Not Diverse Enough — Are You Having A Laugh?!

Last season, I wrote an article for the Cray Wanderers club matchday programme about Diversity. From the feedback I got, some supporters liked it, some agreed with it and others said it shouldn't have been included in a football programme.

That's quite a healthy and diverse set of opinions. And there's the word in a slightly different form. Diverse. It can come in all shapes and forms, which was what I was trying to get at in my original article.

I will admit that, in the past, I have been accused of not being diverse enough. Of course, I denied — and still deny — such accusations. Besides the true story of a little lad called Andrew that I included in that previous article, I have had plenty of experience of Diversity in my life. For instance, when I first started school at St Mary Cray Primary School when I was four and a half years old, my first 'girlfriend' was a black girl called Shirley. I thought she was wonderful. Unfortunately, that was a short-lived 'romance', as her family moved away from the area about a year after I had first got to know her.

St Mary Cray and Orpington back in the late 1950s/early 1960s were places predominantly populated by white people. It also happened that kids around that time in our village and town never had the chance to really mingle with kids of other origins, except maybe with the Travellers who lived up Star Lane (yes, the same Star Lane where Cray Wanderers originally played their football matches). So it was quite an eye-opener for me, when I left school at 15 years old and started working in the City of London, where I was suddenly sitting in a large open-plan office inside an old building and surrounded by men and women of many nationalities. For those of you who think you know me, you may be surprised to learn that I immediately treated every person in that room with respect, no matter who they were, what their background was or what they looked like. And, I am pleased to say, my approach was reciprocated by everyone in return. Diversity before its time? You decide.

It was a brilliant learning curve for me; I learnt about different cultures around the world and why so many people from overseas were working in that office in London. I learnt more about people of the world than I ever could have done at school. Yes, there were good and bad examples, that's only natural. Diversity wasn't an emphasised topic back in the early 1970s, so I still heard what is now termed abusive or racist language within the workplace and it saddened me but, I always had this strange feeling that 'one day it will all change'. Whether it has or not isn't up for discussion here today.

Throughout my working life I met and worked with men and women from most of the continents; Asia, Africa, South America (Joe from Brazil was an amazing character), North America, Mainland Europe and even Australia. What an education I had in human geographical terms from all those variants!

Fast forward many years and, in my mid-30s, I met and married my second wife Myra.  Strangely, I vowed never to get married again after my first marriage had crashed and burst into flames. Single again, I wasn't particularly looking for a new permanent involvement, but Cupid and his bloody arrow had other ideas. And, maybe this will shock you, maybe it won't. Myra hails from South-East Asia. We've been married now for 35 years. Where has that time gone?! — I'm blowed if I know!

For most of my life I have been involved with, learnt about and understood Diversity, in all its forms. And that's probably a lot more than most people. A simple lesson to learn from this is, don't be too quick to judge a book by its cover, as there is often more good in someone's back story than meets the eye.