My father moved to the UK from Iran in the 1970s to study engineering when he met and married my mother, who is from a small town in the Welsh valleys. Many people from that town would not have met a non-white person before they met my father. After the Islamic Revolution in 1979, my parents made the eminently sensible decision that they would build their life together in Wales and not Iran.
To this day my father remains the hardest working person I know. He always worked two jobs, became a successful engineer and I recall watching him take part in publicity photos in the 1990s as the first non-white retained fireman in Wales, which he went on to do for 25 years.
He is by any measure a credit to his community and can easily be held up as a model for "integration." However, he is just one person. I sometimes wonder how different things might have been if there had been even one or two other Iranian families living on our street.
My father was born more than 3,700 miles from where I was born. By the age of three I'd already lived in four different countries. I grew up in a small town in Wales. By the time I was 15, I couldn't wait to move to London. I'm writing this column in a hotel room in Japan. When it is finished I'll send it to my editor in Australia and by the time you read it I'll likely be back home in London. As an internationally minded academic, I have what Talcott Parsons called an "achieved identity" based on education and career success.
Comment: Bitcoin takes a nosedive, trading below $4,000 for the first time since 2017