Bageye at the Wheel: A 1970s Childhood in Suburbia

2013 | Biography

To his fellow West Indians who assemble every weekend for the all-night poker game at Mrs Knight's, he is always known as Bageye. There aren't very many black men in Luton in 1972 and most of them gather at Mrs Knight's - Summer Wear, Pioneer, Anxious, Tidy Boots - each has his nickname. Bageye already finds it a struggle to feed his family on his wage from Vauxhall Motors, but now his wife Blossom has set her heart on her sons going to private school and she will not settle for anything less. This is the story of a feckless father seen through the eyes of his ten-year-old son. It's a wry and gently comedy about unfulfilling day jobs and late night poker games, of illegal mini-cabs and small-scale drug-dealing. And it is also about a family struggling to belong and a vivid tale of growing up in a vanished world of 1970s suburbia.

Colin Grant (Author)