his is in my childhood garden in south London. I look very posed in this photograph; down to my hands and my very particular crouch. My uncle Errol fancied himself as a photographer, so he would use me and my cousin Marcus as his models. By the expression, it looks as if he’s taken one too many; that smile is very “Can we just hurry up now?” I couldn’t look too moody though – I’d get a massive telling-off.
My parents were good at throwing activities at me to see what would stick. I loved tap, ballet and the recorder – a lot of my passion for music was absorbed by osmosis at the Jamaican Christian church my grandad helped to create. My love of writing was nurtured from an early age, too – Dad would teach me to read using newspaper headlines, and we watched the news on TV every day. If I wrote something good at school, like a poem, they’d get me to recite it in front of the family.
The school I went to was really mixed in terms of ethnic and class diversity. When I moved to a new one aged seven, there was a very different demographic, and that’s where I first had to learn how to assimilate. It wasn’t full of people who looked like me or had a similar background, and it was the first time I was a victim of any sort of verbal or racist abuse. I realised I was different, and I tried not to stick out so I could have an easier time.