How Ya Like Me Now

Was having a bit of a shoe problem when getting ready for my graduation. Shazby had ruled the red vintage peep-toes as too outre, and I'd sold my black Prada courts because they were starting to give me some Hammer-time toes .

I decided on a brown patterned wrap dress, and pale pink Poste Mistress suede courts with a grosgrain bow on the side. Forgive me for sounding like an episode of Sex and The Absence of Black Folk in the City, but it's the little things that make a difference.

I dug up the graduation robe I wore seven years earlier, dusted off my sister's mortar board, and trotted off to Central Hall, Westminster, just opposite the Houses of Shouty White Men, Diane Abbott and a few brown folk. It's only when I get there that I start to feel the shine of graduating. Everyone's looking all fresh, dressed, like a million bucks, parents are skinning teet, and graduands are posing for pictures with everyone from family to the security guards in the foyer.

As I sit in the audience waiting for my name to be called, I think about the hours I put in, the nights I worked until 5am and still made it to my shorthand class for 9.30am.

I recalled the fear of not having a good idea to pitch to David Roper, whose entertainment masterclass on Fridays made your stomach do windmills, as I rode the train 30 minutes before the class started. And the final week of the shorthand tests we had to pass at 100 words per minute. I managed it with just two days to spare. When you're studying with 20-somethings, the majority of whom are fresh out of Oxbridge, failure is a swear word and those bitches were ultra-competitive.

I remembered the migraines which hospitalised me after Exorcist type vomiting episodes, and the virus which left me out for the count for three weeks. My lecturer Paul Dunn gave me extra tuition during his lunch hour to get me up to speed with sub-editing even though his lecture day came straight after an overnight shift at The Times where he was deputy night editor.

Then I recalled the satisfaction when I'd written something which was praised by Linda 'Darth Maul' Christmas, our course director who trained a vast majority of Fleet Streets 'finest' hacks. Linda derived great joy from sending us to a part of the city she picked from the A-Z and telling us to come back with a story. The off-diary exercise was not generally the highlight of anyone's week. And it was not cool to have 'rubbish' scrawled on one of your stories.

It shouldn't really be a surprise as I was always a naturally bright, competitive girl at school. One of my mums favourite stories is one where I chastise a childhood friend by saying: "What do you mean you cant read?!?". But when I was younger if whatever I did didn't come naturally, I moved onto something else. I didn't get maths for years in primary school, so concentrated on English. I got my O Levels without revising, but not the A's. My degree was tough, but there were no final exams. But this time, I had to really study, politics, media law, sub-editing, teeline shorthand, newswriting, and keep going over that shit until it sunk into my dreadlocked head, and do exams at the end. Crap.

So yes, on my graduation day I allowed myself a big swell of pride in my achievements. This gyal from White City Estate. The estate whose address meant you couldnt get into a decent school in West London, only the ghetto school on your doorstep where the deputy head had been stabbed by a bad breed pupil, the school that sent you to do work experience in a nursery when you said you wanted to be a journalist.

But luckily for me I had a mother who taught me my alphabet before I started nursery, and always bought newspapers. It's the little things sometimes that make a difference.

Like taking the time to consider what shoes you're going to wear. I should have taken a bit longer as I nearly popped my raas walking across the stage in them dorothys.

But they did look good though.