Photons on the Prostate: My Life After Prostate Cancer Treatment

A Diagnosis at Fifty-Eight

I was just over fifty-eight when I was diagnosed. As a black man in the UK, where one in four of us will encounter prostate cancer compared with one in eight of the broader male population, the PSA test ought to have been offered long before I had to ask for it, especially as other indicators in my blood work already needed addressing.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I asked for it in early February 2024, and by the end of March my PSA had risen from 3.5 to 4.0. What followed I have set out in full in my earlier series, "Men's things" and "Photons on the prostate": the examinations, the imaging, and the biopsy that confirmed adenocarcinoma in mid-June 2024. I will not retread it here. [Prostate Cancer UK: The PSA blood test] [Check4Cancer-Private]

Twenty Sessions Begin

Two years ago, I began twenty sessions of hypofractionated radiotherapy for prostate cancer. It was scheduled for weekdays alone, so I thought I could fit both work and the treatment in comfortably.

The treatment began on a Thursday, which gave me two sessions before the weekend. Little did I know how impactful radiotherapy would be. The chronic fatigue set in far earlier than expected, and the weekend literally wore me out.

A Toll on the Body

By the fourth session, I returned from the hospital and had to go straight to bed; I simply had no energy for anything. I obtained a sick note, though with the proviso that I would not be completely signed off work.

Then came a range of side effects. After the fatigue, my voice became a husky whisper, betraying such tiredness and exhaustion that, after one meeting, a participant asked my manager why I was still working. I had the capacity and the facility to continue, yet the toll could not be ignored.

Alongside this came urethral pain, bladder incontinence, and a greater urgency, all exacerbated by a prostate gland reacting to the radiotherapy. Coupled with nocturnal insomnia, I began to wonder whether I could be productive at anything at all.

Planning Around the Pain

Towards the end, I had to plan my outings carefully, as I could not go twenty minutes without needing to visit a toilet. I was prescribed paracetamol and codeine to ease the pain, along with Tamsulosin to manage the prostate issues, which I am still taking. I also obtained a RADAR key to access disabled toilets, and a "Just Can't Wait" card to show premises owners whenever I had an urgent need.

Four weeks later, I was ringing the bell, ending the treatment and ushering in a new life: the beginning of the story after prostate cancer. However, I needed to recuperate by taking long-term sick leave and having someone care for me, because home in Manchester was no longer convenient.

A Journey to Recover

Against the wishes of many, I jetted off to Cape Town to be with Brian, my partner. The trip was comfortable enough, because I used airport assistance for every leg of the journey. Even though I arrived in Cape Town literally a shell of myself, the weather proved almost as good an elixir as the companionship.

Much as I had every urge to return home, I took as much time as possible to recover sufficiently for general activity. My sick leave eventually ran to seven weeks, and I returned to work in January 2025.

In truth, I should have taken a phased return, but the burden at work was light, so I decided against it and settled in well enough. In time, working alongside an occupational therapist, we found ways to manage both the work and the pressure.

Two Years On

Two years on, some side effects linger. The loss of my voice remains unexplained, even after review by an otolaryngologist and her team, and I put it down to one of the rarer side effects. Bowel incontinence can be occasional, bladder incontinence is quite frequent, and sexual dysfunction is not helped by the mental stress of it. The nocturnal insomnia, meanwhile, should have me beavering away late into the night.

Now, better and more targeted treatments are available in the UK, including ultra-short five-visit radiotherapy, tissue-sparing focal therapy, and new at-home medicines, all a far cry from the twenty to thirty-nine sessions of hypofractionated radiotherapy. [ICR: Thousands of men with prostate cancer will now be offered high-powered radiotherapy on the NHS]

Even so, I do not think I would have wanted to wait for these developments, given my determination, once advised to pursue active treatment at diagnosis, to rid myself of the cancer as soon as possible. I would not have been persuaded of watchful waiting or active surveillance in the circumstances.

A Word to Men

Three check-ups at the Christie Hospital, every six months, have had my Prostate-Specific Antigen (PSA) test results read at the lowest level ever. I can only advise that men keep their prostate health in view, have it checked, and follow through on any adverse results.

