Don't Push Too Many Trolleys

Introduction

I was born in July 1975 at Frimley Park Hospital in Surrey and grew up in the neighbouring town of Farnborough, which is around 30 miles (about 48 km) south west of central London.

After a life that took me around the world, including spending time living in China and New York City, I have ended up living a few miles from where I was born.

My sister, Suet Lee, who is ten years older than me, was born in 1965. At this time, my parents lived in a tiny one-room studio flat in Bayswater. They were given the opportunity to move to a two-bedroom council house in Farnborough as part of the GLC's efforts to relocate people from overcrowded central London to the growing surrounding suburbs. So I spent the first ten years of my life in a terrace house on a council estate that my parents eventually bought. They managed to save up and buy it for a few thousand pounds when tenants' opportunities to buy their council homes became more popular and widespread in the 1970s, a trend mostly driven by Sir Horace Cutler (Conservative leader of the GLC from 1977–1981) and then heavily pushed by Margaret Thatcher's first Secretary of State for the Environment, Michael Heseltine.

I did well at primary school. I was an all-rounder at a time when school kids tended to fall into one of two camps: you were sporty and popular or you were academic and nerdy. I benefitted from the popularity that comes with being good at sports, as well as pleasing my parents and teachers by doing well academically. ...