Overly Devoted Archivist Uncategorized leicester, me 0 Comments

I was watching Make Leicester British this evening. (Well, sort of. It was on in the background. I didn’t want to make too big a commitment because the title annoyed me so much.) I can’t comment on those individual people in the show, but…

…I’m so proud of Leicester, you know. I’m always so proud of Leicester. I wasn’t born there, but it’s sort of my adopted hometown, and the fact that it exists and is still standing strong always wows me. So many cultures are living side by side – I used to live on Narborough Road and in a five-minute walk you’d take in a mosque, a bar, a Polish food shop, a Subway, shops specifially for African people, shops specifically for Indian people – I’ve never seen another place like it. And in the centre of town, you have all the usual fast food restaurants (KFC, McDonalds, Burger King…), but selling halal meat and side-to-side with Indian or Chinese or Indonesian restaurants. And all the different religious festivals celebrated every year with banners and decorations: Diwali, Eid, Christmas. People wearing their traditional dress in the streets all the time! Specific cultural hairdressers, beauty salons and bridal shops! Over seventy languages spoken in the schools!

I know I’m white and don’t have the nuanced view of it that other people might, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that plenty of pockets of racism still thrive there, though hopefully not for much longer. But god, I love that city. The EDL keep turning up and ‘protesting’ and smashing up halal restaurants and all the horrible, pathetic things you’d expect from them – but I’m pretty sure it’s because they’re scared, scared of Leicester. Good, they should be.