A visit to the Prostate Cancer UK website for the risk checker, followed by an at-home review of your own symptoms using the International Prostate Symptom Score (IPSS), is a sensible place to begin. Not every prostate enlargement is indicative of cancer, but every such situation must be checked and kept under monitoring. Thank you.

Related Blogs

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Blog - Photons on the Prostate - Three Things I Wish I'd Known

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A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

The Deed and the Doer

On a T-shirt, a rainbow, and a play on a sacred word, there is offence enough to summon a mob. 

Yet before we take up arms for our gods, we might ask whether Western Christianity would truly accept an Arabic Christ, and whether we have the sense of the old cow, who eats the hay and leaves the baling wire.

This is a reflection on symbolism, belief, and the fine but firm line between the deed and the doer.

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An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Where Offence Begins

Religious symbolism, individual perceptions, and beliefs provide many opportunities to take offence. This became the core of a conversation in which I was invited to comment on someone wearing a T-shirt depicting a religious personality, with a play on one of the final words of supplication or veneration, all set in the context of human sexuality.

At first glance, there are so many things capable of causing offence, ranging across a spectrum from the merely unfunny, through the disrespectful and the sacrilegious, to outright blasphemy.

Each could attract anything from a simple flinch to an outrage that seeks out a mob for retribution, all in response to this perceived denigration of symbols and language. Such reactions often arise in the quest for an expansionist embrace of all things represented in our humanity; a sometimes-worthy goal, though one that needs wisdom in its deployment.

I will not dwell on the particulars of the item itself, for my concern is not the object but the impulse it stirs in us; the principle interests me far more than the personality behind it.

Confrontation and Its Limits

I would suggest that the confrontational approach sets people up against one another. It might well be a way of challenging norms, yet it is rarely the means by which one wins converts.

In terms of religious figures who walked the earth more than a millennium ago, it is quite unlikely that anyone truly knows what they looked like. The pictures we see of them today are figments of human imagination and artistry, quite awesome and commendable, but not real. For those who claim to have had visions or apparitions, my view is that revelation is only presented to the limit of one's capacity to perceive.

Depictions and Idolatry

Depictions might offer a sensual connection to the unseen, but they do not replace it; to think otherwise opens one's appreciation to a form of idolatry. Then again, depictions can be instructive or misleading. 

For instance, the European masters have in many cases depicted Jesus Christ as Caucasian, with northern Scandinavian features, when, by reason of history and region, He would most likely have looked Arabic. Such features would not have made Him seem alien, nor His parents, when they sojourned in Egypt at the time Herod massacred every boy-child in Judea under the age of two.

The question then becomes this: would Western Christianity have been amenable to an Arabic, Black, or Asian Jesus Christ? Now, that is to court controversy, meddling with images and depictions preconceived to accentuate belief, yet upended by reasonable supposition.

The Lesson of Gideon

I am reminded of the story of Gideon in the Bible, who one night destroyed the idols of his community, so that they rose up to put him to death. His father was able to convince them to let the offended gods avenge themselves.

We should be careful of emasculating our deities by offering to fight for them as though they were utterly powerless, because the deeper issue is this: if a god cannot fight for himself when slighted, what is the power we believe he possesses? Gideon came to be known as Jerubbaal.

Belief and Fellowship

We all believe differently, to the extent of our own persuasion, and we do let the beliefs of others influence us, hopefully to buttress what we know rather than to pull apart and pull down our creeds. At worst, those who choose to meddle with the elements of our foundational beliefs put themselves at risk of forsaking our fellowship, communion, and friendship.

They might be misguided, but it is impossible to read motivation or intent from afar; we are left with our conscience to decide. One may hold an act to be unwise, even unnecessary, without presuming to indict the one who acts; the deed and the doer are not the same thing.

Perhaps I feel quite unperturbed because, in the admonition of one preacher, I have as much sense as an old cow: I eat the hay and leave the baling wire. The beliefs we hold are like seeds sown, which will grow in the ways we allow, for the ground of our hearts tends the seed to be fruitful, affected by heat, thorns, or weeds, for it is in these very things that offence reveals itself.

