The day I met Ike

On 11 February 1990, the impossible happened. Nelson Mandela, the South African anti-apartheid campaigner, was freed from prison after 27 years.

It was also the day me, my mum and two sisters moved from Hammersmith to East Acton. I remember it being cold. It also may have even snowed for the time in my living memory.

I think about this period many times as it was around that time I met my friend Ike. He died in spring 2008 and today would have been his 38th birthday.

I don’t remember the exact day I met Ike – but I do remember the time – as he moved into the area around the same time (we always used to argue about who moved onto the street first).

I don’t remember being especially conscious of meeting him at the time. However, I do remember one of his brothers. As we queued at the bus stop his brother would stay in the warmth of his home and when he saw the number 72, which was a double-decker in those days, he would run across the green outside their house straight onto the bus.

I remembered them being together in the mornings chatting away as on the top deck of the bus as it snaked and weaved itself to Hammersmith.

I was mostly indifferent to Ike but there was part of me that really disliked him. Why did I dislike him? He was always happy to see me. Always. He would always sing my name: ‘Joy joooy jooooy jooy jooy joy!!’, without ever having a conversation with me. Not that I wanted to have a conversation with him. He didn’t even stop singing at me when his good friend Simon embarrassed him in front of me.

I wasn’t a shy person. Maybe I was. I think I disliked him because he saw me: Joy Dunbar. I wasn’t someone’s sister, friend or daughter in his eyes. I was Joy Dunbar. I think he felt that I was an amazing human being – even though I didn’t feel it at the time.

As we got older our friendship deepened.

I stopped disliking him.

Eventually, I loved him as a true friend.