Diary – 7 July 2006

Australian TV wants to make a documentary about me. Why would a black guy from inner-city Birmingham want to buy a farm in the West Country? The usual stuff follows — long interview, shots of me with my lovely Ruby Red cattle and shots with Chris, my farm manager. Then a hike north to where it all started — Small Heath, Birmingham. I hadn’t been back for 30 years and had never wanted to go. The poverty and misery of it left a scar on my soul, which meant I had avoided rekindling memories of it. But the producer is adamant: I have to visit the street where I grew up, the school — and the allotment that inspired me to own a farm.

I arrive at Bankes Road — still the same as I remembered. Two-up, two-down terrace houses with no greenery in sight. But the people have changed. When I was a kid it was a mix of Asian, Irish and West Indian families. The Irish and West Indians have long gone; it is now a Muslim enclave of Somali and Pakistani families. I knock on my old front door to be faced with an elderly woman who looks terrified the moment she sees the camera. She covers her face with her veil and says something in a language I can’t understand, but her gestures signal that she is not interested in talking to me. Her son intervenes and informs me it is time for Friday prayers and it is inconvenient. Having got this far, I want to look around the house, but it is not to be. Next, off to my old school where the headmistress searches the records and there it is — my name in black and white. So it is true, I was brought up in this miserable place.

Before returning to my own New World I have to visit the place that gave me hope and the ambition to buy a part of the British countryside, Yardley Wood allotments.