Keeping Offence in Perspective

Yes, we do get offended, but we must limit the impact to two things. First, the offender acts in a foolishness that does not engender the best of our humanity. Secondly, for all the offender does, I do not attach myself so closely to any man that I cannot cut loose when he is falling into the ditch.

The offender might be worthy of rebuke, and in extreme situations they might find themselves in receipt of mob violence. Even where the latter could be justified, I would not subscribe to it. We are allowed to deviate in how we believe, and to break away if no compromise can be found.

At the intersection of symbolism, language, depictions, and beliefs, the apparent offence of any one thing is kept in perspective. Another's journey, leading to redemption or perdition, is theirs alone; I refuse to follow in folly.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

A Picasso No One Can Repaint

The Mad Hatter's Drawing Board

Every good farce needs its Mad Hatter, and mine arrives armed with a drawing board. That drawing board, the one we have returned to many times over the last six weeks, was the receptacle of imperceptible scrawls by a mad scientist whose antics do not, on the surface, look like a frenzy of demented absentmindedness coupled with a sense of all-knowing confidence.

No, what comes out at the end is what makes this a Mad Hatter you could, in your complete docility, be persuaded to strangle. The task itself was simple enough to state: to improve laptop performance in a tightly controlled environment.

There we were at the end of last week, on the cusp of completing this intensive work of art, in the sense that the automation now had snapshots, verbose logging, and user-initiated rollbacks, all at my insistence, achieved in stages of improvement that registered close to fifty versions of the code.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

Two Questions

Then two questions, from different perspectives, quite literally upset the applecart. The first was why something that could be done by policy was being implemented by scripts. It was possible because the architect, the same mad scientist, had tinkered with the engine enforcing policy, in what I saw as a neat piece of coding.

The second question concerned supportability, to which I responded that, although there was a spectrum of knowledge available, the code presented a level of complexity that no one would grasp beyond tweaking it. My own suspicion, if I am honest, was that the code would eventually be ripped out rather than developed and maintained.

I suggested it was a work of art, the progeny of the architect, and that you will not get another painter to daub on a Picasso. A good analogy, but probably too suggestive in its reading, because the architect was soon back to trying to fix it. What resulted was a new design for what the code did, and we were back to square one with deployment by policy and preference; twenty-three tweaks had become ninety-two.

Policy Versus Scripts

The policy-versus-scripts argument comes down to something quite practical. Policy carries comprehensible text and well-known, configurable settings that are recognised right across the industry when it comes to endpoint devices.

Scripts, by contrast, are bespoke by nature, and far too many of them end up impossible to maintain or are simply left to function with their faults until something new can replace them. I am firmly on the side of adapting the concepts as designed and moving them into an implementation that others can actually support.

Skimming through the document, I could already see problems, some easy to correct, but others requiring a total rethink. The concept remained the same in terms of what was to be delivered, but there was a paradigm shift in the implementation that could no longer be done in the phases the scripts were best suited to.

A Promise Disappointed

Worse still, the settings from the scripts did not transcribe directly into policy text; I needed a reference website to derive the policy text for each required setting. Then came the realisation that many of those settings from the script had no commensurate policy text at all.

It did not help; it merely exacerbated the amount of unnecessary work that could have been done right the first time. I sense a kind of aversion to explaining or describing anything that has been done, with emails and Microsoft Teams chats substituting for this essential piece of communication that I have requested many times before.

At the end, an XML file that could have saved me hours of work was in the wrong format for ingestion. None of it was helpful; a promise at first sight was, in truth, a total disappointment deserving of excoriation, but I am too polite for that. I have a pattern-recognition insight into things that suggests an Originally Conditioned Distraction (OCD) to fix. At a glance, I saw that an XML delimiter had not been properly set.

Meticulous to a Fault

Perhaps I am meticulous to a fault, but it is to forestall and arrest faults before they cause issues. Erring on the side of caution always trumps bludgeoning through like a bull let loose in a china shop. Many may not agree, but you do not build a forty-year IT career on being reckless, especially after learning from interesting or costly mistakes earlier on.

This remains a work in progress. I am hoping the transition from scripts to policy will hold, though there are the various unhelpful gaps I have referred to the architect. So, I await the response, before chivalry from the Middle Ages requests the violent disembowelment of someone mercifully dispatched before they wreak additional havoc on the peace of our noble workplace.

