Who am I

I have just been reading http://www.madnessandbeauty.com/ in particular her piece "Um Canada", on the vagaries of nationality. This is something that has crossed my mind even though I rarely leave the UK and never yet Europe. Being very PC many of my employers over the years have had questionnaires asking for such useful data as ethnic origins. Fearing accusations of racial stereotyping - or worse - we get such riders as " we are not asking for your race or country of birth, but the cultural group to which you feel most akin" to this I always tick the box for other and then add "Londoner"

My rational is simple I feel more culturally akin to a Black West Indian Londoner than I do to a white European Scouser or Brummie.

However the over all point is not so simple, what is it that makes up our identity, I would hate to be classified by my occupation, I am not what I do any more than I am where I come from, so who am I.

Well certainly I am my father son, and my wife's husband, but more than that I am the total of my experiences, but when asked where I'm from what's the point of saying Anerley when no one has heard of it? after all it is only a place between other places for putting houses.

At least as a Canadian there is a strong identity - at least to Europeans - as a "Brit" I'm no longer sure what our identity is. Plucky underdogs, arrogant colonists, industrial urchins, victims or oppressors, maybe we have too much history and can no longer create a single identity from it, I know I have Saxon, Bavarian, maybe Spanish blood, when it is boiled down maybe I'm just the bloke who plays Mrs T.........

If you have been thank you for reading, it wouol dbe nice to know if you are.......................