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> 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
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Caribbean Masterchef
Denzel Gordon was recently voted one of Momentum Arts Top 10 Black and Asian Local Role Models in Cambridgeshire. He works as a chef in the kitchens of the same building on Mill Road where, 30 years ago, he was born.
My dad came from Jamaica in 1958 when he was about 18. He worked in Bedford for the London Brick Company. He couldn’t get a room; there were signs with No Blacks, No Irish. So he had to sleep with about 8 other people at his cousin’s. He told me that every day they had to pack about 20,000 bricks off to London, they were rebuilding after the war. He got really strong heaving all those bricks. He used to come to Cambridge to visit another cousin in St Philip’s Road. That’s where he saw this picture of a young woman. He kept thinking about her. Had he seen her before somewhere? So he asked his cousin who she was. In the end he actually sent for her from Jamaica! When she arrived it turned out she was the girl he’d seen waving to his ship from the quayside when he was leaving Kingston. She’d seemed to be looking at him, shouting out ‘When are you going to take me to England?’ He remembered her face. You’ve probably guessed she became my mum! |
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We’ve come a long way from the ignorance there was in this country towards black people when my dad first arrived. But it was there even in the early eighties, when I was just a kid at Sedley School. I remember one time I was walking down a passageway to the school and I saw a load of skinheads. I don’t think I’d ever been that frightened before. They saw me and started calling me Jungle Bunny. That name really got me, it still does. They started coming after me and I legged it. It was like a Terminator film or something. I outran them but I’ll never forget that day and the fear I felt.
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| "We’ve come a long way from the ignorance there was in this country towards black people when my dad first arrived." |
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When I was a teenager, I wanted the flashy clothes, the BMW and all of that. But gradually I realised that was the fake picture of the black man, that’s the stereotype we see in films and on TV. You know, the gold tooth, gold chain and bracelet, the 50 Cent rapper image. I almost didn’t take my GCSEs. It was the image thing again: it wasn’t cool, so I wasn’t going to go in for the exam. It was my sister who made me sit them. And I’m so glad she did. It’s easy to fall into a stereotype, especially as a young black male, there aren’t many alternatives. We do it to ourselves. In the black community if you aren’t speaking ‘street’ and using the West Indian flex, yuh kna wa’ah mean, brudder, it’s seen as talking posh. It’s like our brains have been programmed.
I reckon a lot of it comes from some of the ‘gangsta’ rappers’ lyrics and the macho image of the black guys who sing them. The rapper, Tupac, was at a
Mike Tyson fight. Tupac got into an argument with a guy and beat him up. Later someone murdered Tupac. People think a rapper called Biggy Smalls killed him. Then Biggy Smalls got murdered too! Not very good role models. The funny thing is if you listen properly to the lyrics of a lot of these rappers, they’re actually speaking out against violence. But the message isn’t coming through. Of course, calling the record label Death Row Records doesn’t help…
There are other role models out there, besides boxers and rappers. Take the black apprentice who won The Alan Sugar Award or and the black lawyer who won Mastermind 2004. People take the mickey out of Trevor McDonald, the news reader, just because he speaks properly. But we need people like him.
My dad’s actually been my role model in many ways. Back in Jamaica he had to stop school at 10 and go out fishing and herding goats to bring money in. In England, after the brickworks, he worked at Pye in Chesterton cutting sheet metal. He lost two fingers, now they’re attached with metal rods. Then he worked for British Rail laying tracks and a sleeper fell on the back of his heel. The way I see it, it would be a waste of his time coming here and going through all that, if I wasn’t doing something with my life.
I used go to the Romsey Mill Centre as a youth, and play football. The youth leader used to ask me to talk to some of the lads who were fighting and misbehaving. There was a lot of that in the early nineties; the police would be turning up all the time. Then the youth leader asks me, ‘Would you like a job?’ I was at Cambridge Regional College studying mechanics but I took the job as youth worker part time. We got them into football, deejaying, we went on a trip to Alton Towers. We applied to the Prince’s Trust and got funding to buy football kits. That team is still going ten years on. I did a lot of deejaying, at the Fez Club, Route 66, and The Junction. With my cousin Kingsley Richards and a friend Damian Andriana from Madagascar we set up a deejay programme at The Mill. Channel 4 did a report on us. ‘Troublesome’ who started in that little deejaying programme at Romsey is well known all over East Anglia now. The Archbishop of Canterbury at the time, John Carey, came along and I showed him how to mix the decks for Wicked Wicked Jungle is Massive!
| "When I was a teenager, I wanted the flashy clothes, the BMW and all of that. But gradually I realised that was the fake picture of the black man..." |
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Receiving the Momentum Arts Award was such an honour. Barring the birth of my kids, it was the biggest thing that’s happened to me. I couldn’t believe I’d been chosen along with people like Jafar Mirza, Head of Governors at Cambridge Regional College, and John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York. I want to use the recognition the award’s given me to go into schools and clubs, and make a difference.
I went to Jamaica with my family for the only time when I was 12. The beauty was absolutely unbelievable. I didn’t look on it as a foreign country, I felt comfortable, totally relaxed. It was nice for the first time to walk down the street and feel you really fit in. It’s funny, because as soon as I opened my mouth they realised I wasn’t one of them and started calling me ‘English boy’!
I have brothers out there and they took us round the island. I remember they killed a goat in the morning, cooked it and ate it the same evening. A fisherman went out to the sea and brought us back a massive snapper. I’d love to do some cooking there!
Denzel Gordon with colleague Yunus Jaan. The team manages the Ditchburn Place kitchen on the weekends. |
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Ditchburn Place used to be the old maternity ward. My mum actually had me here. Now it’s a residential care community, a quiet caring place right on Mill Road. Some of our elderly residents have their own flats and their own carers come in. They can come and go as they please, but there’s a warden to oversee everything. At the back we have accommodation for young people who have had a hard time and we’re helping get back on their feet. A lot of my family are carers in one way or another. Before she retired, Mum was a carer at Fulbourn Hospital and my sister works for Care Force. |
In the kitchens we work as a team preparing food for 75 people every day. I work closely with Sue Willet and together we try and keep the menu interesting for the residents. Today it’s Moroccan Lamb. We do curries, Italian and Thai food, and try to branch out. Like we’ve taken traditional English sponge trifle and made it with Jamaican ginger cake, laced it with rum and put in exotic fruit, bananas and pineapples. We call it Jamaican trifle. They love it! The roast dinners on a Sunday are the most popular. We’ll do them with the best cuts, topside or whatever, which we order in from a supplier in King’s Lynn. Roasts we do with Yorkshire pudding and all the trimmings. You should see the empty plates after they’ve finished eating! It’s a bit of a fight to get any dinner myself on roast days! You can’t beat a good English steak and kidney pudding; we make them here on the premises.
Things do go wrong, a kitchen can be a stressful place! You have to be careful with custard and white sauces. We use a bain marie because if it catches at the bottom it’ll taint the entire sauce. Sometimes you’ll forget to put someone’s pie in or something, and then you realise and you start running round. But everybody here treats each other with a lot of respect. Ditchburn Place is like a big family. Mealtimes can be the highlight of the day for some residents. I think food is very important in people’s lives, especially as you get older.
I watch all the celebrity chef programmes. I like Ainsley Harriet on Ready, Steady, Cook because he empowers people in the kitchen. Delia Smith covers the basics, but there are people out there who don’t know how to fry an egg! Jamie Oliver is definitely changing attitudes to unhealthy school meals in this country. Food is important. Perhaps it’s not surprising there are so many of these celebrity chefs. You can use food to make a difference.
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