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Men's things XXXV: A Man's Search for Dignity

Pursuing a Diagnosis

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

I have found myself at the intersection where solutions designed for women seem to be just as suitable for men.

Many years ago, this first arose when I set about addressing folic acid deficiency anaemia. It was flagged when I noticed an out-of-range and irregular reading of my MCV (Mean Corpuscular Volume) blood test, which pointed, in the first instance, to a possible nutritional deficiency of folic acid, iron, or vitamin B12.

At my insistence, I persuaded my GP to order the specific tests for serum folate (folic acid), serum ferritin (iron), and serum B12. It was discovered that my folic acid levels were quite low; hence the diagnosis of folic acid deficiency anaemia.

Since then, I have requested the granular serum tests that sit beneath the headline MCV.

Pills Made for Mothers

I bought over-the-counter folic acid tablets, each with a strength of 400 micrograms. The label on the container carried the message, “Supports the overall health of your baby during conception and pregnancy.”

Well, I did a double take. The ability to conceive or carry a baby is not one I possess. My GP then gave me a prescription for folic acid at a strength of 5 milligrams, twelve and a half times that of the over-the-counter tablet. It meant I was not going to fix my deficiency by popping chemist pills.

A New Reality

Anyway, we have grown inured to watching adverts for sanitary towels and pads on television, and to seeing what the women using such protection get to do once their fear of leaking, and of embarrassingly revealing their flow, has been overcome by advances in sanitary towel technology.

Now, following treatment for prostate cancer with radical radiotherapy, I have experienced occasional bowel incontinence and regular bladder incontinence.

Once, in the case of the latter, it was the cover of darkness and a long overcoat that spared my blushes when my red chinos were soaked through.

Searching for Protection

For anatomical reasons, I could not simply start wearing feminine sanitary pads, just as I had taken to correcting folic acid deficiency anaemia with pills marketed primarily to fertile and pregnant women.

The male incontinence underwear I found was expensive, and it did not contain the urgency to the extent needed to forestall embarrassment.

The protection did not entirely eliminate the fear of emission or excretion; it offered only temporary safety, in the hope that you might reach the refuge of a convenience before the dam burst.

Adverts Not for Men

It goes without saying that the strain of advert music with the line “body formed for you”, or the tagline “Always with wings”, does not pertain to menfolk. Either we are too poorly served, or I need better discreet guidance when I visit a department that accounts for dignity in its solutions, without public spectacle.

So, imagine how I felt when a new advertisement came on television this afternoon for the Always Discreet Maxi Comfort Pads 9 Drop, offering the highest-absorbency pads designed for heavy bladder leaks, with a wider back for 50% more coverage and OdourLock technology. If only that catered for me too.

What We Actually Need

You might ask why I have not considered nappies for adults. It is a valid point, but that also suggests a level of incapacity and loss of control that is probably excessive for my current situation. It is a concession I do not think anyone, adult female or male, would make willingly if nature had not imposed it without option.

Minimal, unintrusive, anatomically aware, fully absorbent, and effective is what we need: coverage, protection, and odour lock without bulking out your trousers. There, I have written the advert for a product that serves bladder incontinence in men.

Breaking the Silence

My own route to this predicament was prostate cancer, but I am hardly the only man walking about with a secret and a spare pair of trousers in mind. Age brings it, an enlarged prostate brings it, so too do surgery, diabetes, neurological conditions, and plain bad luck; the company is far larger than the silence would suggest.

That silence is convenient for everyone but the men living it, and it is worth naming the circular trap at its heart: manufacturers under-serve men because men under-report, and men under-report because they find themselves so poorly served. Somebody has to break the loop, and it will not be the men, who have every reason to say nothing.

Which leaves the people who make and sell these things. I have, after all, written their advert for them; the product is the easy part, and dignity costs no more to design in than to leave out.

A slim thing built for male anatomy, an honest range of absorbencies, odour locked away, trousers uncreased, and a shelf a man can reach without rehearsing an explanation, none of this is beyond an industry that manages it handsomely for women.

