These are photographs of my mum, taken when she...

These are photographs of my mum, taken when she was around twenty-one. She would have been new to London at the time. The city was her birthplace but she was sent to Jamaica as a toddler to live with her paternal grandmother. She grew up sipping the head off Mamma’s Guinness, hating cornmeal porridge and cuddling the guard dogs despite her eczema and asthma. She had my sister, and then hit London in her early twenties. Close scrutiny of family photo albums has led me to conclude that her primary objective for travel was to pop style. Here she is dressed for a job interview. She did not get the job. Nevermind: great hair, and bowtie [cf. Janelle]. Her allergies went away. I was born and then I pilfered the shoes.

3 months ago