I went back to my hometown recently, a small suburb in north-west London. I strolled the streets, stopped by the crumbling library where we did our homework, visited the convent where I was educated (it’s a block of flats now – isn’t everything?). And I’m going to tell you something I’ve been keeping to myself since that day: while I was there I didn’t hear a word of English. 

It really hit me later in the evening, on the Tube home, when I heard a young English fella yapping on his phone. ‘This teenage blather is the first thing I’ve understood today’, I thought to myself. And you know what? I was grateful for it. I’m at that age where I find mobile chatter on trains irksome. Not this time. The boy’s voice hit me like thunder, a sudden, blinding bolt of home.

I know what I’m supposed to think: that it’s enriching to find oneself wrapped in such a glorious tapestry of diversity. But all I felt was crushing alienation

I know what I’m supposed to think: that it’s enriching to find oneself wrapped in such a glorious tapestry of diversity. But all I felt was crushing alienation

Walking my old haunts – the record store now a 24-hour greengrocer, the second-hand bookshop an Afro barbers – I heard Urdu, Russian, Romanian and other tongues I couldn’t decipher. I know what I’m supposed to think: that it’s enriching to find oneself........

© The Spectator