A Matter of Dignity

The country decided, from January 2021, that period products should carry no VAT, recognising them as a plain necessity of life rather than a luxury; a woman buys them relieved of tax and relieved of explanation.

Incontinence products, as it happens, can also be had free of VAT, but only once you have declared yourself “chronically sick or disabled”, the very badge of incapacity I was at pains to avoid. [The UK Parliament: VAT on incontinence products (PDF)]

So, the tax is not quite the point. The point is that one necessity is met with a shrug and the other with a form; that dignity, for some of us, still comes conditionally. These things need thinking about, even if men's things rarely get talked about.

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Give the Doctor Somewhere to Go

Why reading your own clinical results and asking the right questions turns a consultation into a collaboration.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

An Unexpected Appointment

Once again, I found myself in hospital, more times than I would have liked in a single year. I have lost count. I had no reason why this appointment had been scheduled, and my anxiety was not assuaged when, just over a week before, I received a call telling me to attend the diabetes centre.

It was a poorly delivered message. The department I used to attend had been relocated to what was once the Diabetes and Endocrinology Department, but you can imagine how I felt until I received clarification.

In any case, it would have come as a great shock, because nothing in my blood test results indicated any cause for concern in that area.

A Confusing Journey

When I did set off from home, I realised the bus was running seven minutes late. Although I had given myself enough time to find this new location, my appointment notice had not been updated accordingly. So I returned to the old place, where the receptionist registered me before advising me to take a seat.

A few minutes later, the receptionist came to tell me I had to go to another department. She gave directions, but the signage left me navigating a labyrinthine route, unsure whether I needed to explore further down or check with someone else. I did eventually find the place, and it was kitted out like a temporary setup, with patients barely out of a daze from the trouble of getting there.

Checks and Confusion

A nurse called out my name to check my height, weight, and blood pressure. Having arrived later than expected, and given the discombobulation that ensued, I feared the readings might be high. I took deep, controlled breaths and folded up my sleeve; they fell within the normal range. Phew!

Half an hour after my arrival, another nurse came to check what I was there for; it seemed the relocation had also introduced inefficiencies. Apparently, I had been invited for the second jab of the HPV vaccine, which, when I took it, proved quite painful.

Being My Own Advocate

This is part of my personal medical advocacy. Literate people should spend some time reading and understanding their clinical results, because doctors sometimes do not have enough time to tease out the issues with you. 

I recognise, too, that not everyone can do this alone; those constrained by education or digital access may need a trusted interpreter, whether a family member, carer, or advocate. That is precisely why those of us who can engage should and could do a little more.

When I do raise something, it is rarely idle curiosity. My questions are usually a way of satisfying myself whether a course of action is genuinely necessary. If you notice something outside the normal range in your results, bringing it up immediately elicits a response, whether an assurance that there is nothing to worry about, or an investigation requiring further tests.

Working With, Not Around

This is where prompting matters. When my consultant noticed my name on the board and invited me for a chat, my question about the creatinine levels gave the conversation somewhere to go. Those levels had been off the scale in late July, indicative of either an infection or kidney problems; if it were the latter, a change of medication might enter the fray.

Had I not raised it, the consultant might reasonably have assumed there was nothing more to discuss. Advocacy of this kind is not working around the doctor; it is working with them.

Along with the vaccine, a urine test was ordered, and late last night the results returned well within the normal range. I did not need a doctor or a consultant to tell me that, and my concerns were immediately allayed.

Essentially, we underserve ourselves in the quest for the best clinical outcomes if we leave everything to doctors as omniscient experts on our bodies, when we should be doing a bit more to keep them apprised.

A Gemini Notebook AI Podcast on this blog

Whom Is Pride For?

An Early Farewell

The Manchester Pride Weekend comes to an end today, and it could not have come much sooner. The August Bank Holiday, from Friday until Monday, is taken over with festivities, revelry, and debauchery, depending on what takes your fancy.

I would rather be elsewhere, however. Last year I was in Cape Town, in the company of my husband and taking things at my own pace.

Falling Out

In the thirteen years that I have lived in Manchester, I have grown progressively disillusioned with the event, both for its commercialisation and its seeming lack of broad representation.

