It was July ‘83.

I was seventeen, which you’ll be surprised about if you’ve seen my youthful appearance and I was in Sri Lanka on one of those “extended” studenty type of holidays that we all wish we could have now. It was the summer between the first and second year of my ‘A’ levels and my parents had paid for me to go there and stay with my Uncle and his Australian wife for a couple of months.

My mother is Tamil, as were her parents, an incredible coincidence I know. I went to stay with her brother who was working for a couple of years in Lanka. He had left the country as a child with my Mother’s family, had …

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