East Ender

It's always interesting to meet locals when you travel. Last night we a real character, Winston Joseph Spaulding. You may be surprised to hear I know his middle name. Believe me, that was the least of it. Within 20 minutes he'd told us his entire life story. Turns out he was born in Hackney, London and moved to Louisville when he was 12. Hearing him speak now you'd never believe it, but we know it's true because every so often he'd slip into an East End accent, especially when talking about something from his past.
So there we were sitting on the sidewalk outside a hip hop bar on a sultry Kentuckian night. Winston had lived in Hawaii and Atlanta before moving to Louisville, and had five kids by different women all over the country. He wore not one, but two diamond studded earrings and smoked and drank copious amounts of white wine as he spoke. We barely said a word, he was excited that we were British, but other than that didn't really care as long as we listened.
What we learned is that Louisville, like most cities we seem to visit in the U.S , is undergoing a regeneration. It's a real melting pot where blacks and whites mingle together. Hardly surprising these days, but interesting when you realize it was only 40 years ago when race riots were common and there was segregation in many cities.
Winston's father was American and his mother from the West Indies. In the 1950s thousands of West Indians immigrated to England. Nowadays the world's a much smaller place, and you never know which immigrants you'll meet.....