Love thy neighbour
Jul 15, 12:44 PM
I live on a very ordinary suburban street - the sort of place you really wouldn't take any notice of as you drive past - with pebbledash houses, a storage centre and a supermarket at one end of the road, and a recreation ground at the other.
On first look, it might seem rather sleepy - even a bit bland. But it is a place defined by migration.
The people who live here come from an extraordinary array of places and migration has played a massive role in many of our lives in one way or another and (simply by living here and sharing this space) in all of our lives to some extent. Most of us know each other pretty well, and we have a street Whatsapp Group, so I invited everyone over for drinks earlier this month.
The recording is a brief window into the very ordinary nature of my relationship with my very amazing neighbours.
The guests who were present at the time of this recording include:
My nextdoor neighbour to the left - who is a Chilean refugee, now in her 80s, who was a teacher in her earlier years. She fled the Pinochet regime with her husband (who sadly died earlier this year) in the 1970s: he had been a doctor specialising in respiratory diseases in Chile, but after relocating to the UK became a leading psychiatrist specialising in support for refugees.
My neighbour to the right, now in her 90s, was also at the drinks, with her daughter. She and her husband (who also passed away earlier this year) were artists whose lives took them to live in Toronto, New York, India and Cornwall. One huge part of their lives involved driving their three young daughters to India in the 1960s to learn artisanal fabric printing techniques with Indian craftspeople, and the materials and ideas they subsequently imported back to the UK were hugely influential in late 1960s fashions - with Yoko Ono among people who wore their designs.
Other visitors included:
On first look, it might seem rather sleepy - even a bit bland. But it is a place defined by migration.
The people who live here come from an extraordinary array of places and migration has played a massive role in many of our lives in one way or another and (simply by living here and sharing this space) in all of our lives to some extent. Most of us know each other pretty well, and we have a street Whatsapp Group, so I invited everyone over for drinks earlier this month.
The recording is a brief window into the very ordinary nature of my relationship with my very amazing neighbours.
The guests who were present at the time of this recording include:
My nextdoor neighbour to the left - who is a Chilean refugee, now in her 80s, who was a teacher in her earlier years. She fled the Pinochet regime with her husband (who sadly died earlier this year) in the 1970s: he had been a doctor specialising in respiratory diseases in Chile, but after relocating to the UK became a leading psychiatrist specialising in support for refugees.
My neighbour to the right, now in her 90s, was also at the drinks, with her daughter. She and her husband (who also passed away earlier this year) were artists whose lives took them to live in Toronto, New York, India and Cornwall. One huge part of their lives involved driving their three young daughters to India in the 1960s to learn artisanal fabric printing techniques with Indian craftspeople, and the materials and ideas they subsequently imported back to the UK were hugely influential in late 1960s fashions - with Yoko Ono among people who wore their designs.
Other visitors included:
- The young father whose family live opposite my house - they moved to the UK from China and their 8 month old baby is the newest arrival on the street.
- Another young couple - both economists from Italy - were there too with their baby, who is also under one year old, and their three year old daughter.
- From further down the street was a neighbour from Mexico, who pointed out that my Guacamole needed extra salt, and who is married to a British husband, and who has two teenage daughters.
- A Czech/German neighbour brought her daughter who spent hours playing with my dog.
- From all the way at the far end of the street was a Dutch artist, who occasionally taught my kids at their local secondary school, and who is married to a Flamenco guitarist who is very proud of his Romany heritage.
- Another guest is half-Austrian and his wife is half-Jamaican - their kids are now grown up, and used to babysit for mine - he has a very infectious (and loud) laugh.
- Several of our guests had not lived overseas, but are part of this friendly mix of people from all over. I also had a number of people who wanted to make it but could not - one is the son of one of the last children to arrive on the Kindertransport, evacuated from Nazi Germany, and his wife's father was part of the community of Jews expelled from Baghdad in the middle of the last century. Another is also the descendent of German Jews who fled the holocaust.
- A Bulgarian couple with a new baby who have recently moved to the street were invited too, but unable to come, and some of the students from down the road (from France, Spain and the US) were also unable to make it.
- As for me: I’m a returned migrant – I lived in the USA for a couple of years, but came back. My Granny on my mum’s side was born and raised in Morocco, and my Father’s family came from the Scottish Islands via Canada (for a couple of generations) to Liverpool and then Lancashire.
Recorded by Rob McNeil.
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration
Part of the Migration Sounds project, the world’s first collection of the sounds of human migration.
For more information and to explore the project, see https://www.citiesandmemory.com/migration