Synopsis "Fledging and Learning to Fly: 1 (in English)"
This book s sub-title is: A Memoir of a Young Afro-Caribbean Man s Kingston, Cambridge and Barrister Student Days, as well as his early working and ( inter-racial ) married life, at Leeds University and elsewhere in 1970s England. It is the third volume of the author s memoirs. The first, entitled Growing up BAREFOOT under Montserrat s sleeping Volcano (published in the UK in 2010), dealt with his earliest childhood until he (aged 8) and his younger brother, John, set sail from their native Caribbean island for England to join their parents already living there. Swimming without mangoes (published in 2013 by Hobnob Press, Wiltshire, UK) is the second volume and continues the story of what happens to the author after arriving in the Wiltshire railway town of Swindon and how he survives, at home and in the classroom, in unfamiliar surroundings during his schooldays there. This book takes up that history. It deals with his student days at Kingston Law School, Surrey and then Cambridge University, before reading (and eating) his way to becoming a Barrister in London. It covers the lead-up to his interracial marriage to his former schoolmate, Philomena, followed by swift parenthood, and how it was for one Black, working-class, young man and his more privileged White girl trying to make a go of life in 1970s English society. Could there ever be a good outcome from such a mix? Read this book to find out.
