I was born and brought up in Manchester and moved to Bradford when I was about 21. At the moment I’m the Assistant Director Safer Stronger Communities at Bradford Council. My husband and I used to live in the heart of the Asian community in Bradford 3, known as Bradford Moor, in Folkestone Street. I’d grown up in a multicultural but predominantly white inner city area – you know, a council estate – but it felt more cosmopolitan, more laid back. When we moved to Bradford we moved into quite hilly terrain where all you could see were rooftops and chimneys and concrete. It felt very claustrophobic; very tight housing, terraces and back to back houses, while in Manchester it felt more spacious.

My initial feeling about Bradford was that the contrast was very stark. It was either very white or Asian. It felt to me there wasn't anything in between. It was just a huge culture shock. The fact that unless you left the area, you could go days without seeing a white person was just – well, I couldn't comprehend it really. The area was so densely populated with Asian families – the schools, the people who lived nearby, the shopkeepers. And everything was geared around the needs of the Asian community – the shops had the Asian vegetables, fruit. And the clothes shops were fabric shops.

It was predominantly Pakistani but there were Bangladeshis there as well. You had neighbours that were very interested in your lives and I think that's cultural. But from my perspective, I wasn't used to that. The women had no barriers in terms of what they asked you – from how much you earned to what contraceptive you were using. It was almost unbelievable in terms of the lack of social barriers in some respect, because I wasn't related to them. I wasn't a friend. I was a neighbour and in terms of how I’d been brought up, there was a certain social line that you didn't cross just out of respect.