Bryony

The email from the University of Birmingham alumni office triggered a flood of random memories from more than 20 years ago. And I remembered Bryony.  She was the first person to make pappadums for me.

In addition to the congratulations, many of the people gave me the nudge nudge wink wink thing about going to England and finding a white woman (or women).  Bryony was the first white woman who invited me to her place.

So September 1990, I was lost in the large University of Birmingham freshers week.. out of place as someone who "looked Indian and sounded Caribbean", who was older than most of the freshers, and who was not homesick but was excited about meeting and finding out about all kind of things and was not interested in getting drunk.

Bryony was handling two of the desks at the Freshers Fair.. one of them was the Lesbian and Gay Society, and the other about safety. She heard my accent and started asking me where I was from. I was learning that not all British spoke with the English accent.
I got brave and ask her if she was Lesbian and other things. She was a final year student, and also living in Griffin Close where I was living.

She invited me over to dinner and to meet her girlfriend. It was kind of scary for me.  She was vegetarian and in my head at that time I remember thinking that the vegetarians I knew were either Rasta or nice decent Hindu people - none  of whom would approve of Bryony and her girlfriend.

Bryony was from a poor background , started Uni when she was older (at that time 23 was old for me) and was on her own. Her girlfriend, dressed in black and pierced lip and nose and also vegetarian, was younger. She had been kicked out her home and was living in shelters in Manchester and worked at different jobs. 

Bryony cooked potato and beans curry and rice - she thought I would want food from home. She also made pappadums for starters.. roasting them on the open flame of the stove. She thought it was funny that I had never heard of them. She also handed me a fork and said she did not have enough knives to eat with.

There was another guy there who was not in Uni, but worked with Bryony. And so I listened into the conversation which was around work, Margaret Thatcher, not paying the poll tax, poverty, and being lesbian/gay in England .
We did not talk about race. I listened to the accents talking about not living with parents - Bryony's girlfriend's grandmother had tried to contact her; about dealing with work mates.  This was very different from what I had imagined conversations with homosexual people to be about.. I was polite and did not ask any of the burning questions I had in my head about who is the man and who is the woman and so on. I cannot remember if there was dessert. I remember going back to the flat which had four other guys (middle class, all brought to Uni by their parents ) and when they asked me where I was, I told them I had dinner with a woman and they thought I was a sneaky bastard since they had not hooked up as yet. I said, nah, was just dinner.. but I remember wondering what the hell would they have thought of the conversation.

Bryony moved out of Griffin Close to live with her girlfriend. I lost touch with her after that - until the end of the first year when she was rounding up a petition to the University to give women permission to wear pants to the graduation ceremonies. I remember Bryony describing pants as free, easy to wear and move about and warmer. and that skirts were confining, got in the way and had to be attended to while wearing and that women should have the choice.  Nice middle class boy from Guyana that I was, I put that down as my first encounter with 'feminism'.

I have no idea why Bryony is on my mind these days.