people and injured over 700.

And again, the quality of London, it galvanized everyone. Within days, things back went back to normal.

But coming back to that phone where the buttons that you press, you know, now we swipe. But these are buttons you actually press. It was amazing. No one could get reception, everything was lockdown. It was a really surreal moment that I’ve never experienced in my life. It was, you know, something I wouldn’t want anyone to experience, especially when you think in that in that room at that time, a lot of us knew people that worked or traveled in or around London, so we were really fearful that they may have been caught up in the atrocities.

Thankfully, within hours, most our minds were later rested; no one that we knew was involved in that situation. But it really galvanized the city, once again, You know, it showed the quality of people, how they came together.

It really is amazing how quickly life can change from one day being sheer jubilation of that; a world that was like flags and bunting everywhere. And the next day it was this devastation. It was a terrorist bomb. So all those individuals that planted those bombs died with the explosives attached to their back.

Myself, my family landed in in Perth, Australia, in 2006, a true blessing. It’s been the amazing experience for me and my family. But six years later, as I sat with my family in the dead of night looking on the Olympic Games, seeing Usain Bolt, the Jamaican smash the 100 meter record, and later he would go on to do the same for the 200 meters.

And he was part of the four by one hundredths relay team. The pride I felt is the black gold and green flag was raised and the national anthem of Jamaica, Land We Love was sung proudly. Truly amazing.

I’ve never felt so emotional in my life apart from the kids when they were born obviously. But it was also a record holder of medals for the Great Britain team. And as I said, it was really a fractious time for me growing up there, understanding my place.

But when I saw this team that was reflective of the community of London with team members that look like me. So when the red, white and blue flag was raised as well, when it was God Save the Queen, again, an immense feeling of pride that I felt.

And this brings me kind of in a roundabout way to understanding of place. Now, the one thing I get asked a lot is where are you really from? And I think I’ll leave that for question time actually, because it would be great for one of you to pose that.

But in closing, each time I go back to London now and it’s a place I love, I think I’ve reconnected with that place. And and I really think that she now wants me. You know, it’s kind of like that temptation of why don’t you come home? We need people like you. But I resist, because each time I land back in Perth, she is now my one true love.

Thank you.