From the day in the Easter break of 2013, when a friend and I were refused entry to a club for no discernible reason beyond bouncer ego and racism, I have fallen out with Canal Street, which constitutes the main part of the Manchester Gay Village, along with the adjoining streets.

What frustrated us further was that there seemed to be no recourse, no obvious means of registering our displeasure. Yet a search of the Internet turned up news reports of exactly these discriminatory door policies, predicated not on fact but on prejudice, assumption, or the subjective judgement of the door staff at many venues.

An Unfair Assessment

That experience coloured my view of the Gay Village and left me with the impression that all the associated voluntary support organisations were of the same ilk. It was an unfair assessment, I concede, but it took hold because none of the ones I hoped might help were willing to do anything.

I live on the border of the village, yet I am the least engaged with the place, apart from walking through it if I need to get to other parts of the city.

Rights and Nuisance

As for Pride itself, the whole area is cordoned off into an enclave of activity that requires a ticket to attend; even so, you cannot be denied the public right of way to traverse it if you need to get through.

That, some years ago, became a point of contention between the security personnel, who did not know the law, and the police, who affirmed our rights.

Beyond that, there is the unneighbourly inconvenience of the cacophony, and of inebriated and sickly attendees becoming a nuisance on our side streets.

Not My Demographic

For what is supposed to be a community event, given the cost to attend and the interest in whatever entertainment is arrayed, I have found that I am probably not the demographic best served by most of what goes on there.

When I have deigned to purchase a ticket, I have never attended any of the performances; and once caught in the thickened crowd, I am already suffocating, so I rush back home for respite.

It is simply not a place of any comfort, whether alone or in the company of others. Now, I avoid it altogether and skirt the place, rather than insist on my right of passage.

Losing Its Way

Beyond community, Pride is supposed to help good causes, and we have many that represent different interests.

A few years ago, the establishment running Pride hiked prices, made their greatest profit, and then reduced their charitable contributions. It had lost its way, trying to rival and outdo the events in Birmingham and London by bringing in global acts best viewed at entertainment venues.

These acts were an exorbitant waste of resources in the quest for fame, and it led to the eventual, and just, collapse of the organisation, which still owed lesser acts who had given their time, resources, energy, and talent in the community spirit.

A Case for Change

This year, we were assured that the event would be more representative. I have not noticed as much. The ticket prices were still high; and whilst the acts celebrated more local talent, so that the total cost came to twenty per cent less than what was paid to the main act last year, I am still failing to find any sense of engagement.

My premise for sponsorship is broader accessibility and affordability, without anyone having to declare that they are in straitened circumstances to qualify for a concessionary ticket, assuming any are available at all, or so few that access becomes a lottery.

The influence sponsors hold over Pride management should be codified as invitational rather than institutional, never commanding or directing what Pride can and cannot do. There must be strict autonomy, alongside broad community representation in the decision-making process.

Watching from Afar

Apart from stepping out of my apartment block onto the street with my folding chair to watch the parades on Saturday, which had over 150 distinct participants, including organisations, companies, clubs, charities, establishments, and political parties, I have done nothing more.

The clouds did gather and rain on the parade at certain times, but it did not dampen anyone's enthusiasm. I was in my rain jacket and poncho, which kept me dry, though some braved the chill and the wet as if it were a bright summer's day.

Even the Service for Pride at Manchester Cathedral, which I would usually steward and sometimes take part in, I gave a miss. Two invitations to garden barbecues I ignored, rather than offer my regrets and risk being persuaded against my own inclination.

Protest and Celebration

It is my view that the Pride principle has long deviated from its founding ethos of both protest and celebration; it has become an over-commercialised affair that now merely grants access to those with the means, rather than a broad community celebration that recognises the diversity it comprises, in groups large and small. Pride has drifted from access towards exclusivity.

So the question remains: whom is the modern Pride for? The answer I have seen suggests it is not for everyone, nor for the well-meaning members of the wider community who wish to embrace one another in the pursuit of human rights and dignity, both for those affected and for their allies. These are all reasons why I am no more supportive of Pride in Manchester today than I have been for the past few years.

No Curmudgeon

As peace returns to my city by the end of today, I am not being curmudgeonly. We can simply agree that not everyone is energised by these things, and that there should be acceptance of this without heaping on any kind of excoriation.

