| |
> Editorial
> What's the Story?
> Mrs. Fixit
> Desperately Seeking Ingredients...
> Passionate about Mill Road
> Caribbean Masterchef
> Everything is Possible!
> A Sanctuary on Mill Road
> Boat People
> Going Green with Al-Amin
> The Akashi Project
> Open All Hours
> Mesmerised by Meze
> Come Together
> The Girl from Arapau
> Still Sweet and Spicy
> A Real Neighourhood
> Lei Si Fan Mei?
> Flight from Baghdad
> Streets of Revolution
> Stepping up the Ladder
|
|
 |
What’s the Story?
“When Cambridge Untold asked me to select fifteen Mill Road business owners and ‘get their stories’ I was unsure how I might go about it...” Writes David Lambert.
When I approached potential interviewees, most had difficulty understanding what exactly I was after. You want to hear my story? One trader, I’m sure, saw me as a snoop from the Home Office enquiring about his status in the UK (perhaps it was the microphone wires dangling from my bag!). Most were initially bemused by the whole idea (who could possibly want to read about their story?). A few, while I was still sussing out who I might include, invited me in behind the counter and plied me with coffee, mint tea, meze or baklava, and started then and there recounting their lives.
By far the greatest challenge was getting busy entrepreneurs to book a slot when they might sit down with a stranger and reminisce about their past. Many cheerfully put me off indefinitely until a ‘less hectic’ time. |
I eventually heard their stories, whether between clients in a basement repair room, in a back of shop storeroom or down a telephone line to Jamaica.In each case I have been amazed at the honesty and generosity with which people have opened up and shared some of the most heartfelt moments of their lives. Here are memories of childhoods in distant lands, touching accounts of family members, as well as dramatic stories of war, revolution and persecution.
It’s all there on Mill Road.
Click image to enlarge |
Click image to enlarge |
“Mill Road is the backbone of the city of Cambridge. It’s where the notion of Cambridge meets the notion of real city – alive, multivocal, always alternative.
If you don’t know Mill Road, you don’t know Cambridge!”
Ali Smith
Cambridge Resident and Booker Prize Nominee
> back to top |
|
