I get on pretty well with Irish people. They often want to chat, possibly because they perceive me as being Irish, or maybe because they just enjoy "the craic". So, as it is St Patrick's Day today, I thought I would post a little story from a few decades ago.
Back in the days when you paid the driver of a bus with real money, I was boarding a Green Line coach, probably at Heathrow Airport, and the driver asked me, with a broad Irish accent,
I replied,
"No, I was born in England."
"But yer folks are Irish?"
"We had ancestors who lived in County Cork."
"Ah, dat's roit next door to Kerry. If you was to go to Kerry, dey wouldn't notice yer."
It struck me that they would notice me as soon as I started to speak, as I have a run-of-the-mill Southern English accent, but I thought it was best to leave it at that, as the other passengers would want to be getting on with their journeys.
London is a racially diverse city these days and you see all sorts of people in the street. In many cases it is impossible to pinpoint a racial origin, but this has long been so. I am of mixed ancestry, although all the bits and pieces making me up would be regarded as "white", so nobody would describe me as "mixed-race". My family name is Anglo-Norman, but my tall, lanky Scandinavian physique is inherited from my Lincolnshire grandfather. His surname was a Yorkshire version of an Anglo-Saxon name. My colouring and facial features are inherited from my maternal grandmother, who had Irish roots. I suspect that few English people living in the London area have a single ethnic origin.
Uploading ....