Maybe, next year, I shall be just as absent from this annual charade, in the company of my husband, who, for his lack of exposure to these settings, is far too easily excited about Pride events for my liking or comfort.

Thought Picnic: Identity Formed by Timing

Returning After War

Way back in my late teens, I had a friend, or someone I thought was a friend. We were agemates, and something interesting and significant caught my attention. It seemed that those who returned from the UK at the end of the Nigerian Civil War integrated better, taking up the growing opportunities in a recovering country, than those who did so almost a decade later.

Between those who returned well under the age of ten and those in their early teens, there was a generational difference in adaptation, a sense of being caught adrift. Staying in the UK for longer proved less beneficial to their sense of belonging or identity; though they had better English accents, they were unsettled, and sometimes having a less prosperous time of it.

A Shared Beginning

For some context, the people I write about and I were all born in the UK in the 1960s. I returned to Nigeria well under the age of ten, having barely been exposed to inner city mechanics and situations; they returned in their teens, late in the 1970s. What separated us, then, was not origin but timing. We were cut from the same cloth, yet a few years of divergence would shape us differently.

My observations are, of course, anecdotal rather than academic. Even so, I think the age-of-return hypothesis is significant, and I have alluded to it in other blogs. It is the quiet variable running beneath everything I am about to describe.

An AI-generated infographic on the blog content. (Click to enlarge.)

What They Brought

What they brought into the fray was a sense of fun. They were the best chess players and had figured out how to solve the Rubik's cube, though they were not better Scrabble players. The Nigerian educational system was a challenge, amongst the other things that left them yearning to return to the UK, if only they had the opportunity.

They were a restless lot, and of the many, there were two who, on reflection, had been exposed to the race and deprivation politics and the discrimination of the 1970s into the 1980s. They carried the scars of inner-city influences, influences that would not have engendered the most positive sense of self and status, even in Nigeria.

They were suspicious before they were trusting, questioning more than listening, ready to respond with violence on a dare without first putting things in perspective. That people envied their exposure, without understanding how they were the personification of a social construct beyond their control, one that amounted to a material deficit, could make for an interesting study.

An Identity Formed at Home

Here is where the timing mattered most. My blackness was always simply part of me, and that was settled in Nigeria, quietly and without apology, long before it was ever questioned. I grew up where blackness needed no explanation and carried no burden; it was simply the ground I stood on. There was nothing to defend, because nothing had been challenged.

So, when I returned to the UK, and the racist abuse came, as it did, it met an identity that was already whole. The abuse did not shape how I saw myself; it had arrived too late for that. I could regard it as a reflection of the abuser rather than a depiction of myself, precisely because the depiction had been drawn elsewhere, at home, on my own terms.

The teenage returnees, I suspect, had that sequence reversed. Their sense of racial self was worked out amid the hostility, not before it, and so the hostility got inside, where mine never could.

A Sudden Slap

This friend of mine gave me a stinging slap after a dare, a playful situation that suddenly turned strange. It taught me a few things. I would not rise to a dare that I had no intention of acting on in the first place. I do not care if I am called a chicken; they are the hardiest and most abused of animals, and they probably possess the greatest survival instinct and resilience in the animal kingdom.

As a consequence, I have no fear of missing out. I am usually told that I do not know what I am missing, to which I would respond that I cannot miss what I do not know. A slap is a momentary event with no follow-on; the embarrassment quickly fades into irrelevance. My temperament is not conditioned for violence. I am comfortable letting things slide, because what defines me is character, not machismo. Class is always understated, never dramatic.

On Character and Circumstance

I think environments and societal settings can influence character as much as mould it, though to varying extents. I cannot speak to the sociological truth of that. Yet I am left wondering whether my own equanimity was truly character, or simply the good fortune of a gentler formative environment, a self settled before it was ever tested.

Perhaps that is the paradox worth sitting with. The returnees had the richer exposure by one measure, the metropolitan UK, the accents, the chess and the Rubik's cube, yet the more unsettled outcome by another. I had the lesser exposure, yet the steadier sense of who I was. Sometimes, it seems, less can be more.

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