Consultants - one of those my mother, a Sister in the QA’s, used to call, “The Great I AM”
I was astounded to listen in on a dinner party conversation in Port of Spain, Trinidad, among middle class, professional, educated, ‘cultured’ people, on the distinctions by colour of a very varied range of ethnicities and mixed races. I can only remember white, black, red, high brown and low brown, tho’ there were two or three more. ‘Red’ was a mix of Chinese and some other ethnicity, perhaps subcontinent Asian or Arab. I can’t remember which of ‘high brown’ or ‘low brown’ was the darker. F1 champ Lewis Hamilton would be one or the other.
What was clear was that ‘blacks’ were at the bottom of the social order. The people I met socially - lawyers, doctors, business people, journalists, media people - non of them were ‘black’ or indeed black.
When my pal French Franck called me from France to check in to the room I was holding for him in my house in Brsl, he felt it necessary to throw in, [we hadn’t met] “By the way, I’m black”. When I missed the ‘c’ from writing his name he wagged the finger, “Chris! I’m French!” I liked that.
I first saw Stirling Moss driving a Vanwall in the 1958 German GP. He was a favourite, a hero, ever since. Then, some thirty years later I became a neighbour - he owned the building next to me in SW7. He’d turn up on a scooter with a bag of tools to change a tap washer or something and we’d chat.
It was only when Moss was in his late 80’s I learned, thru’ a comment he made in an interview, that he was Jewish - “At school they used to call me a dirty little yid”