Born in 1979 in a top-floor flat on Fairhazel Gardens, I was raised overlooking a wild, untamed private green—an unlikely commons bordered by middle-class houses, some owned, some leased by the council, like ours. Our home was a threshold between worlds: class divides, histories of exile, and dreams of belonging. On the ground floor lived an older Czech-Jewish émigré, likely a Holocaust survivor, whose garden gate we’d bypass by climbing the fence—childhood marked by quiet crossings. This early immersion in overlapping stories of displacement, resilience, and community continues to inform my work.