Yesterday was Uttlesford Council’s diversity day, with a fete in the grounds of Audley End house. There was a fair cord and I did see one black person there. Though there are four or five whom one sometimes sees shopping in this town, where 14,000 people live, the only really visible sign that anything has changed in the ethnic makeup of the area since about 1950 are three Indian restaurants, one Turkish, three Chinese, and a Thai place.
Everyone was given forms to fill out, specifying their ethnic origin; I don’t think the results will show much diverstity. But the funniest evidence of the whitebread character of the even came form the entertainments. There was a Bollywood dance troupe, which almost consisted of four Indian dancers in glorious silk dresses: except the second from the right was about nine inches taller than the other three, and white.
Then there was a full troupe of ethnic traditional dancers; about twelve, all in their native costumes, except for one small inauthentic point: you couldn’t help noticing that the men wore underpants (omitted in this shot for decency).
