My black friends.

When I was a girl in Rochdale my two best friends were black.
There were very few West Indian children there in the fifties so my friends stood out.
They were the children of a West Indian cricketer , Ellis Achong. He had settled in Lancashire and bought a small pub near to where I lived. His children went to private schools whilst I was at the the local council primary school.
When I passed for the High School I was introduced into a new world of subjects which were often a great puzzle to me.
Mr Achong was I found very well educated and very patient. He talked me through the mysteries of algebra, French and geometry. He was careful never to do my homework for me but showed me how to do it for myself.
This help was invaluable for me..especially as his pub was the one my father drank in most weekends.
During several long icy winters when fuel for the open fire was hard to come by warmth could always be found in their kitchen whilst I struggled with arcane problems......or maths as I now know it.
School holidays found me playing out, often with the black children. I never really saw them as in any way different. But sometimes, walking through the town with one of them I got called names that I didn’t really understand then.
They were a family I loved dearly...when they went back to Trinidad letters and cards arrived regularly.
I heard that Ellis had become a politician in his old age.
I sometimes wonder what happened to the children..I assume they returned to the paradise Ellis had described to me on freezing cold nights in Rochdale.
But their colour was irrelevant. I never saw their blackness, just their kindness, their laughter and their sheer joy of living.
To send people back to the West Indies after being settled here for many years is a cruel twist of fate. I am glad it seems to have been stopped.




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