Sharon Feinstein

You know I could bullshit you that I’d been reading the book club book, The Shadow of the Sun, which has to be read by next week. Or practising my sax. Or phoning my mother or daughter, or organising the trip to Thailand. But no such thing.
Was out with a very old, precious friend and yet again sittng in a restaurant, this time in Victoria Park in Hackney, drinking more than one bottle of chilled white wine, discussing our chidhoods, our children, work and failures.
It was the trip back which did me in. I was a little bit tipsy and emotional, but what kept me going was listening to African music, that drum beat and chanting and high pitched cry which resounds through the ages. It’s the heart of Africa and I realise that I am an African in the deepest parts of me and not even decades of living in Engand’s green and pleasant lands, getting a degree from a university here and spending more than half my lifetime in this country, has altered that. Give me the big African skies, the cry of the hyenas and that wide open plain and it will feel more like home than my Georgian house in London ever could.
Had another great night in the warmth and glow of this incredible London summer though, and what fantastic friends I’ve got, for which I am eternally grateful, no matter where I belong.