Bismillah...

Too much has been happening these last few days. At least too much to keep me from my pen any longer, as has been the case for some time now. Maybe I just realised I've been silent too long.

In this week I received a leaflet from the BNP, and then one from New Labour for the European elections. I was hard pressed to see the difference. Both celebrate the iconic 'white' family on their cover. Obviously the BNP would do that, even having the audacity or ability however you see it, of sending leaflets to households in the country's most ethincially diverse borough. Believe me it was at once strange, funny and nauseating to read it, standing as I was in a street where so many nationalities are represented, not as newcomers (only the Hungarian family next door and the two English boys across the road fall into that category), but of Australians, and Barzilians, Portuguese, Gujerati, Pashtoon, Punjabi, Russian, Somalian, Nigerian, Tamil, Iranian, Iraqi, the list is endless and doesn't include thos emixed up homes like my own that managed (I pray without any hypocrisy) to get over the 'race' thing.

Whilst the BNP's leaflet was doubtless generic, New Labour's carried some local heading on it. Where would this family be in Brent? I would ask my New Labour MP, but as he has never spent a night in the borough since winning the seat in 1997 (well maybe a few nights...), I think he would be genuinely flumaxed.

Maybe I should have asked some of the Milwall supporters who graced the streets of Wembley this weekend, which I drove through to give my step-son a lift to a friend's. Between the car and his destination (via mounds of police horse poo and rubbish kindly deposited by said fans) he was growled, yelled and sworn at about three times. He was surprised to say the least and a bit confused. I was strangely unnostalgic for my youth at that moment when sometimes almost everyday was like having Milwall fans in your school (I grew up in North, north London, somewhere near Amy Winehouse. Having found out where she grew up, I now understand where some of her problems might have come from).

Then of course there was Sri Lanka... More on that when I have gotten my thoughts together some more.