{"id":201,"date":"2026-09-13T19:40:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T19:40:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/?p=201"},"modified":"2026-09-13T19:40:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T19:40:19","slug":"john","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/2026\/09\/13\/john\/","title":{"rendered":"John"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"et_pb_section_0 et_pb_section et_section_regular et_flex_section\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_row_0 et_pb_row et_flex_row\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_column_0 et_pb_column et-last-child et_flex_column et_pb_css_mix_blend_mode_passthrough et_flex_column_24_24 et_flex_column_24_24_tablet et_flex_column_24_24_phone\">\n<div class=\"et_pb_text_0 et_pb_text et_pb_bg_layout_light et_pb_module et_flex_module\"><div class=\"et_pb_text_inner\"><p>John was born in Richmond, Jamaica, in 1935. He was one of 10 kids and had to share a bed with his brothers. His family lived close to the school, which was good because John loved school.<\/p>\n<p>Once he\u2019d completed his 'Senior Certificate of Education', the same as A levels in the UK, his parents sent him to college at Buxton High School in Kingston, where he boarded.<\/p>\n<p>After college, he got a job in the accountant's office of the 'Citrus Growers Association of Jamaica.\u2019 All the citrus growers in the country would bring their fruit to the warehouse, where it was packed and inspected. It was John's job to work out the value of each shipment before it was exported to the UK.<\/p>\n<p>John said that Kingston was a fantastic place to live during that time; it was safe, and there weren't all the guns and violence that there is today. John enjoyed his job, and while working there, he met Audrey, his future wife.<\/p>\n<p>He was keen to attend university but would have to pay for it in Jamaica. In England, however, back then, university education was free.\u00a0 Audrey wasn't too pleased about him going, but John felt England offered him more opportunities than staying in Jamaica.<\/p>\n<p>He booked a flight to England through the Chinese travel service.\u00a0 In Jamaica, there is a large Chinese population. When slavery was abolished, plantation owners hired cheap Chinese workers to do the work of formerly enslaved people. Jamaica now has Chinese newspapers, schools, cemeteries, a Chinese Freemasons association and even a 'Miss Chinese Jamaican' Beauty Pageant every year.<\/p>\n<p>John flew into London airport (Now Heathrow) in 1961. The British houses all looked so strange to him. Everything was so grey, and he remembers the fog. He said it was so thick that you could barely see at night. He thought it was terrific when it snowed and would spend ages making snowmen. He didn't realise that he should have worn gloves and got chilblains. It was all so exciting and new. He missed his mum terribly, but she would write to him weekly in those lightweight blue airmail letters.<\/p>\n<p>Initially, he stayed in a Hostel near Victoria Station. Then John went to live with an old school friend Oswald, who had come to England 5 years earlier and had a house in Balham with a spare room. They became lifelong friends, and he was the best man at John's wedding. They remained close until he recently passed away from Alzheimer's.<\/p>\n<p>John worked behind the counter at the post office in Tooting.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":68,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-windrush"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":203,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/203"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/windrush.positivenetwork.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}