Life's Rich Tapestry

This is a true story. Allow me to paint a picture..

In a small, average seaside town on the south-east coast of England, populated largely by pensioners and young families, situated on one of the main shopping streets is an average building, converted into six flats. There's nothing special about this building. It looks pretty much like any other from the outside, a bit weather-worn and in need of a coat of paint, with a busy and popular shop located below it.

The flats in this building are a mix of rented and owned homes, and in recent years residents have come and gone, as people do. The building has had its share of problems, and continuing issues with ongoing maintenance, but it is over a hundred years old and doesn't receive the attention such an elderly building needs. An average situation, for this average building, in this average town.

The current residents of the building come from a broad church. One flat is owned by an Asian couple, who live with their young daughter. They run one of the struggling small local shops. Another flat is home to a young white British tenant couple. He works part-time doing deliveries for a local business, she is a full-time student and also works part-time for a local shop. They have a young child between them, and his teenage daughter, of mixed British/Asian heritage, completes the family.

Another flat is owner-occupied, a single-parent family consisting of a Polish mother and her son, born in Britain to an absent British father. She works full-time locally. Then there's a flat housing an older Bulgarian tenant couple, probably in their sixties. He is frail and in rapidly failing health, whilst she is a full-time local care worker and his primary carer. They have a son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren living locally.

Another flat is home for a young eastern-European tenant couple, quite probably Romanian. They seem to be absent during the daytime most days, in all likelihood because they work away from the area. The last flat has the buildings newest tenants, a young white British couple with a dog. She is rarely seen whilst he is often about locally walking the dog. It is impossible to gauge whether they work.

So what is the point of the story?

Let us just say that the people who live in this building have all had various interactions with each other, to a greater or lesser degree. Obvious, you might think, after all they are each others neighbours. But how well do they all really know each other? Well, I can tell you that none of them are actually friends, or spend any time together socially, and although some know more about one set of residents than the others, they are all basically just strangers. Beyond the practicalities of the tiny amount of communication necessary for living in a shared building, no one really knows what kind of person anyone else is.

Life in this building is a microcosm of modern life in Britain. In a humble English town, not known for its diversity, we have a mixed-race, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural mini-community of different kinds of families. There have been a few minor squabbles, a little anti-social behaviour and some decidedly unneighbourly behaviour at odd times, but on the whole the people who live together here do so in peace, without coming into regular conflict.

To read British newspapers, watch television news or listen to popular radio you could easily believe that the families and couples who live in the aforementioned building should basically be at war, such should be their hatred for each other. An awfully large number of the more elderly residents of the town certainly seem to frown and look down on these people. Immigrants, 'broken' families, mixed-race kids, ethnic minorities, the working poor, the struggling small-business owner, the unemployed, the sick and disabled - all these economically disadvantaged groups are represented in just one building, in one sleepy little English town. The fact that there is no real conflict, and everyone basically gets along, is testament to the reality of British life, and lays bare the fallacies we are being fed by the mainstream media in this country.

The dangers of judging people, based on anything other than really getting to know them as a person, are huge. We all make assumptions, and have presumptions and preconceptions about people. These have to be constantly challenged if we are to avoid them building up and disordering our thinking, only to become prejudice, racism, xenophobia and hatred, which inevitably leads to misery and conflict. Yet the benefits of changing our thinking, accepting people for who they really are rather than what they might seem to represent, ignoring the falsehoods and lies spread about them and the yarns that society and the media try to spin, are so huge. To live in peace with people from all different kinds of background, race, culture and economic situation is a gift that never stops giving. It helps promote equality, understanding and tolerance. It enriches our thinking, our culture and our lives. Ultimately, it makes the world a better place to live in.

You know how I know this story is true?

It's because this is my story. I am one of the people living in that building. This is my home town and it is my personal experience I am telling you about.

I'll leave you to decide which flat I live in..

Copyright ©2018 Richard C. Greenlow. All rights reserved.